Thread: The LCS Factor
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Old 08-20-2008, 07:13 PM   #344
Hope
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Durham, North Carolina
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dj,

I spent some time searching my memory about any and all divorces that occurred in Dallas from 1971 up until today. I came up with eleven. Of course there could be more and two were the second and third of the same woman who had moved there. Three were troubled couples who picked up meeting with us after they were married and brought problems with them. Maybe that comes out to 3-5% but at worse way under 10%. If you take the entire history of OK City not just the 15, I wonder what the percent would be - 50%, 60%, or 40% or maybe even down to the level of your evangelical church, 34%. At any rate, it is a tragedy if it is 5%. Divorce is not what the Lord intended. I grieve for all Christian marriages that end in divorce. I do not agree that some marriages just cannot make it. If both spouses receive the proper care and learn to take Christ in reality as the solution to their problems then the Lord can do whatever is needed.

Here are a few informal practices and formal practices that hurt marriages and parenting in the local churches and in the church in Dallas. I would like you to reciprocate and share with us the faults in your church and ministry that you have identified that contributed to the high divorce rate of 34%. It may be a help to us on the forum.

Regarding singles who met and married in the church: Things often moved way too fast. You need to get to know a person before you enter into marriage. Often the person you see in the meetings may not be exactly the person you think you are marrying. I observed my wife for several months before I expressed any interest directly to her. By then I knew that if she would have me then I would be very blessed. Then, we had a 14 month engagement. We saw each other several times a week during this time. I visited with her parents. By the time we had the wedding we really knew each other and there were few surprises. But in Dallas singles moved very fast to be married. This was the church culture.

We had too many church related activities and it was expected that everyone would participate in as many as possible. Family time was not promoted.

The leadership in many places did not spend adequate time to get to know the members up close and personal. The leadership was often too heavenly minded to be of much earthly good.

Other than George Whitington, very few of the leaders spoke of the wonderfulness of marriage. WL himself was very negative in almost every instance in which he spoke of marriage. He had a very skewed view of marriage and family and it affected the leaders in the local churches.

In fact there was a great flat spot in teaching ministry and counseling labor regarding building up the family. The stress from Lee set up a false dichotomy between family and church.

The local churches were too legal and religious toward the children and often antagonized the children. When my son was 14, he let his blond hair grow very long. His hair was longer than any of his worldly classmates at school and really stood out in the church meetings etc. One brother (not an elder) approached me about his hair and rebuked me for not having my children in subjection. I shared with him that I was taking a long range view. While I was not happy within, I was not going to let a few inches of hair possibly lead to our estrangement. I knew he would cut it off in a short time. I wanted him to have the peace to come to me when he had some big problem to talk about.

This leads to my next point. There were codes of conduct that allegedly reflected a person's spirituality. How your children behaved was a reflection on the spirituality of the parents. There was a lot of peer pressure to be accepted and viewed as a member in good standing. Part of this was due to the excessive amount of activities and meetings. Too much of the Christian life was the meeting life. The family life was neglected since there are just so many hours in a day and so many days in a week. Dallas was probably the worst offender in having a jam packed schedule.

There was too much emphasis on the ministry of WL. He was the main staple. Whenever the local elders focused on meeting the needs in their place, someone like Benson or James Barber would come down on them. Sigh, sigh, how grieved I am for my role in not meeting the saints and their family's needs.

Finally, though if I took the time and thought I am sure I could come up with more, but finally, there was a great lack of prayer and fighting the spiritual warfare for the families and for the children in particular. No one knew how and few had any realization regarding what was happening in the unseen realm. I saw many of the children suffer injustices at school. Things that were illogical. We never knew that the demons may have been behind the harassment directed at the children. (Just an example of our need to be on the alert.) Perhaps dj this is a big shortage at your place. Based on the way you brushed this off when I mentioned it in post #13, you obviously could use some help in this area. Consider, maybe the ones you are seeking to help are suffering because you do not know these things.

Well it is now your turn. If you would share your experiences, we ex local churchers could probably get some help and see some of our shortcoming by seeing what a better family, parenting model looks like.


Don Rutledge
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