Letters From Leavers

Geez, I thought my past life was bad which was one of the reasons i became saved. After experiencing the church, the world is not so bad after all. At this point, I have lost most of my faith and am a lone ranger with no desire to set foot in a church again. I watch church on TV and that makes it a safe place. As far as the “world” is concerned its not that bad at all really because unbelievers can show just as much love and honor friendships and they know how to be “cool.”

How i got to this point is from basically the legalism experience in the church. Mostly the judgementalism and pushing to do works was a major factor why the church can be abusive. I read the book “subtle power of spiritual abuse” and all the things mentioned in that book happened to me. And you all know about those annoying looks and turned up noses you get when you say something wrong among christians which also made church irritating.

Really i just want to puke after thinking why I stayed so long in this environment. It was a Baptist church. Actually, a non-denominational church with the Baptist name taken off which seems to be very popular these days to get people sucked into their way of thinking.

The first few years were not so bad but those “encouragers” as they like to call themselves begin making those advancements at you to get you to be more involved. Probably not encouragers but “antagonists”who were not happy with my performance.I know it may seem okay to do to someone because its for the advancement of the kingdom but after a while, the phone calls, verbal jabs, and many invitations to do works/bible study; it begins to wear you down and you feel like your a bad christian for not participating in bringing people into “their church , or what they call to ‘grow spiritually’ while in the community of believers in a bible study.” After years of this i started to become angry and actually began to develop an anger problem and usually leaving upset after an activitiy as someone usually took a verbal jab at my spiritual life. Even one time a few girls did not even want me to sit at thier table while in a restaraunt and told me to sit elsewhere. They denied it ever happened when asked about it later though they may have forgot about it but i did not.

Soon i began to feel like this was wrong and not so loving atmosphere so i told the senior pastor that i did not like people getting into my personal life and it really was spiritual abuse. And i made the mistake of telling the senior pastor that i did not like him putting down other denominations and i did not consider myself a “weak christian” as what was implied if you were not doing mega works for God. I felt that I  led just as much as a moral life as someone who did a lot of works for God and other denominations are just as good as this church. Also, i mentioned that people would not respect my desire to be more of a laid back christian and the associate pastor had taken many of the verbal jabs at me over the years at not being involved enough.

Well, this led the way for a cascade of correction to come my way as my confindentiallity was violated and the letter given to the associate pastor and a letter written by the associate pastor was sent to my home listing all my sins that i had done over the years and my claims were unsubstantied about what happened to me and i need to correct my critical attitude if i was to continue to attend there. Also, at the adult group meeting the associate pastor asked what was going on with me and of course more dirt was dug up on me in my life at the time by the other people in the adult group and even one of my best friends in the group told the pastor that i had been doing a certain sin, which should have been left between me and my friend, who felt very high and mighty since he was a deacon at the time. Also, the adult group leader was told about this sin and he gave a copy of a email between me and him where the group leader suggested that i stop doing this sin and i agreed to stop doing it and confessed it and also talked about how i felt the group was abusive.  So it was a big mess where i was basically was royally screwed, burned, back stabbed, confidentiality violated by people who i knew for some 9 years that i thought were christians and even decent friends. A month later my name was on a memo for the monthly business meeting for me to be removed from membership.

Well, after reciving the letter at my home from the associate pastor i went off/ very angry in many phone calls to his house and the police came and told me that it would be trespassing if i ever went to that church again. I have tried to attend church other places but it wont stick as my faith is almost gone and to be in church brings back all these bad memories. I have probably been marked as a bad guy as Pastors, who like to stick together, like to mark people in there area; i would assume cuz of how blown up this incident got. I dont see any of the people in my old church as I never heard from them again nor do i really ever want to. And i think they feel  i have no desire to ever set foot in thier church so i imagine this is why the lack of contact and no apologies were made from them to me nor did i apologize to them for anything except i did send out some e-mails to try and get them to leave me alone but, of course, they would never respect you since your not a good christian if your not involved so some e-mails were aggressive by me and i apologized for it.

About church, all they talk about in church is service, service, service and give more money. I have had enough of it really.

So some 5 years later, it still hurts me very much what happened and really dont trust christians or pastors. This church had Pastors that were there for some 20 years so i feel they knew how to play the church game and to usher out any dissidents quickly or try to pound them back into submission quickly. And they knew how to put ”yes men” on the deacon board. With Jesus as the judge, it would be interesting to see if it was not one of the most corrupt churchs in my state or the US for that matter. The senior pastor was very authoritarian and has burned other people as well as i am meeting others in the world who got burned by him and i hang out with two of them now who formely went to that church

. But after reading the stories on this site which i am thankful for that this kind of thing happens regularly among christians. Which is why i have left the church for maybe the rest of my life and now back into my old ways as the world seems to be just as loving if not better then the church.