I mentioned (in my post #48) that I might post excerpts from a letter from a sister who was in The Church in Houston for a time just after its incorporation.
First, here is a little background behind her letter to Jane: This sister received a copy of a letter that Jane and I mailed to those who had started with us as The Church in Houston. Our letter described the abuse that leaders had exercised over an elder’s wife in 1977. We mailed out our letter because Benson Phillips, the main leader, would not attend a meeting with us and the elder’s wife to listen to her experiences in the Local Churches and possibly save her marriage.
The sister who received our letter identified with the elder’s wife, because she had experienced the same thing from the leaders in Texas. Here are portions from her letter to Jane:
Dear Jane,
I will be praying for [the elder’s wife] and [the elder]. My heart goes out to her. Reading her experience with the elders was like reliving my own. Although I had no husband, the experience was the same.
You’ve seen the situational comedies or cartoons in which some poor person, unaware that someone has stuck a sign on his back, goes about his daily life wondering why everyone is acting so strangely toward him. That’s what it’s like; we go on with our daily lives in the church, unaware there’s a sign on our backs (“rebellious,” “negative”), wondering why everyone is behaving toward us in unusual ways—until, of course, the elders tell us.
I sense from your letter that you are unaware how many hundreds of times this has happened or how many saints have been wounded, marriages destroyed, children hurt, homes that were happy made sad, and hearts broken. …
Skipping to the next paragraph, we can read her own testimony of despair in the Local Church after being branded:
The fruit of my having been branded “rebel” and “negative” was, ultimately, such deep despair and anguish I found living too hard a thing to do and tried to end my own life. God, who had carried me all the days of my life, carried me through that dark time. I was in deep coma for four days, but while the doctors were telling my family I could not survive, He was holding me close. He had other plans for me. …
Later, she let Jane know that she, too, had talked about teachings and gotten in trouble for it. The elders obviously had a problem with a sister who would dare to express any concern about a Local Church teaching.
If I am uncomfortable with a teaching, you do not know what is the root of my expression of concern about it. Perhaps it is love and not rebelliousness that is behind my discussing it. Only the head of the Body knows. …
Clearly the elders involved in the situation there … branded [the elder’s wife] a rebel, then compounded their deed by saying that individual members cannot understand the word without Lee’s interpretation. Having experienced the deadly results of such pronouncement by elders, I believe our loving Lord knew the use of such labels is tantamount to slaying one’s brother. It would have been much more merciful for one of the elders to have loaded his pistol and shot me than to do what they did when they called me “Moreh!”
The burden became too great. Living was too hard. … Lone-ness is sometimes fatal in depressed persons. …
She later wrote about how many of the people who left the Local Churches felt about the leaders there and their actions:
I can tell you, some of what [the elder’s wife] feels is shock. That is a common thread running through so many stories of saints who touched the local churches, gave their lives to them (some for years) and left because they could no longer stay. They go out with shock and pain, and try to find answers to two questions: (1) “What happened????!” and (2) “How could anything that seemed so right go so wrong?”
The answer to both questions is, of course, fallible men forgetting their place, taking into their fallible hands carelessly the very entity for which all things were created. They handle the Body of Christ carelessly. Protecting the Body Corporate, they will smash however many members they, in their human judgment, choose to smash. As if, Jane, He had not clearly told them their functions. As if, please, they can smash one little finger and not damage, hurt, cause pain to the whole Body, His Body.
In my experience it was clear that there are leaders whom the Lord set up and some who call themselves leaders which the Lord did not set up. To those whom He set up, He gave authority. Those whom He did not set up have and do exercise raw power. In my experience there were a few of the first kind and multitudes of the latter.
Next, she wrote that love is the important item but that “the vision” takes precedence, causing the leaders to mistreat the members:
I have always known that the highest expression of His life in us is love. … Today we stand too often terribly naked of the most important part of our “bridal attire.”
There are, and always have been, brothers who confuse the issue and turn things around. They “caught the vision of the church” and for reasons I do not understand, protect the vision at the expense of the reality—as if they could “fulfill” the vision (“… I will build my church …”). If the gates of hell have at times prevailed it was not against what Christ has built but against what man builds. The concept is “protected” at the expense of the Lord’s own members. …
In the last part of her letter, she wrote of her positive experiences with very caring elders in a traditional church. She ends up writing about her family. When writing about one of her children, she stated:
Our relationship is and always has been bumpy since the “local church.” She feels I should have taken them out (or, having left, should never have gone back) and holds me accountable for her pain.
As most are aware, a few who leave the Local Church return to it. Here is an example of a sister who, after leaving Houston, later gave the Local Church another try in another locality before leaving for the final time. Her case is one of many that show how abusive leaders can have long-lasting, detrimental effects on a family.