Community Chapel and Bible Training Center was a Oneness Pentecostal church and Bible college south of Seattle, Washington. It began as a home Bible study in the mid-60's led by a man named Don Barnett, who later became the pastor of the church formed from the group in 1967. He was a self-taught student of the Bible who was employed as an engineer for the Boeing company before he quit to become the full-time pastor of Community Chapel. He had himself been raised by a Pentecostal pastor and had gone to one or two years of school at a small Bible college in Boise, Idaho, that had been founded during the Latter Rain revival of the 40's but which no longer exists. By the mid-80s, the Chapel had grown to around three thousand members. Its Bible college had around 800 part- and full-time students. It had at least a dozen small satellite churches in the U.S. and one in Switzerland. It also had a large K-12 Christian school for its members.
The Chapel was militantly anti-Trinitarian in its theology. It taught that the church had gone wrong at the Council of Nicea, having become helplessly corrupted by Greek philosophy and pagan religion. Don Barnett had developed his own theology of the Godhead based on this view of history, which was taught in a series of classes called “The Unfolding Revelation of God” (UROG). He referred to this as a “Oneness” doctrine, but it was different from the better known Oneness doctrine of the United Pentecostal Church, which teaches there is only one person in the Godhead who in different, successive modes has manifested himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Don in UROG taught a variation of this theology in which the term “the Son of God” did not refer to a mode of God (as in UPC theology), nor to an eternal person inseparable from and coequal to the Father and the Holy Spirit (as in Trinitarian theology), but only to the man Jesus Christ as Messiah, whose existence began with his conception in Mary's womb and who was in a such an intimate, unique, constant, and permanent union with God, who indwelt him, that he possessed the nature of God and could rightly be called God. (Though Don called this the “dual nature” doctrine and firmly maintained during the Chapel years that this meant Jesus is both man and God, after the Chapel years he abandoned this position in favor of the teaching that Jesus is in fact not God.)
In the early 1980's, Don and his wife began having visions and revelations that they said showed Jesus wanting to be worshipped as “the glorified Son of Man” independently of his deity—an intimate place of fellowship into which God wanted to bring the church.
In 1985, men and women of the congregation began to have “spiritual” experiences while dancing in worship with one another that they claimed fulfilled these revelations. This soon developed into a full-blown practice and doctrine known as “spiritual unions” or “connections.”
The dancing had started out individually, but men and women soon found themselves dancing together (and usually not with one's spouse), “worshipping God.” It was probably inevitable that sooner or later, the eyes of the two people would meet and they would each feel that a powerful spiritual bond had formed between them. Soon it began to be taught that this was a new way in which Jesus was visiting his church and perfecting love in it.
A couple of excerpts from a book later written by Barbara Barnett, the wife of the pastor, convey well both the atmosphere and the teaching of those times at the Chapel:
I don't know how the term “connection” got started, but it certainly describes what began happening [in the spring and summer of 1985]. After many of the congregation opened their eyes while worshipping [in the dance], and, in a very real sense, perceived one another as members of Christ's body, Jesus—assisted by angels—began connecting our spirits one to another in love. Romans 12:5 and Ephesians 4:16 became reality which affected every part of our lives. It was marvelous beyond description.
...It was late, really late, after a wonderful Sunday evening service. All day I was filled with the marvelous presence of God, and the aftermath of joy following an outstanding prayer time earlier that week. For hours, I worshipped the Lord with others. At 1:00 a.m., in spite of the lingering presence of the Lord, I turned to walk to the door, when I looked up and, behold!—a man walked toward me, smiling—all I saw was Jesus! As our eyes met, I whispered, “Jesus!”
Without changing our gaze, we danced in worship. Every move made an incredible imprint on my spirit. I could hardly remain on my feet. I perceived that every step I took was received by him, and I repeated over and over, with abounding adoration, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” I was aware of no one or anything else—only Jesus.
Jesus was there—with me—looking into my eyes and seeing everything I was. With all knowledge, He still gave me unconditional acceptance. I looked into his eyes and I saw Jesus my Friend, my Savior, my Lover and Bridegroom! I was experiencing Jesus with skin on! We never touched. Our spirits merged—we became one.
The song ended. Overwhelmed, I staggered to the wall. Another song began; he came to me and we worshipped again. When that song ended, he said, “Thank you, Barbara,” and backed away to the door. I slumped to the floor in complete joy and ecstasy.
...It was 3:00 a.m. before I could walk down the stairs to my car. I knew that Jesus, the glorified Son of Man, had—in union with another human being's spirit—manifested Himself to me, and by doing so, our spirits melded into one. I was certain the Father had answered Jesus' prayer of John 17:21—‘That they may be one as we are.’
I thought, Surely this is the mystery the Apostle Paul refers to in Ephesians 5:31-32—“...the two shall be one flesh; this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”
(pp. 305, 319-320, The Truth Shall Set You Free, Barbara Barnett, Winepress Publishing, Mukilteo, WA, 1996)
It also began to be taught at the Chapel that we needed to get rid of “legalistic” ideas about marriage so that our spouses would be free to take part in this “move” with other people's spouses. It was taught that too many hurts had been built up over the years of a marriage for this to be possible with one's own spouse. Instead, we must have these hurts healed in a connection, and then return to our own marriage to make it even stronger with the love we had received in the connection.
Not surprisingly, it became common to see men and women sitting in church services with someone other than their spouse. Special nights were set aside for “worshipping” (dancing) with one's connection. One Sunday morning there was even an adult Sunday school lesson on “Is it OK to French Kiss Your Connection?” The answer was a somewhat ambiguous “No” but enough leeway was left so that this, and more, was widely practiced in private. All sexual expression was supposedly off-limits in a connection, but of course it was happening anyway. The church soon crashed in a big way.
At a Friday night service in late February 1988 it was revealed from the pulpit by one of the elders when Don was away that under the influence of the practice of spiritual connections, Don and many of the other elders were in adulterous relationships. The resulting scandal split the church into two factions—those who supported Don (the minority) and those who supported the elders—and basically brought the Chapel to an end. Upwards of 70% of Chapel marriages have since ended in divorce. Multiple lawsuits, some of which had already figured in the exposure of Don's adultery to the congregation, were brought against the church by those whose marriages had been damaged by the Chapel's practices. Several members were convicted of the sexual abuse of children.
When the elders won control of the church buildings, two or three hundred members followed Don into a new church he named the Church of Agape. It still exists as a group that meets in a rented hall in Renton, Washington, where connections are still practiced. Don Barnett went further into heresy and by the mid- or late 90's was teaching that the “dual nature” doctrine was mistaken, it was “too Trinitarian.” He apparently realized that to teach that Jesus' existence began in Mary's womb, no matter how fully God might indwell him, is to teach that Jesus is not really God at all. Don Barnett died in 2017.
The elders' church eventually changed its name to Resurrection Life Assembly, dropped the practice of connections, and removed any trace of its origins as Community Chapel. The Bible college was retroactively renamed “Pacific School of Theology,” offering its courses only by way of the old library of tapes and re-issuing already-granted diplomas under the new name to any graduates who requested it in order to disguise the degrees as coming from Community Chapel, now a widely discredited name. By the late 1990's, none of the Chapel elders remained on its staff and a non-Chapel pastor was serving it. In the spring of 2006, unable to overcome the stigma of its Chapel past, it finally shut down completely and donated its property—the site of the bible college and original church building—to another Pentecostal church. Shortly before that time, two ex-Chapel members obtained the old Bible college tapes and are now offering them for download through a Website they call the “Freely Given Online Bible College."
According to a poll taken on a Web discussion board for ex-Chapel members in 2005—seventeen years after the collapse of the Chapel—over 70% of them still held to “Oneness” beliefs of one form or another (including the variety that holds Jesus is not God). Of these, less than a third were actually attending a Oneness church. Nearly half were attending Trinitarian churches while the rest were attending no church at all. Today in 2021 I get the sense that the situation is much the same. In spite of present church affiliation, the Chapel's influence has remained strong in the lives of its former members. They remain convinced of the falsehood of the Trinity and of the truth of UROG doctrine in spite of having seen the only church that taught it thoroughly splintered by sin, scandal, and divorce. They retain a strong shared sense of identity from their Chapel years and the doctrine they learned there, almost as if they had never witnessed the total collapse of that system.