I AM SICK AND TIRED

My name is Noah, I have been in the LC from my teenage years to now late twenties. After reading recent post regarding the social issues, I just wanted to vent on some things I am tired of in the local churches, lets get straight to it.

As a working adult, who works a lot of hours and is constantly berated on how I need to "fellowship more", "spend more time with the brothers", "attend more meetings and conferences", and just many more demands. I am sick and tired of all these serving ones and elders who are funded by people like me, to sit around, run their mouth, and eat lots of food along with a ton of guitar playing. You know you have a job because of the working saint right and all the free time you have to run your mouth, play guitar, and eat a bunch of food, is because of working saints like me right?

I have responsibilities and I have a lot of things I need to take care of. I have a career that lots of hours, a person I am dating and is really developing a fantastic relationship with, family members and close ones I need to spend time with and not NEGLECT. I have so much on my plate, even knowing all this, I am constantly told attend all meetings, conferences, and more "spending time with the brothers". Like I just want to tell them I am not a teenager anymore, my life revolves around much more than "spending time with the brothers". I am not some kid who just has a bunch of free time and no responsibilities, GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD SAINTS.

Also the constant reminders of getting with the brothers, I just want to say. "Spending time with the brothers can get old sometimes". I go a brothers house and we eat food and sing hymns and get into the ministry. As other people have said on this forum, the robotic repetition of the gatherings/fellowship just becomes deadened to me. You sing the same hymns, repeat the same ministry, the food is good but I have good food in my home that is waiting to be eaten. If the all these events and meetings were just friendly invitations that I can just kindly decline, then I would be just fine. But the constant guilt tripping and subtle shaming is just ridiculous. I don't know what to say but- I AM A BUSY ADULT WITH RESPONSIBILITIES TO FULFILL.

This is the most hectic and busiest part of my life, I am in my late twenties, I am seeing someone I actually care about and have a fantastic relationship with. We definitely see each other engaging and marrying in the near future. I would like to settle down, have kids, get a mortgage, and ACTUALLY SPEND TIME AND RAISE MY KIDS AS A PARENT AND NOT NEGLECT THEM FOR THE SAKE OF REPETITIVE AND MINDLESS MEETINGS".

The main reason I went out of the LC for finding a wife is because I just couldn't stand having my whole personal life revolving around the many symptoms and damaging factors of the LC. I was not interested in the possible courtship/arrangement at all, nothing persona I just did not care one bit. Can imagine having a wedding and thinking inside your head, "I could care less about this person I am putting a ring on". Sounds terrible, so I did everyone a favor and just took my dating life outside the LC since its a big no no inside the LC. Its fantastic having that part of your life outside the LC, you can breathe and not be suffocated the demands of the LC that are just repetitive, draining, and even lifeless sometimes.

I saw a post recently on how lots of brothers just see their wives as breeding machines and dont really care to have a genuine and meaningful relationships with their WIVES. Dont get me started on everything I have read on ex church kids and their lack of a happy and healthy relationship with their parents and growing up in the LC overall. I can attest to comments expressing concern about the broken marriages in the LC. No body genuinely loves each other and it definitely does matter for a healthy marriage, especially with kids involved.

This is why I had to get a big chunk of my personal life outside the LC, I was going insane and I just needed to get some nice freedom of peace. I know others must be sick and tired to. Any lurkers or users on here, know where im coming from. I know there must be a considerable amount of people who feel what I feel. I AM AND SICK OF TIRED OF ALL THE NONSENSE WRITTEN ABOVE. This is me venting I hope it was worthy of your time and feel free to share. Share about what you were SICK AND TIRED OF in the LC, whatever it was. I vented and you have the freedom to vent to. Anonymous unregistered user or official account holder, who cares just share. I AM SICK AND TIRED AND IM LETTING ALL OF YOU KNOW. The caps locks helps express my current thoughts of frustration, so hope you dont mind them consistently appearing in this post.

[aron]

Noah,

One thing that consistently strikes me about such posts as yours is the emotional unloading. A lot has been repressed, stretching back into the childhood/teen years. The only expression allowed is "Ooooooooo Loooooord" etc. Not healthy at all. So the all-caps mode may seem 'ugly' or 'unpleasant' to the casual passerby, but it's probably therapeutic.

So vent away. There's a largely voiceless generation, thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands if you look abroad in non-English areas, who've come through the LC wringer and are trying to face life apart from the constant mental conditioning of their past.

Be brave and speak(write). You speak for many. Even though you're selfishly speaking to break your mind/soul free, you do so on behalf of many who've been pushed down into silence. Your freedom of expression becomes a sort of vicarious gateway to others.

[Trapped]

Welcome Noah!

You have your head screwed on right. I'm so encouraged by your post.

God did not ordain marriage (or the lead-up to marriage) between two people so that one of those people could neglect the other person in favor of "spending time with the brothers". This is totally antithetical to what marriage is in the Bible. The Bible shows that husbands are to lay their lives down for their wives, i.e. sacrifice FOR their wives, and wives are to submit to the husband who sacrifices for them.

What the local church does is teach the husbands to sacrifice their wives.....not to sacrifice themselves for their wives.

The wives get sacrificed every time the husband leaves her at home, and walks out the door away from her and toward "the brothers".....for the fourth night that week. I can't hardly think about how many married sisters in the church are silently suffering and neglected.

I totally get you about the robotic repetitions and dead same hymns, same ministry format of the meetings. I have a "selfie" picture on my phone where I am giving myself a totally bored out of my mind, frustrated, hair-pulling expression. Do you know what I was doing at the time I took that photo? I had arrived late (yet again) to a Sunday meeting, and was sitting just around the corner out of sight so everyone wouldn't know I was late, listening to the meeting, and rolling my eyes over and over at the utter dull, dry, lifeless, nonsense they were sharing from the HWMR. In the LC I couldn't express how fed up I was to anyone (because....it's the LC) and so I had to resort to expressing it to myself on my phone so I didn't explode. I stopped going to the weekend meetings when I looked at my own face in the photo and saw how ludicrous it was that I was doing that to myself......forcing myself to get up and drive to the meetings to endure that insanity over and over every weekend.

We are not made to bottle up or suppress our feelings, issues, or frustrations. Feel free to vent more here if you need to. I know that plenty of read-onlys (i.e., lurkers who don't post) will thoroughly relate to what you have said, even if you don't get written feedback.

Abusive groups, unhealthy groups, put unhealthy, un-human demands on their members. They commonly schedule so many gatherings and events like this so the members' lives are consumed with the group. The guilt-tripping, the shaming for not being 100% given to every activity is just another characteristic of abusive groups.

Are you thinking to leave the LC? Just curious about what you plan to do going forward. It sounds like you are technically still in it, but are trying to carve out a life outside of it's confines.

So happy you found someone you have a great relationship with. I wish all the best for you with her.

Trapped

[HERn]

"This is the most hectic and busiest part of my life, I am in my late twenties, I am seeing someone I actually care about and have a fantastic relationship with. We definitely see each other engaging and marrying in the near future. I would like to settle down, have kids, get a mortgage, and ACTUALLY SPEND TIME AND RAISE MY KIDS AS A PARENT AND NOT NEGLECT THEM FOR THE SAKE OF REPETITIVE AND MINDLESS MEETINGS".

The main reason I went out of the LC for finding a wife is because I just couldn't stand having my whole personal life revolving around the many symptoms and damaging factors of the LC. I was not interested in the possible courtship/arrangement at all, nothing persona I just did not care one bit. Can imagine having a wedding and thinking inside your head, "I could care less about this person I am putting a ring on". Sounds terrible, so I did everyone a favor and just took my dating life outside the LC since its a big no no inside the LC. Its fantastic having that part of your life outside the LC, you can breathe and not be suffocated the demands of the LC that are just repetitive, draining, and even lifeless sometimes."


I really enjoyed your honest and open venting! The reason the free-loading full-timers are pestering you is that they have "ministry goals" for you, like your attending more meetings, fellowship, etc. These are things they share in their leadership meetings that hope and pray that you will start doing. If you comply they can report success to their ministry superiors who can decide TO SPEND YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY ON THEIR SALARIES! Think about it, you have no say in where your money donations go towards in the LSM/LC conglomerate, the brothers leading the full-timers decide who to support and for how long. So, it is important for the full-timers who have YOU as their ministry target to have some success in their religious goals for you to report. So, they tell you the things they want you to do because these are the things that they are praying for and telling their leaders these are their goals for you. If they can manipulate and guilt-trip you into performing they then have the success they need to report to their leaders making their case to CONTINUE FREE-LOADING AND LIVING ON THE WORKING SAINTS HARD EARNED INCOME. It's a religious scheme cloaked in spiritual sounding terms. They set your goals and pester you to meet them so they can report success and continue eating, meeting, and playing the guitar; all the while LIVING OFF THE HARD EARNED INCOME OF THE WORKING SAINTS.

Thank you all for your replies, I will try answer most of your questions/responses

As Aaron said, I hope that others are motivated to express their frustrations (whatever that may be) in the LC. Now going to trapped reply, trapped I have to say that I to get tiresome of the non stop repetition of the HWMR more times than I want. Not just lords day meetings HWMR time, but everything in the LC is so repetitive and lifeless. Everything they do is the same, repeat the same ministry, play and sing the same songs, do the same activities, hang with the same people (various meetings). EVERYTHING IS SO ROBOTIC. They are so obsessed with keeping everyone inside this "Bubble of insanity" that they dont realize that the easiest way to burst that bubble is to go just absolutely crazy on every repetitive activity.

HERn, I will have to say that I complete agree with you in the full timers objective in bugging people so much. There is one thing in funding people for church service, but looking at what do the full timers do, its really disappointing when all they do is try to deceive 18 year old college students and be constantly berate saints to come to meetings in order to fall for their "plan" and result a bunch of people coughing up money. 1. Trick college students 2. Get people to give money, that summarizes a full timer. Its honestly disappointing but the local churches cant really do much more.

[HERn]

Originally Posted by Noah

Thank you all for your replies, I will try answer most of your questions/responses

As Aaron said, I hope that others are motivated to express their frustrations (whatever that may be) in the LC. Now going to trapped reply, trapped I have to say that I to get tiresome of the non stop repetition of the HWMR more times than I want. Not just lords day meetings HWMR time, but everything in the LC is so repetitive and lifeless. Everything they do is the same, repeat the same ministry, play and sing the same songs, do the same activities, hang with the same people (various meetings). EVERYTHING IS SO ROBOTIC. They are so obsessed with keeping everyone inside this "Bubble of insanity" that they dont realize that the easiest way to burst that bubble is to go just absolutely crazy on every repetitive activity.

HERn, I will have to say that I complete agree with you in the full timers objective in bugging people so much. There is one thing in funding people for church service, but looking at what do the full timers do, its really disappointing when all they do is try to deceive 18 year old college students and be constantly berate saints to come to meetings in order to fall for their "plan" and result a bunch of people coughing up money. 1. Trick college students 2. Get people to give money, that summarizes a full timer. Its honestly disappointing but the local churches cant really do much more.

We had professional full timers serving in our locality. At the beginning it was the FTers together with the community saints reaching out, feeding and opening their homes to new college student. But it degraded into community saints driving the vans 100% of the time to college conferences and outings so the FTers could monopolize conversations with the new college students during the drive. I once told a FTer brother I was tired of driving and it was his turn. So we changed seats and I fellowshipped with the new ones. My wife and I were older successfully raising children and grandchildren and had much practical Christian family living to share with them. They seemed more interested in this than “God’s current move on the earth” and “the importance of having only one trumpet trumpeting”!!

[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by Trapped

.
God did not ordain marriage (or the lead-up to marriage) between two people so that one of those people could neglect the other person in favor of "spending time with the brothers". This is totally antithetical to what marriage is in the Bible. The Bible shows that husbands are to lay their lives down for their wives, i.e. sacrifice FOR their wives, and wives are to submit to the husband who sacrifices for them.

What the local church does is teach the husbands to sacrifice their wives.....not to sacrifice themselves for their wives.

Truth is spoken. With my own ears I heard the same comment.
Early 1995 Church in Bellevue had just gotten a brothers house due to the couple that owned it moving to Anaheim. Among just college age brothers, a serving brother (married and now a blended co-worker) uttered "how he misses being with the brothers". At the time I remember thinking you can't be possibly joking? Telling a rib? If i was a joke, it was in poor taste and I did not receive it as a joke. As far as I was concerned, the serving brother was very serious.
Why would anyone possibly marry if you don't love and enjoy spending time with them. Marriage is like a partnership. It is serving one another in love.
Marriage is not so a brother has someone to cook and clean for them. Brothers are equally capable of doing house chores too.
Brothers should be a sacrifice to their wives.

[HERn]

Originally Posted by Terry

Truth is spoken. With my own ears I heard the same comment.
Early 1995 Church in Bellevue had just gotten a brothers house due to the couple that owned it moving to Anaheim. Among just college age brothers, a serving brother (married and now a blended co-worker) uttered "how he misses being with the brothers". At the time I remember thinking you can't be possibly joking? Telling a rib? If i was a joke, it was in poor taste and I did not receive it as a joke. As far as I was concerned, the serving brother was very serious.
Why would anyone possibly marry if you don't love and enjoy spending time with them. Marriage is like a partnership. It is serving one another in love.
Marriage is not so a brother has someone to cook and clean for them. Brothers are equally capable of doing house chores too.
Brothers should be a sacrifice to their wives.

I agree, a marriage is more than a partnership. I believe there is no human relationship that can be as deep, intimate, and united than marriage. The husband is to love his wife more and before his love of the church, ministry, or even the elders, and to sacrifice his physical and emotional comfort for his wife before any other human or institution. I believe the wife is to love and submit to her husband before the church, the elders, and certainly before the twisted ministry of WL now propagated by LSM. Of course both husband and wife submit and love first their risen Lord Jesus. The elders, ministry, and being blinded brothers should be third place or greater regarding love and submission.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Noah

My name is Noah, I have been in the LC from my teenage years to now late twenties. After reading recent post regarding the social issues, I just wanted to vent on some things I am tired of in the local churches, lets get straight to it.

As a working adult, who works a lot of hours and is constantly berated on how I need to "fellowship more", "spend more time with the brothers", "attend more meetings and conferences", and just many more demands. I am sick and tired of all these serving ones and elders who are funded by people like me, to sit around, run their mouth, and eat lots of food along with a ton of guitar playing. You know you have a job because of the working saint right and all the free time you have to run your mouth, play guitar, and eat a bunch of food, is because of working saints like me right?

Welcome to the Forum, Noah!

It was these unceasing demands upon me that forced me to rethink my so-called Recovery "vision." My serving was "never enough." I never received any appreciation for my service, never asking me before "assigning" me with another project or responsibility, and when my life at one point came crashing down upon me, never taking any responsibility for loading up this old "mule." Rather I was told "I would not half my service" from some hymn. They heaped demands upon me which they could not bear themselves. When I told my elder, "I'm doing the best I can," he quipped, "I don't need you. If you can't do this, I'll get someone who can." That comment particularly stung.

Noah, they are treating you the same way they have been treated. Many leaders actually survive by cheating the rules they give others. "Rulers for thee, but not for me." How many times I saw elders' wives free from the latest demands, yet deacons' (like me) wives doubly loaded. Legalistic systems like this do nothing more than produce liars and hypocrites. Unfortunately, it will never get any better.

If you bring a wife into this program, I doubt she will survive.