A Curious Fellow's Introduction

[ACuriousFellow]

Hello there! Don’t know who’ll see this, but I figure I’ll add a bit of my story to this site. I met with a local church for a little over nine years. I met them as a freshman in college. For many years, I was involved in their Christians on Campus college ministry as a student, participating in just about every event/meeting they had. I enjoyed my time there, and over the years I developed what I believed were strong connections with my mentor, a full-timer and now elder. He served as a father-figure to me and I often butted heads with him regarding the scriptures and various other trivial matters. Exactly as a son should, right? Anyhow, I became one of the leading students on campus, helping to reach out to and usher in many new ones to our group and setting up meetings and whatnot. My favorite way to help was to lead the singing times with my (most likely) obnoxiously loud voice and my guitar. I went to most of the college conferences, internship trainings (these were trainings for students who were interested in reaching out to the incoming freshmen during the summer months), internships (already described), bible studies, Saturday fun times, Lord’s day meetings, etc. I joined the children’s ministry and worked with the coordinator for seven years up until the point where I left. In my later years in The Lord’s Recovery, I often also worked with a certain woman who had a heart to restart the young people’s meetings since they were dropped during the splendiferous COVID era. Many of the years were good to me, and I am grateful that God provided me with a community to keep me alive during what was an extended period of chronic depression and one gratefully small period where I experienced passively suicidal tendencies (lasted about a week or two). As the years went on, I picked up on more and more of the common red flags that ex-members pick up on, and one particular incident occurred back in January which was my tipping point. The last several months have served as a detox period for me, and although they’ve been painful, I’ve been feeling greater and greater relief after having left The Lord’s Recovery. It was also after my departure that I decided to do more research and ended up finding out that the history of The Lord’s Recovery is rife with controversy, abuse, and conflict. The most striking stories for me were those of Jo and Greg Casteel, Harvest House Publishers, and John Ingalls’ testimony in his book “Speaking the Truth in Love.” Anyhoo, that seems like enough for an introduction.

Yours truly,

A Curious Fellow