My situation with the Local Church

[OGOP]

Hey everybody, I've been reading over old threads here for the past couple days.
Everything I've been experiencing for the past year and a half in the Local Church and 'Christians on Campus' is finally starting to make sense. I feel like I could write a book, but I will try to be brief about my experience.


Prior to my involvement with the LC I didn't attend any church at all. I still identified as Christian and was a believer in Jesus Christ, but I wasn't raised going to church in my family. When I moved away to college I was far too busy with school and extracurricular activities to find a denomination as a freshman. So although I wanted to get involved with a church and make faith a bigger aspect of my life, I remained "church-less".

Sophomore year, I met a girl. I knew she was religious and involved with some sort of church, but I wasn't curious enough to delve into the details right away. After the first few months of dating, she invited me to the Christians on Campus bible study. I went, and to be honest nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was my first bible study ever so I wouldn't have really known if it was normal or not to be honest, but I saw no red flags initially.

When I started joining her at the home meetings, was when I started feeling uncomfortable. Three main things that I noticed right away:

1) The way the groups prayed.
I know that may sound wrong, but I've seen similar opinions expressed on this site in other threads so I'm sure you all know what I mean by this. The shouting of "OOOhhh LOOOOOOrd JEEEEsUUUs!" along with other things they would just shout made me feel uncomfortable.

2) The fact that at some meetings we wouldn't even read the bible and just read and analyze Morning Revival.
It didn't make sense to me that the group that kept professing about how strictly they followed the word of God, was reading these books at the meetings in place of The Bible.

3) Talk of the Full Time Training.
This screamed "cult" to me right away. You're going to spend two years of your life isolated from family, friends, the opposite sex, wearing uniforms, no technology, etc. I had never heard of anything like this before, and the fact that all of the college aged kids were being expected to attend something so extreme seemed so crazy to me.

Things started really getting out of control after the first few months.

As MANY people have experienced and shared on here, dating in the "church life" is not something ordinary by any means.
Dating in the LC as an outsider, is even more strict. I would hear everything people would say about me and our relationship, via my girlfriend. How the "elders" didn't approve.
There was even one situation where a brother was planning propose to my girlfriend. He had reached out to the older brothers and was in the process of contacting her parents for their approval to marry my girlfriend.
As you can imagine I was extremely angered by the whole handling of the situation. For somebody who had only been in the "church life" for a few months, I was dumbfounded that something like this was even allowed to happen.

The brother barely even knew my girlfriend, but it was completely acceptable for them to get married?? They would marry off two strangers simply to avoid pre-marital sex? My role as the boyfriend meant nothing to the elders. I was livid.

This was the situation that made me become extremely distrustful of the LCM. I had felt uncomfortable with some of their biblical interpretations and rituals before this happened. However after this, and several other problems due to dating in the church life, I started to secretly question the practices of the LC.

Another example: At one point my girlfriend was interrogated by some of the elder brothers when people started complaining at the sight of us holding hands. Completely inappropriate in my mind.

One more: I was even interrogated by elders who were friends of my girlfriends family, to make sure I was a genuine member of the LCM. It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. Being forced to read certain verses, pray certain prayers, etc.

However, like I said, I could go on and on but thats not the purpose of this thread.

I have fallen head over heels for my girlfriend and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. We are 21 years old now, and we both want to get married. She is my true love, and I love everything about her.
Despite the multiple problems I have faced with dating within the church life, I have continued attending the meetings and even the "Lords day" service and table. After a year and a half, the church life is my entire social life. All of our friends are from the meetings. I have drifted apart from my friends I had prior to getting involved with the LC.

As recently as a few days ago, I was completely content with remaining involved in the LCM and even raising our family in the church life. A couple days ago I stumbled upon the full time training website, which led me to researching about its history, and finding out about Witness Lee and Watchman Nee. I found out about all the accusations of it being a cult. I have been completely awoken to everything, and all the little things that didn't make sense I completely understand now.

When I mentioned to my girlfriend just a few days ago that I was going to research the history of the denomination, I got quite the backlash. That I shouldn't research anything because I would be "poisoned" and "confused" by what I would see.

I need advice.
I obviously can't just go to my girlfriend, who has known only the church life nothing else, and tell her she's in church that is borderline cult. I don't want to raise my kids in an environment like that. I don't know what to do.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my story and for any responses you may have for me. I have a lot more stories I might share later, about some experiences at some of the "college conferences" and some other run ins with the elders, but for now I think Ive made my point.

I have come to see the light, no pun intended, that the Local Church is not the church for me, and I want absolutely nothing to do with it. Yes I see some of the positives it has and it has really taught me a lot about Christ and for that I am thankful. One thing I know is, this is not the denomination for me or my future family.

God Bless.