ABINGDON, Va. – For David King, a change seemed to be in order.
This farmer had grown up in an Amish community at Lancaster County, Penn., then settled along the North Fork of the Holston River with his wife, Barbara, in 1995 and helped start an Amish community in rural Abingdon.
King followed the traditional rules of the Amish, like shunning modern machinery.
But, along the way, even before leaving Pennsylvania, King began questioning his faith.
“What I found out was missing was that I was not born again, according to the Bible,” King said. “I still needed to be baptized by immersion in the name of Jesus Christ – and receive that baptism of the Holy Ghost.”
Ultimately, King left the Amish community and switched to the Pentecostal faith.
Today, King’s story is the focus of a recently published book, “From Amish to Apostolic: Pentecost in the Amish Community (Classic Publishing, $15)” by Pennsylvania author Audrey J. Feigl.
The book tells the story of the spiritual journey of David and Barbara King, from their childhood to their life today, working on the farm and selling their crops twice a week at the Abingdon Farmers Market.
It also explains the story of how the Kings met John Brown, a man who “was willing to open up his Bible and his Bible study chart and show me, step by step, what I had been missing,” David King said.
King, 48, said he had concerns about his faith even before moving to Virginia.
“As I was growing up and through the years, I felt like the Amish religion didn’t have the whole Bible truth,” King said. “I asked God to help me and to show me. And He answered that prayer.”
Feigl captures King’s mood in the book: “He realized he was on a journey of soul searching,” Feigl writes. “He began to read other religious literature and felt his people dwelt on too many non-spiritual subjects.”
Then came the turning point.
“I was baptized in Jesus’s name and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost,” King said. “And when word of that got to our Amish people, our religious people, they did not like it. They said, ‘That’s not the way we do things.’ ”
King was banned from the Amish community, where he had grown up in Pennsylvania.
The Amish leaders told him that he could no longer be a member of the Amish church – “which is not what me and my family wanted,” King said.
“But I thought I knew what I had done was in God’s will,” King added. “And I accepted that and went on and started attending a Pentecostal church.”
Today, King is a member of the Abingdon United Pentecostal Church.
He also keeps busy on his 47-acre farm with wife, Barbara, and their eight children, ages 8 to 24. The Kings home-school their youngest children and rear them in the Apostolic Pentecostal faith.
King’s family members in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, still speak to him, “but they do practice the Amish method of shunning.”
Shunning, he said, can mean “no business dealings ... That was part of being cut off from the Amish church.”
Even so, King said he is happy about his decision – and, too, having his story told in a book, saying, “I would not trade what I have now for anything in the world.”
YOU SHOULD KNOW
David King sells the book “From Amish to Apostolic” each Saturday and Tuesday at the Abingdon Farmers Market. It is also available at Abingdon Mercantile. To order a copy, write: David King, 23220 N. Fork River Road, Abingdon, VA 24210, or call (276) 628-9276.
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