Ashes to Ashes, Toys to Dust: My Bizarre Brush with Pace Assembly of God

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You know, there are some things you witness growing up that just stick with you, not because they were particularly profound or life-altering in a good way, but because they were just…weird. And the whole "spiritual cleansing" through fire thing I saw in Pace, Florida, back in the glorious, big-haired, neon-drenched 1980s? Yeah, that definitely lands in the "what the heck was that?" category for me.

Now, I’m generally a live-and-let-live kind of person. Your beliefs are your beliefs, even if I’m scratching my head wondering how you got there. But this particular episode? It felt different. It felt…off.

Picture this: Pace, Florida, a place where it seemed like a new church popped up every other Tuesday. And towering above them all, the undisputed heavyweight champion of local morality, was the Pace Assembly of God. This wasn't your quaint little chapel; this was a full-blown megachurch, casting a long shadow over the county, especially since everything was drier than a popcorn fart thanks to the local alcohol laws. You could buy wine coolers and beer every day but Sunday and if you wanted anything harder or drinks on Sunday, you had to drive across the bay to Escambia county to indulge yourself, and many how cast their vote for DRY were the ones willing to drive to another county for their alcoholic needs.

Being the not-so-religious soul that I am (leaning heavily towards the "show me the receipts" side of agnosticism), I always found the intense fervor around these parts a little…much. And honestly, the hypocrisy was often thicker than the Florida humidity. You’d hear fire and brimstone sermons, yet the folks delivering them weren’t exactly walking on water themselves.

What always got under my skin, though, was the selective interpretation of faith. Take the whole gay issue, for example. People would thump their Bibles, quoting this and that about homosexuality, completely ignoring the fact that Jesus himself? Never once condemned it. Just a little food for thought I always found interesting.

But back to the bizarre. One day, the talk around town wasn’t about potlucks or Sunday school. It was about the burning. The Pace Assembly of God was having a…well, a bonfire of perceived unholy items. And the list of what qualified for this fiery farewell was something else.

We're talking innocent Smurfs and He-Man figures, deemed evil because of…magic? Barbie dolls, apparently scandalous because you could, gasp, undress them. Entire comic book collections vanished in flames. Horror movie VHS tapes – obviously gateways to demonic possession.

And then there was the music. Oh, the music. If it wasn’t praising Jesus, it was apparently fuel for the inferno. Madonna, Kiss, Dolly Parton, your favorite rock anthems, that catchy pop tune you couldn’t get out of your head – all deemed worthy of destruction. If a kid found joy in it and it didn't have a heavenly choir, it was perfect for the pyre. Members of this church were serious about this to the point where some were going out to stores, flea markets and garage sales to purchase things to contribute to the bonfire.

I wasn’t there in person but I remember standing in my living room watching it happen on the local news, a little bewildered, as Pastor (Lowry) Whoever-He-Was pointed at the growing plume of black smoke and bellowed something about seeing demons rising. Demons? Dude, that wasn’t demons. That was the lovely cocktail of burning rubber, melting plastic, the chemicals from comic book paper and vinyl records. I lived a couple of miles from this situation and it was in the air all over town and it smelled less like spiritual cleansing and more like an environmental hazard. The Pace volunteer fire department were there to extinguish anything that looked amiss but honestly, it was all amiss.

My one and only visit to the Pace Assembly of God was with my friend Candy Shelton and her brother when I was in the 6th grade. Let me tell you, that service was an experience. The first thing I was told when I walked in was blue jeans are a sin, I was not the only kid in jeans. During the service, something the pastor said felt as if I was singled out, “We have a homosexual and witches in the buiding today!” Hands shooting skyward, people speaking in tongues that sounded like they'd swallowed a dictionary of gibberish and a few folks taking dramatic tumbles onto the floor. It felt like a toned-down, significantly less venomous version of those Pentecostal churches you see in documentaries, the ones where folks handle handfuls of rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths like they're fluffy kittens. I love snakes but it is definitely not my cup of tea. They were awfully keen on getting my contact information, promising a follow-up visit with my parents and me. I had vivid memories of past incidents where my sister would visit churches with friends and shortly thereafter, we'd have pastors showing up at our doorstep for impromptu living room prayer sessions with my parents, who were far too polite to say no. So, spoiler alert: I politely wrote the wrong number and address to pacify their eager requests at the moment and needless to say, I never went back.

This whole burning ritual, it was supposed to be about spiritual purification. But honestly? The people I knew who were enthusiastically tossing their kids' belongings into the flames often seemed to be the furthest thing from paragons of Christian virtue. It felt more like a wave of collective hysteria, fueled by the Satanic Panic that gripped the 80s. I know now that it wasn't just a Pace thing, this fear was everywhere, but in our little corner of Florida, it felt particularly intense. The following year, another was slated to happen but the fire department and EPA were on the scene to shut it down before it happened and at last minute, a member of the congregation who worked for a company that owned large equipment came in with a steam roller to roll over and destroy all of the belongings that were thrown into the pile before everything was scooped into a garbage truck and compacted for extra dramatic appeal to the masses.

Looking back, it just feels so wrong. Confiscating a child’s cherished toys and books based on some fear-mongering ideology? Suppressing creativity and innocent joy? It wasn't about fostering godliness; it was about asserting control and demanding conformity. And what’s truly unsettling is that, over three decades later, this kind of irrationality seems to have made a disturbing comeback, not just in the quiet corners of suburbia but across the globe. It’s like we’ve hit rewind on reason in so many ways.

What do you all think? Did anyone else experience anything like this growing up? I’m genuinely curious to hear your stories and perspectives. And, you know, if you found this little trip down memory lane entertaining or thought-provoking, and you're feeling generous, a small token of your appreciation would be… well, appreciated. Keeps the storytelling going, you dig? 😉


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