Tag Archive for fallout at Letters From Leavers

Dear my former church

I dearly wish you had been everything you said you were. I wih you had been a community. I wish you had been a place genuinely committed to people’s healing, a place where people could ask questions, a place were people honoured commitments, a place where people extended care.

I loved you so much and I gave you my time, my heart, my life. And you go on, unaffected by my life, unaffected by the lives of many like me who were spat out, confused, heartbroken and bewildered. Those of us who loved you so much but were never loved back because we didn’t somehow fit the mould - whatever that mould was.

It wasn’t just that I was on your staff team but unlike other staff members you weren’t interested in my development and that as soon as the leadership changed you made me redundant without taking time to get to know who I was, what I could do, what I was called to, what I dreamed of.

Nor was it just that the people in the church who promised they would not abandon and hurt me as others had done, that they were committed to me no matter what didn’t hold true to their words, didn’t care, had better things to do, better people to spend time with.

Although those things hurt, it was the way you brushed aside my questions and confusion and hurt that killed me the most - not just because it happened to me but because it could happen to so many others like me. Because you think everything that happened is purely down to me being just generally messed up, therefore there is nothing to learn from this experience for you.

When I said I wasn’t sure what the gospel was, when I didn’t see the things in the Bible reflected in my life, when I never felt peace or joy or any of that stuff, when everything God said to me the opposite happened, when my head and heart were so messed up by the failure of God’s word to come to fruition, when I saw no fulfillment on his promises or people’s promises, when I found no healing despite so much prayer ministry, when I asked for help because worship services always made me feel evil and because every Christian I tried to befriend ignored me no matter what I tried, when I was told (and was convinced myself) there were demons in me and most of all when I was devastated to the point of self-harming, panicking and attempting suicide because I had no love, no support and no answers, you told me everything that happened was my fault (with no explanation of why), you shouted at me for being upset and you told me to get over myself.

When I was most in need of people to lament for me, to call out to God for me, to sit in the sackcloth and ashes, you told me there was nothing that could be done for me and cut me off.

What will you do to the next depressed person, the drug addict, the prostitute, the next lonely person, the bereaved, the outcast? You say you want people like this in your church - but you don’t. Only the sorted, the popular, the straightforward fit in. the messy are only allowed if they get unmessy very quickly. There is no room for questions, no room for doubt and very little love for anyone who isn’t perfect.

I believed you, I believed God and I took the most risks I have ever taken in my life in loving, trusting and hoping him and you.

After nine years in your church I left in a worse mess than when I joined (no mean feat), and I’m not sure I will ever join a church again, other than some charade attendance to please my family who would emotionally blackmail and nag me to death if I ever dared to not be a good Christian. In my own heart though, I would no longer call myself a Christian, or at least I would say I was an agnostic Christian although I still try to live by some Christian principles, and I would still love it to be true.

I don’t think I will ever understand what happened - and until I do I will never dare take the same risks of loving, believing or trusting again.

Before I joined your church I was scared to hope, to love, to trust, to believe. You made me drop my guard and then beat me to death when I was most vulnerable. I loved you so much, but it was an abusive relationship. You made out I was the abusive one because I wasn’t perfect, because I wasn’t straightforward, because I got upset, I questioned, I expected returns on the things I was promised. All I did was believe and trust and obey - and have the audactity to hurt and to question when these things didn’t work.

I just wish you’d wanted me to be a part of you as much as I wanted to be.

I know what I believed God said to me, and so many of you confirmed those things. Just because you then randomly decided to do the opposite to what God was saying and told me I needed to go with your decisions because they must be from God even though you’d had no ‘words’ or anything doesn’t mean what you did was of Him. I may have heard him wrong, but if that is possible, it is also possible your words and decisions were wrong, especially as many of them were conflicting and contradictory. I wish someone had cared enough to at least understand the confusion and sit with me through it. The one person I trusted most even said they had to leave me because they were getting confused too and couldn’t handle it.

I know you would tell me the way I am living (by not going to church etc) is wrong, but no more wrong than the things you said or did. I don’t know any more if there is a right, if there is a God. If there was, why didn’t he intervene?

Life is not the way your preach it to be (become a Christian, do everything God’s way, do everything you are told, and your life will be amazing) and until you accept it, your large front door and large back door will always remain.

clergy abuse, depression, desire for community, destructive practices, fallout, forced out of church, frustration, hate, unforgiven by church
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I joined this group because I wanted to change the world. I was religious to some extent, but here was a group of people that were going everywhere, even to Mongolia to spread the Gospel. It was fun for a while. Sure, we were called a cult by some, but we were baptizing people all over the world. I thought to myself, “who can argue with that?”

Soon, I became the one that could argue with it.

About four years ago, a mid-level leader wrote an open letter to the major leadership that was leaked to the internet. Many reacted with joy that certain unspoken thoughts and attitudes were made public. Many others reacted by pretending that the letter did not exist. Still others decried the letter because of some perceived ‘negativity’ and ’slander’. As for me, I hoped it could serve as a roadmap for change. I embraced its message and acted on what I perceived to be a God-given opportunity to help those harmed by our destructive practices.

At the point this letter emerged, I had recently moved away from the local church I attended for 10 years. I moved, by my own choice, to a city where I didn’t know a soul. My former congregation was over 1000, this congregation was barely 100. It seemed that most families were founding members of the church when it was planted 60 miles west of it’s current location. As far as my own participation, the letter changed my status from member to staff. My vote, I was elected to a new board to oversee our transition from our old practices into what we hoped would be a more Godly way of life.

The old structure was a hierarchy - the man on top dictated to everyone below. Information rushed down the pyramid like a river with very little bubbling up from the ground. The immediate fallout of this letter was that our founder and leader was fired. Soon, those at a leadership level just below him dismantled their group and the leadership level just below them dissolved itself as well. Still, those in the highest levels still held great influence over congregations worldwide, especially outside the US. As someone dedicated to change, I went to a meeting which would have many of the highest-ranking leaders in attendance. Even our deposed leader would be there. I hoped to talk to many of them to see how we would change and to seek help in overseeing the process in my local congregation.

What I encountered was great resistance to new ideas. Speaker after speaker spoke of control, order, peace, and being nice to each other. One or two speakers from outside the US even rebuked the Americans as giving up on evangelizing the world in one generation. The leader of our denominational charity berated us for weakening and disappearing contributions. A few spoke of change, but I got the feeling that they were deliberately trying to avoid speaking plainly. I was embarrassed to have attended.

Over the years since that day, the message of many of the speakers is still being preached. Take control of your congregation, eliminate those that disturb the order, create peace by uniformity, and above all else, just be nice to each other. The deposed founder has founded a new group. The former tier two leaders have tried to enforce a worldwide unity by making people sign a document that spells out doctrines and practices for all. We still perceive ourselves as the only denomination going to Heaven. We still blame the messenger for the ‘firestorm’ generating by the letter (even comparing the author to O’Leary’s cow). I was asked to be a deacon by the congregation, but turned it down because I wanted to focus on my upcoming marriage.

One positive from all of this was the change to make peace with those people that I perceived had personally hurt me. I also sought those that I had personally harmed. With person after person there were tears, prayers, and embraces. In the end, I feel that there was only one with whom I could not be resolved. To this day, he still claims that he did nothing wrong and that a vocal minority that was allowed to much voice caused his termination. (He quit and demanded a severance. He wasn’t terminated.)

I left because we did not change. We said many of the right things only to return to our former practices. In my time in the church, I saw verbal abuse on a scale that is frightening. We bought into a system that made us all codependent on each other and completely dependent on the leaders. Few seem willing to address these issues - those that do try to ‘work behind the scenes’ . I spent four years speaking to major and minor leaders, going to ‘progressive’ seminars, even blogging to no avail. The time for us to make any real changes has past and it is very sad.

We formed a new structure with a committee of nine overseeing our denominations’ transition. This group of nine included several tier two leaders from the old structure. They invited input and mulled over the direction of our denomination for months. In the end, the decision was to form something very similar to what we had before. There were no new voices in the new structures formed and biennial elections insured that no new faces would emerge for the next 20 years. The old voices began to say many of the old things. One of these old voices said on his congregation’s website that dissent was sin. Many voices old and new began publicly chided dissenters to ‘move on’. Sermons were delivered that basically said that a few months was too long to ‘naval-gaze’ and ‘analyze’. Quick action was called for and delivered. It was clearly time to ‘get back to the mission’ and all other matters were swept under the rug.

There is more here than can be written briefly. In the end, I realized that we were a cult. We have destroyed the lives of thousands of people and we refuse to deal with it. Those that have been damaged are cast aside. Their needs are perceived to be too much of a drain on the church’s resources. I couldn’t take it anymore so I asked to be considered a nonmember.

I still attend the local congregation here. Enough progress was made here to feel safe for the time being. Truth is, my family needs the stability of familiar faces right now. The local congregation has gone out of its way to meet our needs and I am grateful. If we hadn’t signed on to our denomination’s creed, I would still be a member. Our creed confuses doctrine and practice to a point that there is no such thing as a disputable matter, effectively eliminating Romans 14. In any case, the local congregation reaches out to other congregations in the city and continues to strive for real and lasting change.

All is not perfect. Our congregation still participates in our denomination’s regional meetings and summer camps. These summer camps still feature many of the old teachings and methodologies that harmed so many. My children will not be attending these camps. My wife and I will not attend the regional Jubilees or marriage retreats. Being on the outside reveals to me how bizarre and strange our meetings truly are. It’s not just the groupthink, but it’s that along with the old ways.

I tried to avoid naming the denomination, but I have to. Avoid the International Churches of Christ at all costs. Really really stay away from the Portland Discipling Movement, the new group formed by the former leaders of the ICoC. The new group is more dangerous. These are not to be confused with churches of Christ. Both groups have a peverse form of shepherding that they call discipling or mentoring. It involves one member coaching another member on their Christian walk, which is not necessarily a bad thing. As practiced by both groups, this form of discipling makes members codependent on each other and completely dependent on leadership. This distinctive form of discipleship also forms the dangerous belief that they are the only denomination going to Heaven. It is reasoned that because ‘other churches’ do not disciple their members as directed in Matt 28:18-20, the other churches must be ‘lost’.

destructive practices, fallout, leadership level, unspoken thoughts
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