Relationship

[gr8ful]

Originally Posted by DP0902

Thank you for sharing that with me. Yes, their questions are invading someone's personal life. Do you have any idea what will happen to FTT students once they had graduated from their training?

Hi. I went to the Full Time Training in Anaheim (FTTA) in the 1990s and have known people who have been before and since then. First of all, the "Consecration #7" issue (no boy/girl relationships) is serious enough that people discovered to have violated it have been removed from the training (and then invited to return to their church to pursue the relationship).

Secondly, after the FTTA, or actually towards the END of FTTA, the attention shifts strongly towards getting the trainees married. When I was there, and have heard this from others, too, we had several "4th term brother" and "4th term sister" meetings where the harsh restriction from having male-female relationships is lifted and the soon-to-be-graduated trainees are encouraged to pursue a spouse.

Unsurprisingly, the entire fellowship on finding a spouse is centered on finding someone of the same vision of God's Economy -- someone who can join to give their lives full-time to "Christ and the Church." The "trainees" are held in a high esteem (well, in SoCal, anyway) and the thought of "losing" a trainee to a non-Recovered spouse isn't pleasantly accepted as "God's Perfect Will."

I do know faithful members in the Local Churches who are married to someone met outside of the Lord's Recovery (and some who since marriage stopped meeting), but these are considered sub-par pairings -- as in, "oh, that's a shame." The couple isn't shunned, per se, but there's a definite "oh, we should do something to help our young people find a spouse in the church!" when such relationships happen. Also, I've been in prayer meetings where strong prayers were made for the non-meeting partner to be "gained" for God's Economy, and those prayers followed up with invitations to the couple to "come for dinner." I don't know if the effort to "gain" the non-meeting spouse ever subsides. It may, but it remains a sticky issue for a long time in the minds of everyone in the church around that couple -- especially if one spouse is intending to be a serving one.

More to the issue at heart, though, is a concern on how this "hiding the heart" is affecting your boyfriend in the FTT. Knowing that he's not respecting the sworn consecration and also can't openly be in such an important life-relationship might result in guilt, shame, and other painful feelings. One the one hand, hiding such a fact from the Training is hardly a great way to start one's "Service to the Lord," but on the other, feeling that he has to chose between the Lord and you...that's not a great way to start a life-relationship with someone. It's a shame that the pressure to conform to the "call" to attend the FTT is so strong one would be in such a situation to put God against love.

That may seem like a strong paragraph, but having been in the FTT, and having seen colleagues struggling with this very issue still lingers with me so many years later. One trainee had an emotional breakdown over his relationship with his fiancée, which he had to hide while he was in the training. I cannot imagine the stress this must have caused.

The official line from the FTT is along the lines of "we encourage health relationships and want to see brothers and sisters marry; however, just for the period of the two year FTT, we want trainees to be focused on the Lord and to set aside such plans until after the training. If one cannot put pursuing a spouse aside, we free them from the training so they can pursue such a relationship with a clear conscience." As if the incessant "Go to the training!" calls at every major LSM conference/training isn't putting enormous pressure on young people scared they won't measure up to be overcomers....