Tom Tilley Recounts Leaving Pentecostal Revival Centres Church in Memoir

Tom Tilley grew up in the country in a strict Pentecostal church, where his childhood centred on outdoor play, holiday camps with church friends and the close bonds of a congregation. The main pressure of those years, he recalls, was the expectation to speak in tongues, which the church treated as a sign of the Holy Spirit and a prerequisite for baptism and a place in heaven.

Tilley belonged to Revival Centres, a fundamentalist Pentecostal church founded in Melbourne in the 1950s. His father was pastor of the church’s Mudgee branch. Tilley was baptised by his father in a corrugated-iron tank in Mudgee, a moment shown in a photograph supplied for the story.

As Tilley describes in his memoir, *Speaking in Tongues*, his relationship with the church changed during his teenage years as its rules became stricter. A ban on Sunday sport, which his father had previously overlooked but which higher church leaders enforced, ended his representative schoolboy rugby career. After he moved to Sydney to study commerce at Macquarie University, he came into conflict with the church’s doctrine, which prohibited drinking, dancing and “fornication” outside marriage. According to the church’s teaching, breaking these rules could lead to dismissal, separation from friends and family in this life and, as church doctrine held, in the next.

Tilley said that when he and his brother Sam attended the Sydney Mardi Gras one year, word reached church leaders, who suspended the two young men. Later, his pastor disapproved of his conduct in a romantic relationship with someone outside the church, and Tilley left Revival Centres for good.

Leaving was difficult in several ways. Tilley said one of the hardest things was knowing he was disappointing his parents. He also described the loss of routine and fellowship: the church services and meetings that filled his week had been “light posts of connection and community.” Without them, he says, “it was dark, because I didn’t really know anyone or have many connections.” He sees the loss of community as a central part of what he left behind, and one that is shared by many people who have left Pentecostalism, who often find themselves reconsidering questions of identity and their place in the wider world (Psalm 34:18 shows God’s nearness to the brokenhearted).

Reflecting on the move, Tilley said: “I was a country kid in Sydney, and I knew I was going to be starting to build a life from scratch. Not knowing where that would go … was kind of scary.”

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