c. 2006 Religion News Service

MADISON, Ala. _ A little more than 10 years ago, Paul Kurts pastored a congregation of 200 close-knit members. Today, his flock sometimes numbers as few as 20 _ and he’s never been happier.

New Life Christian Fellowship, the remnant of his original congregation of Worldwide Church of God, is what’s left after one of the most dramatic conversion stories since Saul of Tarsus headed for Damascus.

But this is not the story of a single person’s conversion, but of an entire denomination’s. The church built on the charisma and teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong opened the Bible after his 1986 death and had a revelation: Their prophet had taken them down a false path.

It took nearly a decade of agonized study after Armstrong’s death, but in December 1994, Pastor General Joseph Tkach Sr., Armstrong’s hand-picked successor, announced to the church that the teachings of Armstrong had been wrong.

They’d been wrong about the prophecies. They’d been wrong about the Sabbath. They’d been wrong about Jesus and the Trinity. They’d been wrong about thinking that America was founded by one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. They’d been wrong about keeping Jewish festivals. They’d been wrong about not using medical doctors when they were sick. They’d been wrong about condemning other Christian churches as false.

The teachings of Armstrong, in short, had led the church away from God, not toward him as the members so fervently desired.

Tkach’s announcement, for most of the 150,000 members of the church worldwide, had the same sort of cataclysmic power that would come from, say, the pope suddenly announcing he was not really God’s viceroy on earth.

“Jesus Christ changes lives,” reads a history of the church on its Web site. “He can change an organization, too.”

After the church recanted Armstrong’s teachings, the Worldwide Church of God was welcomed into the National Association of Evangelicals in 1997. Today, church headquarters in Pasadena, Calif., counts 64,000 members in 860 congregations across 90 countries.

Within a few years, membership dropped to less than 60,000 worldwide. Giving to the church virtually dried up, and leaders were forced to sell Ambassador College and scale back publishing from 1,000 employees to 10.

When Tkach (pronounced Ta-cotch) died of cancer in 1995, his son Joseph Tkach Jr. was named his successor and continues to lead the church.

For Kurts, who, with his wife, had joined the church when he was a college student, it felt like someone had shifted the magnetic pole of the Earth.

“It took me months to fully accept, to see,” Kurts said recently as he and his wife Pat remembered those tumultuous days.

“I kept thinking, `How could I have fallen for this?”’ Kurts said. “People felt betrayed, stupid.”

One of Kurts’ parishioners, a retired engineer named Joe who didn’t want his last name used, isn’t used to feeling stupid. He likes to figure things out, to get them right. He said he is embarrassed about having been a member of the Worldwide Church of God for so many years.

But he remembers why he was attracted to the church: Armstrong’s authoritative speaking style, his common sense directions for many practical matters, the close-knit congregation, the repeated assurance that this was the true church, the only true church.

“I had a strong desire to be in the right, the true church,” Joe said. “But I lived in fear of not being good enough.”

The release from those old requirements, and a sense of responsibility to help guide the members he could into the new emphasis on the love of God and the grace extended by Jesus’ death kept Kurts at the helm of his incredibly shrinking congregation.

Some of his members left to go to other churches. For those, he gave his blessing and good wishes. Many others were so disillusioned over the church’s about-face that they abandoned religion altogether. Kurts grieves for those.

A few joined other splinter groups that follow former Worldwide Church of God leaders who rejected the revolution.

So Kurts is left with the few members who are exploring the new world of Christian cooperation with other denominations and the new celebration of the centrality of Jesus in their lives.

“It is really exciting to grow in understanding of Christ with the background of what was not correct and what is correct with the same zeal we had for the false way,” Kurts said. “I really feel we have a destiny to help people in all religions to see the truth in Jesus Christ.”

“Our burden has been lifted,” Joe said. “I think we are a more loving people with Christ living in us. I hope people can learn from us and realize that changes can occur.”

KE/CM END CAMPBELL

(Kay Campbell writes for The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Kurts, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.