Sharon Clark grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Wisconsin and received her education in Adventist schools from grade school through Andrews University. She taught at Loma Linda Academy for 12 years and received the Zapara Excellence in Teaching Award. Unable to reconcile Adventism’s inconsistencies, she began attending a “Sunday church” in 1995. In 2009 she began to attend Former Adventist Fellowship and realized she hadn’t unpacked her Adventist beliefs. Three years later she finally knew that she was no longer an Adventist, and today she leads the Celebrate Recovery ministry in the church she and her husband Derwood attend in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2015 / SPRING / FAITH STORY BY SHARON CLARK
My name is Sharon. I am a child of God who is recovering from Adventism.
My story is different from many, yet at the core it is typical. For years my focus was mainly on the rules. Now, looking back over my long journey out, I realize mine is a story of recovery from rules, fear, guilt, shame, distress, black and white thinking, approval seeking, and mistrust of God. It is the story of my recovery from religion to relationship, from legalism to grace.
I was born and raised a second-generation Adventist in Wisconsin and went to the church’s elementary school, to Wisconsin Academy, and then to Andrews University. I taught at Loma Linda Academy (LLA) for 12 years; in fact, during my last year there I was honored to receive the Zapara Excellence in Teaching Award. My experience in “the church” was positive. I took in all the teachings and was a good rule follower. I enjoyed everything: boarding school, camp meetings, summer camps, and Pathfinders. Even today when old hymns are sung, they bring a surge of love for my past and of memories of baptisms at the lake. In fact, when I was baptized, I felt the Holy Spirit come over me as I came out of the water. I was proud of being an Adventist and felt special because we had extra knowledge from Ellen White that wasn’t in the Bible. We had more than regular Christians.
Like a good rule follower, I even studied the church manual to learn the rules. I grew up judgmental, self-righteous, fearful of white clouds (Jesus would return like He went away—in the clouds), of God, of hell, and of the time of trouble.
As a youth I was bothered by the cultural rules that seemed inconsistent. For example, jewelry wasn’t allowed because it was adornment and it was costly, yet many Adventists poured much extravagance into their homes and cars. Vegetarianism and the prohibition of unclean meats were promoted for both health and religious reasons, yet potlucks were overloaded with sugar, fat, and gluttony. We couldn’t dance, yet we roller skated and did the Grand March with our boyfriends. On Sabbath it was alright to talk about purchasing things, but money never exchanged hands. We couldn’t go out to movies, yet movies were brought into the academy. (I guess our angels would not abandon us if we were in the Adventist gym!) Cards were wrong, yet we played Rook on academy band trips. We didn’t kill and were conscientious objectors, yet the pro-choice position on abortion was a subtle underlying belief.
Later, when I moved to California as an adult, I found a new set of inconsistencies. We could go out to eat on Sabbath, and it was alright for others to work to feed us. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t have worked in restaurants on Sabbath to feed others. Furthermore, as a Loma Linda faculty member, I couldn’t wear jewelry, but my twelfth-grade daughter on the other side of the campus could have pierced ears.
My Adventist family and friends tell me that Adventism has changed, that it isn’t what it used to be, but I see inconsistencies in what Adventists believe from one friend to another and from one locality to another. For example, many Adventists say they don’t believe in Ellen White, but unknowingly they live within a worldview shaped by the things she said. It seems the external differences among Adventists serve to hide the core reality of the religion.
First Questions
Besides being disturbed by these inconsistencies, I began to question my beliefs when I started reading the Bible in the mid ’70s. One of my first insights was reading in the New Testament about people who were baptized. All they did was believe Jesus, and they were baptized. This practice was inconsistent with my raising my hand 27 times to agree with the 27 beliefs the Adventist church professed.
My next steps came within the church about 1979. I came across a book called Security of Salvation by Adventist psychologist Richard Nies. It grabbed my attention. You mean I could know? I read it with great interest and intensity, and it took away my fear of clouds.
In fact, one day a few years later as I was getting ready to go to work teaching at LLA, I noticed outside my window a beautiful cloud like those in Harry Anderson’s pictures. It seemed open in the middle, and rainbow streaks of light came out of it. I was sure that at any minute Jesus and His angels would appear! I was ready to go home with Him and leave my beautiful house. I wasn’t afraid.
I talked to my kids about what we should do. If we stayed and waited for Him to come in the cloud and it wasn’t Him, how would I explain why I was late to work? “I’m late because I saw this cloud and thought Jesus was coming?” I don’t think they would accept that even at Loma Linda Academy.
As I watched, however, the cloud finally evaporated, and I went to work with tears in my eyes. Nevertheless, I was grateful for the realization that I wasn’t afraid and was ready to go. I had no fear. Not long after that, a young lady in the mall asked me if I was saved. I said without hesitation and with full confidence and assurance, “Yes.” This certainty was a wonderful new freedom I felt inside the Adventist church for nearly 20 years. Yet I had the freedom with guilt.
More questions
I experienced the struggles in the ’80s when Ellen White’s authority was questioned, and many fell away from Adventism. I heard Walter Rea speak of his research that showed Ellen had copied much of her work. This knowledge didn’t shake me; I had been focused on Jesus, not on a woman. I continued attending church but held a very light view of her. I disliked Child Guidance, The Adventist Home, and Messages to Young People anyway, because they always made me feel guilty. I could never measure up to her standards, and she didn’t have any suggestions for accomplishing her demands.
I was beginning to question the church, and I wondered if it was a cult. I read a book by Walter Martin on cults, and I sighed a sigh of relief when I saw that he put Adventists in the evangelical camp. I was somewhat confused, though, about what an evangelical was.
One year while I and some colleagues were working on a Vacation Bible School (VBS) program for the Loma Linda University Church, we previewed several non-Adventist programs for possible use in our VBS. I remember thinking that they talked about Jesus in a very different way than we did. They talked about receiving Jesus and leading others to Christ. That language was inconsistent with Adventist talk.
In the late ’80s Celebration Center opened. It was an Adventist church, but it had a different worship style with praise music, freedom and transparency, no rules, and no inconsistencies in its practices. It fit my now-evolving beliefs, and I began to attend. I loved the worship and praise we gave to our Lord during the service. Moreover, I found something that I always wanted. Grace was freely taught, and I left a load of grief and guilt on the steps during their “Gardens of Prayer”. I learned how much God loved me and how to express my worship and my love for Him. It was here that I first started a 12-step program of recovery.
In spite of the underlying Adventism, God was reaching me and changing me.
Isolation was another issue I had to process. I had been sheltered in Adventist schools and never associated with people outside the Adventist circle. I only knew “Adventist talk”. In fact, after college it was difficult associating with neighbors and colleagues of other beliefs. As a teacher in public school, for example, I never went to the teachers’ lounge. Years later I found myself at a restaurant and noticed I was the only Adventist at the table. I still remember the panic I felt inside my chest.
Finally, after I eventually left teaching at LLA, I learned ballroom dancing and went to Friday evening dances. Those dances were where I practiced socializing and making conversation outside my “Adventist talk”.
Leaving my identity
My first physical step out of Adventism occurred about 1994. Changes had begun to happen at Celebration Center that didn’t fit my new recovery, and I could no longer attend. I wanted to continue in a church with this particular style of worship where I could express my love to God, but I had to look outside the Adventist church for such a place since the rest of Adventism seemed to be criticizing Celebration.
Leaving caused me great distress and grief for many years. I was leaving everything I ever knew, all the friends I ever had, and all the institutions of the church. More than that I believed I was truly lost if I didn’t keep the Sabbath—or should I say—if I didn’t worship in a building on Saturday. Consequently, I went back and forth between another little Adventist gathering, which was a spin-off from Celebration, and Victoria Community Church (now called The Grove) in Riverside on Sundays.
I prayed oh-so-hard for God to help me with this dilemma, and He did. He put books in front of me and provided several pastors (both Saturday and Sunday pastors) teaching on the Sabbath. I was comforted knowing that God was with me, helping me.
After months of wrestling, I finally took a stand on what I considered the bedrock fact: if I was saved according to the day I went into a building and worshiped, then I wasn’t saved by grace, and Jesus’ death on the cross didn’t mean anything.
Although I didn’t fully understand the subject, in 1995, I arbitrarily put my Sabbath struggle to rest and joined Hillside Community church in Rancho Cucamonga. For at least five years my weekly cycle was turned upside down; I never knew if it was Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Sabbath verses continued to nag at me, and I didn’t understand why these Bible-fearing people didn’t see we were worshiping on the wrong day.
Fifteen years after leaving the Adventist church and dropping my membership, I was still an Adventist going to church on Sunday, and I filtered all the teachings in my Christian church through an Adventist prism. Slowly, I began to realize that there were many more differences between Adventism and Christianity than I had realized. I had not unpacked my Adventist suitcase of doctrines.
In a Bible study group I learned that Adam was with Eve at the tree in the Garden of Eden, and I heard that Michael was an angel, not Jesus. I was having confusion over the end-times, the state of the dead, unclean meats, eternal hell, Easter, Old and New Covenants, and Sabbath verses; and I never understood the investigative judgment.
My evangelical husband said that when I died, I could rest because of all the rules I’d had to follow, but he was going straight to heaven when he died.
In 2009, help arrived. Through a series of connections and through Facebook, I came across a book called Sabbath in Christ. In the process of getting it, I found a book called The Truth About Adventist “Truth”, both books by Dale Raztlaff. The “truth” Dale talked about was hard to swallow. After reading those books, I found the Former Adventist Fellowship website and connected with Colleen Tinker. She invited me to a Former Adventist Fellowship (FAF) meeting in Redlands. I decided that I needed to find out the truth for myself. Through Dale’s books, through three years of FAF Bible studies, and through reading Proclamation! magazines and attending the FAF weekends, I began to learn the truth.
One by one I unpacked all the errors embedded into my worldview, and at the 2011 FAF Weekend, my last pillars fell when Mark Martin spoke. I won’t go into all the details of the doctrines that I had to unlearn, for others have done that in their testimonies better than I can. I have to say, however, that when I learned how The Clear Word had been changed to agree with Ellen, I was furious. Being the emotional eater than I am, I went straight to the cupboard when I got home, opened a can of my husband’s pork and beans, and ate them. I realized that when I left Adventism, I had buried it alive. I had pushed it out of sight, but it was not gone, and it had resurfaced, demanding that I deal with it.
Truly free
I am not an Adventist anymore, and I no longer filter the Bible through Adventist eyes. I recant Adventism and will not pick and choose out of the 28 beliefs as so many do. There is no unity in that. I’ve gone through a grief I cannot explain, but I move off the fence between my two worlds with integrity as I reveal my story. I’ve always been afraid to tell it because of all the wonderful former students I have on Facebook. I cannot concern myself any longer over what they may think of me. What’s important to me now is that my grieving is over, and I’m adjusted into a new life of freedom in Christ. I’ve just completed my eighth read-through of the Bible and have found a God Who is bigger than I ever thought; He is sovereign and totally in control. I can trust Him with all my will and my life.
As the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book states, “I don’t regret the past or wish to shut the door on it.” I received a good education that served me well in my career as a teacher. I learned a work ethic, and I have a great love of nature that came from Pathfinders, junior camps, and their leaders.
I am indebted to the leadership and integrity of the Tinkers, of Mark Martin, of the Ratzlaffs, and of my Redlands FAF friends that have directed me to the Bible alone. It took someone that had been where I was to help me transition out. It’s been wonderful not to be traveling this road alone anymore.
Now I’ve taken my recovery to new levels. For the past five years I have been serving my church as the ministry leader for Celebrate Recovery. I feel more in God’s will than ever before in my life.
I thank God for persistently leading me to Himself and for giving me freedom in Jesus. He is faithful, and He is all I need.†
Copyright 2015 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Camp Verde, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised May 19, 2015. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
S P R I N G • 2 0 1 5
VOLUME 16, ISSUE 1
D E P A R T M E N T S
STORIES OF FAITH
SHARON CLARK