Greetings brothers and sisters.
I found this site a couple weeks ago and was intrigued by what I saw. As the title of my thread may imply, I am not a member of the so called Lord's Recovery. So why am I here? Well sit back and relax and I'll tell you.
A few years ago, I had no idea this movement even existed. I grew up in what they would call the "apostate denominational churches" in the Recovery. I was perfectly content with how things were until a girl came and rocked my world...
As you might've guessed, this girl was a member of the Lord's Recovery. Now typically, this wouldn't have mattered to me except for one thing: this girl became my girlfriend. A few months into the relationship, I asked her what church she went to since I had never asked before then (I had known she was a Christian before we started going out and whatnot) to which she replied "the Church in *I won't say where to preserve the anonymity of this post*" Upon a quick google search of this place, the Lord's Recovery was introduced into my life.
I didn't think much of it at first, since after seeing their website nothing popped out as weird except for the term Lord's Recovery. I asked her about it a few times, but I guess she gave all the "right answers" as I continued to not really think anything of this place. However, months later, I looked up the Recovery version of the Bible out of curiosity. It was then that I first saw the lengthy Witness Lee footnotes that you are all familiar with. The particular preview that I saw was from Genesis 1:1. I was amused by the fact that there was 1 or 2 verses on the page followed by paragraphs upon paragraphs of footnotes. I had been told that her Bible had footnotes prior to this, however I had assumed it would've been like the footnotes in any other Bible I've seen, just a few notes here and there. While I joked with her about the amount of footnotes there were, I looked at some other parts in the New Testament and was, of course, treated to the same thing. I asked her if she read all of these footnotes to which she replied that it wasn't "necessary" to but it was helpful in the explanation of certain parts. Made perfect sense to me, so I proceeded to read some in the next few weeks. However I was more confused by these footnotes than enlightened.
Fast forward to the summer before we started college. We happened to choose the same college
and I asked her if she wanted to join one of the campus ministries on campus that a few people from my church had told me about. She was pretty adamant about going to the Christians on Campus "branch" of her church. This, naturally, disappointed me greatly. By this point I had grown to care very much about her, and it always bugged me that we had never been to church together. We had talked about it every now and then, and I figured college would be the perfect opportunity to do so. Thus, her persistent stance on joining Christians on Campus stung even more.
By now, I had read many bad things about the Lord's Recovery, even being told by my youth pastor that it was a heretical church based upon their modalistic teachings. Not wanting to condemn based on the words of people who might not necessarily know what they were talking about (and partly based on my girlfriend's exclamations that people on the internet were simply seeking/were instruments of Satan to smash her church) I decided to go to a meeting the 2nd week of school. What I saw there fit most descriptions of what I had read up until that point. There was sing-reading, pray-reading, many exclamations of "Oh Lord Jesus!" and loud "Amens" and "Lord Jesus", exclusive usage of the Recovery version (which wasn't even being used in this particular meeting) and what I call the Witness Lee Hymnal, and all sorts of things that I should not have to describe to you. I recall one hymn we sang which contained something along the lines of "Jesus transfigured into the Holy Spirit" which sprung my mental modalist warning system. It seemed as though everything I had read was right.
My girlfriend perhaps sensed that I had a negative view of her church and gave me the silent treatment for awhile. Not wanting to upset her, I agreed to go to a larger college meeting or outing or something with members of Christians on Campus from several other colleges. However, it was more of the same. While I convinced her that it wasn't as bad as I had thought before, the thought that she was in a "misguided" church gnawed at my heart for months afterwards.
Since then the differences between our churches has grown more and more apparent. She has always been taught that people who are in denominational churches (which I don't happen to be, but it's really all the same to them regardless) are dividing the church and whatnot. However, when I brought her to the All Campus Worship event to which nearly every single campus ministry was represented and acknowledged (except, of course, for hers). This bothered her greatly. For all the preaching of oneness and unity, why was it that her church did not go to this ALL CAMPUS worship event? After all, it was the perfect opportunity to display the oneness of all believers in Christ. There are more differences that I could mention, but I feel like I don't really have to here.
This leads me to why I am posting here. What should I do? I know a lot of you have some pretty strong views on Witness Lee and the local church and whatnot, but naturally (and for some personal reasons which I can't really disclose) I can't ask her to just leave and join me. In fact, she'll probably be unable to leave even if she wanted to until after we've graduated. I'm not asking for some way to "convert" her or anything, just for a way that we can grow together in Christ like we've wanted to do this whole time. I know there are some good aspects of the local church (such as a communal, family like lifestyle) that many churches can stand to learn from, but it seems in this case, the bad outweighs the good.
Many thanks and God bless.