Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510200010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I know Father's voice," she said. "I don't have to discuss it. I know."
Early in the evening, about a year and a half ago, "God spoke to me. He told me to go to a shopping center. I told him, 'I don't need anything'," but she obediently went anyway.
"I found five men there. Stinking drunk. They were dirty and foul-smelling. But one reached up and said 'could you pray for us?'
"Three hours later he was sobered up. His name was Robert. He asked me, 'Can you hold something for me?' It was $350. He said, 'I'm gonna be at your church Sunday.'
"That Saturday evening he called me, drunk again. We brought him here [to the Whole Life Ministries and Worship Center], put him on a cot, brought him some of my husband's clothes.
"He knew the word of God. He needed the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
"He was speaking in tongues that night."
Just as God led her to that shopping center to take care of one man, Pat Anderson is convinced that God has a plan for the church she founded three years ago.
Whole Life Ministries and Worship Center on Belle Avenue Northeast "is a church known for specific things - 'Book of Acts' miracles. We see healings of the blind and the deaf on a regular basis," Anderson said recently.
But she believes God is calling the congregation to be even more than that.
Her predominantly white church recently merged with a predominantly black Church of God of Prophecy congregation. She also believes God called her to place her strong, dominant personality - used to being the final authority in the church - under the supervision of the minister of that other congregation, a black man who is now bishop of the combined congregation.
Among the gifts of the Holy Spirit that many Pentecostals and Charismatics believe are still manifested among Christians is prophecy.
"Several months ago, at a minister's meeting, there was prophecy about the merger of black and white congregations; about men serving under women; about women serving under men," Anderson said. "We were first to see God manifest that prophetic word."
She believes God has other specific tasks in mind for Whole Life Ministries.
One of those is the opening of a three-day-a-week adult day-care center, specificially to help take care of adults with special needs - Alzheimer's patients, people with Lou Gehrig's disease, those with cerebral palsy.
Anderson also believes the church she founded must be involved in the education of youth. She described plans to help raise scholarship funds for children who could not otherwise go to college.
And while she fully, absolutely, positively believes God is using the church for those purposes, she still expresses some amazement that God chose her to start it.
"It's ludicrous that a 4-foot-11 Jewish woman would take a ministry into the black housing projects; would have a ministry to crackheads and homosexuals and prostitutes. But I do it. I believe because it is ludicrous is why I do it. ... How wild for a 4-11 woman to do such a thing. People think I'm wild or crazy, but I'm just obedient."
When God speaks, Pat Anderson obeys.
When God told her she should approach Steven Spencer about becoming her overseer - even though she is the founder and continues to hold the title of senior pastor of Whole Life Ministries - she did it.
She didn't put out feelers. She didn't check with her congregation. She called Spencer.
She is a passionate, assertive Jewish convert to Christianity from a family that produced, she said, six generations of Orthodox rabbis.
Spencer is a quiet, reserved black minister, ordained by the Church of God of Prophecy, who hadn't been planning to merge his predominantly black congregation with Anderson's predominantly white one.
What he did see, however, was "the vision of a church in complete agreement" with his own, he said recently - one concerned with feeding the hungry, helping the homeless, caring for the elderly, and doing something for youth.
"The purpose of ministry is to meet the needs of people," Spencer said. "The vision of this church is to do that, not just do something 'religious.'"
Consequently, he took Anderson's call seriously. He was already considering seeking his denomination's designation as a bishop and now he consulted with his own overseer about linking his congregation with Anderson's.
"It became clear the Lord had brought us together. Together we recognized we were hearing the voice of God," Spencer said.
Though their first meeting with Spencer's overseer started off a little rough, permission to join the congregations was granted.
And their members were delighted, Anderson and Spencer said.
"Because it is of God, it has been fully accepted, fully embraced," Anderson said.
That was especially true of Whole Life's assistant pastor, Andrew Smith.
Integrating religious congregations "has been in my heart for years," Smith said. "We are united in the body of Christ. We are working as one people."
Anderson struggles to find just the right word to describe it.
"This is so 'God'," she said.
"I don't believe in playing church," Anderson says.
So, "sometimes my messages come across hard."
She describes herself as so bold and direct, in fact, that attendance at the church has fluctuated over the years.
"I don't give comfortable sermons. I love and encourage, but I give the truth."
For some of her flock, she says, her "demands are too strong. I preach holiness a lot. Righteousness."
Anderson believes the great Christian revivals of the past happened because "hellfire and brimstone was preached. The message is, if you don't accept Christ, you will go to hell.... That is not [preaching] fear, but the plain truth."
Beyond that simple message, Anderson also enforces discipline in the congregation.
"There was discord in the church; strife in the church. And I put it out. I told the individuals to go, to leave. God said, 'You clean it out, I'll fill it up.' I did and he's filled it."
Anderson estimates that, though there have been both growth and decline, 50 to 60 attend on an average Sunday.
Visitors to Whole Life Ministries and Worship Center will hear a relatively conventional Pentecostal or Charismatic Christian theology, which includes an emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are described in the New Testament Book of Acts. Those include healing, speaking in tongues and prophecy.
What one might not expect are the wall hangings with inscriptions in Hebrew, or the presence of a Jewish prayer shawl in the sanctuary, or the celebration of Passover with a traditional seder.
Though Anderson, 44, comes from an Orthodox Jewish family, she says the inclusion of elements of Judaism in worship at Whole Life comes "not because the senior pastor is a Jew," but because Christians need to know "how Jesus lived. The music he heard. The foods he ate. How he celebrated his life."
Anderson describes herself as a "completed Jew," a phrase that has recently superceded the concept of "messianic Jew" in describing Jews who convert to Christianity. She sees her adoption of Christianity as the fulfillment of her being a Jew.
The process began 26 years ago, she said. Anderson started college at 14, but considered herself "socially retarded" even as she was intellectually advanced. "I was a confused kid."
"I felt an emptiness," she says, that wasn't being filled by Judaism. One day when she was 18, she walked into a Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio, where she lived.
Her parents, to her surprise, were very supportive, hoping that "God would straighten everything out" in their daughter's life. They were present at her baptism, confirmation and first communion.
She explored becoming a nun, "but I was a little too radical for them. They told me to go back out into the world. That God had something for me."
Eventually, she joined a charismatic Catholic congregation where she heard about the gifts of the Spirit, and later moved to an Assembly of God church, which was even more Pentecostal in character.
When she moved to Roanoke with her husband in 1982, they visited many churches before settling at Valley Work Ministries. She was licensed to preach by the congregation in 1988 and began an evangelistic ministry. Anderson received full ordination from Whole Life Ministries when she founded it in 1992.
Anderson says she believes the "prosperity gospel" preached by some well-heeled television preachers; that is, that God intends for those who follow him to prosper materially as well as spiritually.
But, "this church is not about money. ... I have no problem with preachers receiving an income, but not until other needs have been met. I have heard preachers say, 'We're not here to meet all your needs.' Yes, we are. We need to meet the needs of body, soul and spirit" not only of the church but the wider community around it, Anderson believes.
"I do not believe in prostituting the Gospel. We shouldn't sell it for $5. We instill a teaching of tithing. If we tap into that spiritual base, we won't have to beg for money."
by CNB