My Journey with the
Evangelical Church of God 
from heresy to orthodoxy

By Lorenzo Arroyo
District Superintendent

 
CALIFORNIA HISPANIC PASTORS COMMISSIONED—From left: Lorenzo Arroyo, district superintendent for the WCG Hispanic district; Pastor General Joseph Tkach with Pastor Gildardo De La Rosa (Santa Ana).  Back row: Benjamin Escalante (Santa Fe Springs); Jesus Acosta (Riverside); Carlos Ortiz (Westminster); Jose Luis Escalante, associate pastor (Santa Fe Springs). Right photos from left: Manuel Ochoa (Hawthorne) and Heber Ticas (San Fernando).[Photos by Thomas C. Hanson]

ANTIOCH, California—This is a costly but wonderful story of how a splinter cultish-organization was able to make the journey from heresy to orthodoxy.

I was not always able to see how or why certain events took place in my personal journey with the Lord. But now, looking back, I can see clearly as if I am standing on the top of a great summit overlooking my journey’s landscape.

Somewhere along the beginning of my journey, while my wife, Rita, and I were still vulnerable, we fell prey to a heretical sect. And, it has taken my family and me years to find our way back to the center of the gospel message. In this sense my story is not unique, but one many can identify with and others can avert.

However, it is most unlikely for a cult-organization to make this journey and complete it. The only organization that I have heard of doing so is the Worldwide Church of God. Well, what follows is one more that can be added to that unlikely list by the grace of God.

In 1976, Rita, then my wife to be, and I became fascinated with the Bible. We really did not know much about it, but a co-worker had given me a paperback copy of the New Testament and off we went reading it at every opportunity. We also delighted in watching Billy Graham telecasts every chance we got.

After we were married the following year, we began to look for a church in Northern California that we could call home. I remember visiting at least a dozen churches. Now, I realize that some were evangelical. Unfortunately for us, they had left the back door wide open. We were brand new believers looking for a home, but no one seemed to notice. Eventually, we found a heretical sect that was more than glad to have us! They gave us emotional support, Bible studies, literature centered on the seventh-day Sabbath, and a place to belong.

In 1978, we became members of the General Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day). Some of the cultish teachings we received from our pastor and local church are as follows: We are the only true church and all Sunday-keeping churches are lost; our church’s Sabbath-keeping lineage could be traced back to the time of Christ and the apostles; only those who keep the true seventh-day Sabbath and the Ten Commandments will be saved; eating unclean foods such as pork products will condemn you; one could not be sure of his or her salvation because salvation is something earned; the Son is not co-essential with the Father, and the Holy Spirit is only a force; the doctrine of the Trinity is pagan in origin.

Of course, the parent organization will deny most of the above, except for the fact that they are non-Trinitarian. But the above continues internationally to this day to be the main diet for most of their members, regardless of the more moderated views of the parent cult-organization.

In 1982, I became a licensed pastor and moved up the ministerial ranks of the organization. I pastored a couple of churches, served as a missionary seminary teacher in Mexico, and finally I served as a seminary instructor at the organization’s ministerial school in the Denver, Colorado, area. Also, I served on various committees, including the board of directors.

Further, I wrote several articles for their Bible Advocate magazine, and was featured in the questions and answers section of that magazine. However, I also was heavily involved, along with other colleagues, in the Hispanic work of the organization.

Through the efforts of key Hispanic leaders and after years of toil, we finally convinced the board of directors in 1991 to allow the creation of a Hispanic agency to help coordinate the Hispanic work within the United States. We felt that the agency’s existence was vital to assure fair treatment of our growing Hispanic community.

In 1996, a substantial number (relative to their small organization) of churches broke away from the parent organization. The major reason for the split was decisions made by the board of directors in February of that year.

Not all Hispanic church leaders felt the same way, in fact, most to this day don’t even know what happened, because the board of directors never published those decisions. But several Hispanic leaders and myself felt that those decisions were politically motivated and discriminatory against the Hispanic community. Those decisions included the discontinuance of the Hispanic agency.

After it became apparent to us that the board of directors had no intention of reconsidering its decisions, seven pastors from Denver and Southern California agreed to leave the General Conference. At first, we wanted to create a new conference that would be evangelical. I was fortunate to have attended classes at Denver Seminary for three years until the split with the Seventh-Day cultish organization.

By this time, I was an evangelical but I still carried a lot of baggage. The General Conference made some inroads toward evangelical doctrines but always stopped short and finally relapsed. Denver Seminary helped me to shed more of my heretical baggage and prepared me for what lay ahead.

Unfortunately, because of new developments, our plans for an evangelical conference were placed on hold. We were only anticipating seven pastors and five churches in our new movement (one church from Denver and four from Southern California), when we began to get calls from other Hispanic leaders who also were eager to leave the General Conference.

However, their reasons for leaving were not doctrinal, but based on alleged racial discrimination coupled with years of neglect by the church hierarchy. The latter reason was also the primary reason why we had left, but in our minds doctrinal change was inevitable. Also, if we had not been forced out of that cultish organization, we may have never arrived at the point of shedding our heretical baggage to come to a full-orbed understanding of the gospel. Sooner or later we would have had to leave that organization.

On May 17 and 18, 1996, the North American Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day) was born, and I was elected as its first president. To my surprise, 27 churches were represented at our first ministerial council, which took place in El Paso, Texas. Twenty-five churches left the General Conference and two independent churches joined us as well.

Thereafter, we conducted several ministerial council meetings and a couple of national convocations. Also, we emphasized church planting in our vision and mission statements. In the first few years of our semi-cultish- organization we were successful in nearly doubling the number of congregations that we started with, including those in Mexico and Canada.

By this time we began to feel a doctrinal rift escalating with each passing year. Most of the congregations that had joined us were not evangelically oriented. They wanted to preserve their traditional doctrinal error but belong to a separate administration other than the General Conference. This was not the vision of the key leaders who were most instrumental in founding the new conference.

Joseph Tkach, president and pastor general of the Worldwide Church of God, published his book Transformed By Truth in 1997. I first met Dr. Tkach in 1994 at the offices of the General Conference in Denver, while I was still employed there. He documents the morning meeting that took place there with the leadership of the General Conference on page 47 of his book.

Others and I joined the meeting in the afternoon. The whole thing turned out to be a big disappointment. Our leadership was weak and unable to capitalize on the great opportunity of partnering with the WCG, a vastly more resourceful organization than our own.

However, Dr. Tkach had left a good impression as well as conveying that his father wanted to move his organization in an evangelical direction. After reading his book, I contacted him by mail and not long after he called me on the phone.

We continued to meet periodically over the following years. He kindly accepted our invitation to be our featured speaker at our 1999 national convocation in Anaheim, California, where close to a thousand of our members gathered to hear him speak. We even discussed the possibility of working together.

However, my organization had a lot of work to do doctrinally before we could take that step. By this time, I was fully convinced that Sabbath-keeping in any form held no place in a grace-based gospel. My closest colleagues and key respected pastors were all instrumental in helping forge the way in making essential doctrinal changes.

In May 2000, we conducted our fourth ministerial council and formally adopted the evangelical position of the Deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit. Our position on the full Deity of the Son was consistently sustained in our publications, although we encountered resistance because of it.

Therefore, at the council meeting we acknowledged accepting the historical evangelical doctrine of the Trinity by default. The backlash was severe. We lost a third of our pastors almost immediately and more than half our churches over time.

May 24 to 26, 2002, we conducted our fifth ministerial council in Hawthorne, California, with the following results: (1) We officially changed our name to North American Conference of the Evangelical Church of God (ECG); (2) We jettisoned our old heretical Statement of Faith that we inherited from the parent cultish-organization we left; and, (3) We adopted a fully evangelical Statement of Faith emphasizing the full inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the Trinity of historical Christianity, justification by faith alone, and our Sabbath rest being fulfilled in Christ alone and not in any particular day.

These decisions were also costly. Although we did not lose any more churches because of our now official evangelical position, practically all the churches lost members and entire families.

On Sept. 27, 2002, our executive board accepted an offer from Dr. Tkach to merge with the Worldwide Church of God. I was hired in November 2002, as a superintendent for a newly created district that encompasses congregations from the Evangelical Church of God (ECG).

As of March, the first wave of pastors and congregations from California have made the journey and merged with the WCG, and others will shortly follow.

Aside from our current doctrinal similarities, another important factor that led us to the merger is the WCG’s outspoken interest in a variety of ethnic communities living in the United States. The WCG has conveyed its vision to reach the Hispanic community by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Spanish language and planting new Hispanic congregations. My prayer is that the Lord will use the ECG as a tool in the Master’s hand for that purpose.

It has been one long journey in comprehending the fuller implication of the gospel. We have all paid the price in moving from the shadows of the old covenant law into the marvelous light of his new covenant grace. The good news is that there is no room for boasting other than in Jesus. As the old hymn Amazing Grace goes, "I was blind, but now I see!"

The Worldwide Church of God also originated from the same Church of God (Seventh Day) historical roots as the ECG, and this accounts for our mutual empathy in that our doctrinal errors and journeys were so similar.

It is impossible for me to think that somehow both our organizations, which were steeped in heresy, could make such a wondrous journey on parallel courses, and yet, it all be an accident. I firmly believe the Holy Spirit guided both our organizations out of the error of legalism to meet at this crossroads. It is only fitting to complete the journey together in Christ’s service. May God, in Christ, bless our new journey together in "living and sharing the gospel."

In closing this concise story of my journey with the Evangelical Church of God, I would like to add that this story would not be possible without the courage and resolve of all the pastors who made the journey with me. They and their families had to cross and endure many points of crisis for the gospel’s sake. The Lord knows their untold stories, tears and perseverance.

I am also indebted to the congregations, both in the United States and in Mexico, who have all suffered and counted the cost of discipleship for the unmerited grace of the knowledge of our all-sufficient Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Finally, I am thankful to the Lord for my encounter with Dr. Tkach and the friendship that has developed over the years. The Worldwide Church of God is now our home, and they have received us with open arms. Glory to God the Father in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Copyright © Grace Communion International, 2003