Quote:
Originally Posted by TLFisher
It had to do with words Witness Lee spoke in one of the 1986 elders training meetings. Something to the effect of "if you're not here for me and my ministry, then you might as well not be here". The two elders from Moses Lake walked out on that.
Speaking of autonomy, in my few visits to Spokane in the mid-90's the local church there seemed far more autonomous than my experiences in Bellevue, Seattle, Portland, and Bellingham to name a few.
My take from correspondence with Ken Sandburg, the Church in Moses Lake was open to fellowship with other local churches. Local churches in Washington state were not open to fellowship with Moses Lake.
 In my time meeting in Bellevue, when I asked an elder about the Church in Moses Lake, I was told they're a rebel church. I knew more than a few that came from the Church in Moses Lake. |
My family moved to Spokane around 1990 (we were basically churchless for three years or so after Moses Lake cut off from Lee, and my father stood up in a meeting and said it was the wrong thing to do and our family got attacked by the members who were ok with the dissent. a few other families had the same experience as us and ultimately moved away from ML), and I spent a couple years as a child in Spokane LC. But I stopped going after my parents split up in 1995, and I was out in the world from that time to around 2003 when I moved to Bellevue and sort of started meeting there, and then ultimately moved back to Spokane from 2004-2006ish. I absolutely adore Spokane, both the city and the people there as well as the local church there. They had so much Christ when I was with them. They had the spirit and the shepherding and just everything at that time. They did have problems in the 90's that I somehow missed. They were acting culty and exclusive over how people dressed and they confronted some members about wearing jeans and one family I knew got so offended by that that they stopped meeting. It was pretty sad. But they just wanted to stay away from the world so they would act weird when people dressed worldly. Anyway it wasn't really like that in 2004 when I met with them. I guess they grew out of it, but they had so much life and the spirit when I was with them and I never wanted to leave
Unfortunately I did have to leave and moved back to Bellevue area. And it was a crappy experience because I just felt like Bellevue had no life, and they had no spirit. They were going through the motions but it was just a dead or dormant atmosphere as far as the enjoyment of Christ. It was a different type of church culture. Kind of elitist and judgmental. But very subtly so. It took me many years to figure out why because I had no frame of reference for problems within the church. I learned later that probably the reason why they were choked spiritually was because of eldership control and a type of clergy-laity vibe that they practiced. There was a lot of hidden ambition for position and a lot of brothers were trying to work their way up the ladder of church administration to become prominent members. So for sure that was a huge subtle problem and it just sucked because I was in love with God when I moved away from Spokane. But that locality just killed a lot of it. I needed the saints to be loving and living and shepherding like what I experienced in Spokane and they just weren't. I felt judged, I felt like I didn't fit in, and I felt like there was no spiritual food there. I think that was my first introduction to a lot of what people on this site are talking about with regards to the "special class" of leadership in the LC
The only thing I know about how other churches treated Moses Lake was that one time when I was in Spokane, maybe 2005 I think, the elder there stood up and told everyone that Bill Freeman was visiting Spokane, possibly moving there, and he advised everyone to stay away from him, and don't talk to him. And said something about how poisonous he was. That seemed very odd to me at the time because Spokane usually never talked about anything besides Christ and God's economy. I have a mild opinion about the elder there, but it's nothing solid and for the most part that locality was not "controlled" nor did it have an atmosphere of being controlled by any elder, not like Bellevue did. I think part of the reason for that is that there were so many living brothers there who were NOT at all caught in ambition for position. For instance in Bellevue there were like three elders who always sat in the front row and you could tell they thought they were powerful and at times they exercised control over the saints. And it was just so weird because you could tell easily who was number 1, who was number 2, and who was number 3 elder. It was like a moving ranking system which never sat right with me. But in Spokane the brothers all just had one thing in common- they wanted to enjoy Christ, and that made the locality there so living and enjoyable
But Bill Freeman eventually died a few years after that and the leading elder in Bellevue died maybe 10 years ago now? I forget. But I wonder how the locality there has changed. I've moved to a nearby locality and I've run into problems with the leadership as well and seen things that really are very troubling