Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
I don't know what is so hard about this to understand, why it has to be so complicated. If a person says "I have no group" it means "I am not meeting anywhere".
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Actually, he did not (that I recall) say "I have no group" but rather "I belong to no group."
There is a difference. All that means is that he is not bound by some kind of external sign (like "membership") to a particular group. In some churches, the membership is many times greater than the participation. There are also groups where many participate in material ways that have never become members. And many of those are not just making it easy to leave. They are just being part of the church without the stipulation of membership.
That is all that "not belonging to a group" means to me. but I suspect that he still considers himself part of some group and they consider him part of it as well. Probably at least as much if not more than the people who continue to hang on around the LRC. But not because they have been scared into thinking that there is no other place to go.