My Testimony

[Freedom]

Hello everyone, I am new here, though I have been reading the forum for quite some time. I am currently a LC member. It’s hard to know where to start with an introduction, I will write something about myself here to get started, and I can add more later if there are comments/questions on anything I’ve posted. I know this will probably be a bit lengthy, but please bear with me, hopefully this will be the longest post I make.


I was born and raised in the LC, and as might be expected, I have devoted a good amount of time and energy to it. I am still young (in my late 20’s) and I realize I have my life ahead of me. I have been considering joining this forum for some time, but being a current LC member, there is always the underlying concern of people finding out that I’m posting on here. I realize now though that I have nothing to lose. I know that others here can benefit from hearing about my experience, and similarly, I hope to be helped by others as well.


I was the most devoted to the LC during my time in college. I lived in a “brother’s house” for some of that time. I attended a number of LSM trainings, college related activities, etc. Basically I did everything that was expected of me and then some. I also was a president for out LC Christian Club at the campus that I attended. Due to certain circumstances in my life, I was able to (intentionally) avoid attending the FTTA, and here I am. I will leave out all the other details for now, that should give a good enough picture about my background and who I am.


Now I want to explain what brought me here. I’m sure that those who grew up in the LC, aka “church kids”, have had some type of feeling of not fitting in with everyone else outside the LC. This type of feeling forced me to place my trust and friendships in the LC. Since I didn’t fit in anywhere else outside the LC, I in turn dedicated myself solely to LC activities.


Currently, a big focus, if not the biggest focus of the LC is college campus work. By the time I entered college, I fully committed myself to participating in the college work, since it's such a big focus. I basically spent most of my time doing all the activities associated with the college work and church life that are expected of everyone. This is things such as: campus activities, LSM trainings, conferences, meetings most nights of the week, etc.


At the time I was quite naïve, and I thought that simply having a high level of commitment to the LC and campus work would bring some type of fulfillment to me and my life. After all, the college work was pretty much the focus of the church life itself. It did bring me some fulfillment at first, however, I eventually got to the point where I realized that all this time I was putting it wasn’t amounting to much. Additionally I realized that my fellow peers involved in the LC campus work weren’t all that engaged in what was going on either. I came to the realization that it was all just an act I was putting on, probably to either impress people or to “pay my dues”. This forced me to begin to consider what I was doing and what I really wanted.


During this time period I regularly attended the bi-annual LSM trainings. Ironically, due to attending these trainings, I began to hear the constant innuendos put forth about “negative” writings on the internet, “rebellions”, and so on. What really struck me about it is that here I was attending a training to hear the word of God, and instead they often would diverge into making these very broad statements about “rebellious ones” or “negative writings”, all of which was supposedly irrelevant to me. I could never see why they brought up such things in the first place. Eventually I had to ask myself, why did they bring up these things during every training, and why were they so adamant about not reading anything on the internet?


I always challenge myself to think critically, so I had to ask myself the question, what is it that they don’t want me to know about, and why? This resulted in me undertaking my own research, and I took the time to read all of the things that we aren’t supposed to know about. I read Steve Isitt’s writings, John Ingalls’ book, etc. After reading all of that, I really had to take a step back and consider everything I had learned.


At first it all seemed too farfetched to be true, that is, the idea that maybe the LC didn’t have the pristine image that I thought it did. Since no one in the LC discusses such things, I was on my own to make sense of what I had found out. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, well of course these things are true, the bigger question is what I do with what I know.


What I eventually began to realize is that these writings expressed to a certain extent how I felt inside. I mentioned earlier that I was feeling like I was putting on an act as far as my involvement in the church life. Even though most of the writings I had read discussed events that occurred when I was a young child, I realized there were answers that explained a lot of things and put the current church life into perspective. Up until then, I had never really questioned our practices or considered why we do things certain ways, I just accepted everything at face value.


I didn’t realize it at the time, but just the very way we do things was the really the root cause of my disengagement. For example, every Sunday we have and hour or more of a “prophesying” time. I cannot even express how dry it feels to sit there and listen to person after person get up and read an excerpt from the HWMR. I’m sure other current LC members feel the exact same way, though they would never dare admit to it. As the president of the campus Christian club at my school I had to wonder why it was necessary to pressure people who come to our club meetings to use the Recovery Version of the Bible instead of their own versions that they bring. All in all, I finally realized that what it all boiled down to is that we were exclusively dependent on Nee/Lee’s writings, teachings, and methods for everything. The material I read on the internet helped to put all that into perspective, and I realized why I felt the way I did. I didn’t know how to explain it before, I thought it was just some problem on my end such as not being devoted or engaged enough.


Well, I am still here in the LC, not because I want to be, but because I don’t have a viable exit strategy. I guess I have the faint hope that somehow, I can help others to see all the things that I have seen, but I know that’s probably not going to happen. What I also have realized is that I have no ability to change anything in the LC, and eventually I have to move on for my own good.


You may have noticed that my screen name is “Freedom”. I chose that name because in coming here, I want to free myself from anything that is keeping me from the Lord. Unfortunately this has just been the system of the LC itself. Though I am still in the LC, I look forward to the freedom that I will eventually realize.