Community Chapel and Bible Training Center was a controversial independent church created in 1967 and pastored by Donald Lee Barnett in which he taught his version of Oneness Pentecostalism. The church eventually grew to an attendance of over 3,000 before splitting and losing significant numbers in 1988 because of numerous lawsuits brought against Barnett and others in the church leadership for sexual improprieties. Community Chapel became famous for a practice its leaders advocated known as "spiritual connections." This practice involved seeking intense emotional experiences of love with another person, usually not one's spouse, while dancing together in worship. It was taught at the Chapel that through this experience, Jesus, specially known to the participants as "the glorified Son of Man" because of the teaching of Barnett, was connecting the members of his church together in love as he had always meant them to be.
Famous quotes containing the words community, chapel, training and/or center:
“Jesus, Buddha, Mahommed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another’s woe. Sorrow’s the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“I never went near the Wellesley College chapel in my four years there, but I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity that school stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.... How marvelous it would have been to go to a women’s college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“At present I feel like a caged animal, bound up by the luxury, comfort and respectability of my position. I can’t get the training that I want without neglecting my duty.”
—Beatrice Potter Webb (1858–1943)
“Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the center of the silent Word.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)