What a Lack of Increase Really Means for the LC

[aron]

Originally Posted by Trapped

"friendships". Social interaction. Belonging. Food.

The pull is strong.

The most powerful force of the LC is it's mental conditioning of members against other believers. They really believe, "There is nowhere else to go."

Originally Posted by Trapped

Because even if they do somehow manage to walk through the doors of a "denomination" or "so-called church" one Sunday, or a few Sundays in a row, they still have to contend with the ingrained judgmental attitude that can be hard to beat.

"Oh, their music is contemporary"
"Oh, they just have one man speaking"
"That graphic on the screen feels like leaven"
"They didn't mention God's economy even once"
"That pastor seems to be drumming up emotion rather than the reality of Christ as life"

And on and on and on, and it makes it almost impossible to just sit there and take it in.

I left the LC and reflexively went straight back into mainstream Christian fellowship. I had been meeting there before and didn't want to lose that connection. But I would (in my head) judge everything I saw and heard. "Oh, that's not God's economy" after a sermon that had brought the house into God's presence. And so forth. I did nothing but pick nits. All of it, mind you, warranted. Christianity is, in fact, pretty awful. But it's where the believers are.

And the LC, unable to see or appreciate its own defects, and existing solely to point out those of others, is far worse. You could have the best local expression imaginable in a community church or un-named fellowship, and you'd think, "Oh, they're not meeting on the local ground", ignoring the fact that "the local ground" really means "affiliated with the ministries of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee." No, ignore the beam in your own eye and find the mote in the other's.

The LC members are so pickled in this brine that they struggle to find any alternative life. Even when they admit the glory is gone from the LC (I daresay it never was there, but was a chimera) they stay.