What a Lack of Increase Really Means for the LC

[aron]

Originally Posted by Trapped

The sad thing is, the students they drool over will just become the disaffected members beginning about 8 years later.

I wish every HS and college student in the LC could read this sentence and stop for 40 seconds and consider its implications. But they're unfortunately under the thrall of hyper-spiritualised love-bombing and have no time for such sober reflections.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by aron

I wish every HS and college student in the LC could read this sentence and stop for 40 seconds and consider its implications. But they're unfortunately under the thrall of hyper-spiritualised love-bombing and have no time for such sober reflections.

Sadly, the ones who are most active in the LC are the ones who fall victim to this. As a church kid, some of my peers could care less about the LC (and left as soon as they could) but there were also some who actually took it seriously and were enthusiastic about it. Some of them were short-terming in the FTTA while on the breaks in college, made every conference and training, you name it.

Ten years later most of these same people were either out or just trying desperately to survive in the LC. With those who did manage to survive, I saw the types of problems they ran into. Some would move a locality, only to find out they weren't needed there, so then a year later they're moving somewhere else. Then the new locality has different issues, so it's on to the next locality.

I think a lot of us could probably point to some period of time in the LC where the environment just seemed intoxicating, there was a lot going on, we felt valued, wanted, etc. Then at some point that stopped. Maybe after moving somewhere else, graduating from college, or whatever else it was. Once all the 'fun' subsides, that's when people begin questioning their involvement. And it's not unreasonable either (I'm not saying the environment has to be fun or exciting). The point here is that if the LC is incapable of meeting someones needs at any given stage in their life, then it ceases to serve any purpose for that person.

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Freedom

The point here is that if the LC is incapable of meeting someones needs at any given stage in their life, then it ceases to serve any purpose for that person.

And the LC response would be to shame you for thinking of your needs rather than God's needs. Except God didn't create us to starve us.

One issue is, I think, in the LC, "the church" is something different than the people. For all their years of looking down on Christianity for thinking the church is the building, and although the words are correct that "we [the people] are the church", somehow that truthful statement has deviated and "the church" seems to have become something separate from the people itself.

I know of cases where dear saints were gutted by the leadership "because it's the best thing for the church". How can lacerating a part of the church and losing that part of the church from the pain of the gutting be the best thing for the church? Because somehow, in the LC, "the church" is something different from the people. I don't know what it is in their mind, or even if THEY know what it is. But it ain't the people anymore.

It's like....."the church" has become "the protection of the ministry and the pretending that everything is fine and that we are not a controlling group".

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Trapped

I know of cases where dear saints were gutted by the leadership "because it's the best thing for the church". How can lacerating a part of the church and losing that part of the church from the pain of the gutting be the best thing for the church? Because somehow, in the LC, "the church" is something different from the people. I don't know what it is in their mind, or even if THEY know what it is. But it ain't the people anymore.

It's like....."the church" has become "the protection of the ministry and the pretending that everything is fine and that we are not a controlling group".

Interesting. Did not we in the Midwest get lacerated? For the good of the body???

For decades I heard, "The church is not for the ministry, but the ministry is for the church." Repeat often enough, and we were supposed to believe it. But in every situation, the church only existed to support the ministry. The church was constantly forced to change to suit the ministry. Unbearable contradictions like this over time just grate at the soul. The church was constantly sacrificed to accommodate the whims of the ministry. Every church and every saint was thus expendable.

Like the government, the ministry has become this huge bloated self-serving organism, deemed "essential," while all others are deemed "non-essential."

Going back to your comment about "lacerating," this can also take another form. How many times did I see the "ministry" draft (think steal) key brothers from LC's in order to force that LC to be more dependent on the ministry? I hated that. Was not that one of the deeds of the Nicolaitans?

[Freedom]

I want to switch gears a little now and use a LC Q&A session as a case study. In the LSM publication entitled A Timely Word, the very end has some questions that are answered by WL (circa the late 80’s ‘turmoil’). WL gets asked the following question:
Some of the saints may hear some rumors or some gossip. They may not become negative themselves or cause some trouble, but the symptom in many cases is that they become discouraged. They lose their heart for the church life. They lose their confidence in the Lord’s recovery. There are many cases where this causes them to question the leadership in their church or the ministry among us. This last training on Leviticus was a real medicine, a real balm, and a real help. But I am concerned that many of us may have certain cases in our church where brothers or sisters are not negative, but they heard some gossip or rumor, which may be totally unfounded. There may be some element in what they heard that causes them to question. They themselves are not opposing, and they do not form a party. But they lose all their enjoyment, they lose all their heart, and they lose all their confidence. In many cases they do not even express what they heard, but there is a kind of withdrawing from the church life and a withdrawing from the service. This is a real weakening to these saints. How can we help this kind of brother or sister either in a public way or a personal way?

Before we get to how WL responds to this question, I think it is interesting to consider the implications of the question itself. First off, this question is regarding those who leave the LC in a ‘quiet’ way, those who don’t voice their concerns or anything like that. If we separate ex-members into two categories – those who left vocally and those who left quietly, it goes without saying that the vocal ones are the biggest targets to get called whatever names or derogatory terms that people in the LC could come up with. So it makes perfect sense to operate under the assumption that taking the ‘pacifist’ approach to leaving would be the preferred method by the average LC member.

So in my mind, what this question is really about is basically a covert attempt to make the point that when people leave the LC, they are afraid to speak up because they know that the LC leadership loves to shoot the messenger. Let’s say someone leaves in a vocal way. It does provide an immediate form of feedback for the LC, but they don’t want to hear it. But ironically, when someone leaves quietly, no one knows what happened. Sometimes even the person is involved in various areas of service - lets say they play piano in meetings, they serve with the college students, etc., and then one day they are just gone. They stop answering phone calls, nobody knows what happened. Obviously that's very concerning, so it's perfectly reasonably that everyone would want to find out what happened.

But at the same time people in the LC very well know that the issue is more complex than the typical explanations like the person has become ‘dormant’, so nobody wants to be the one to try to initiate contact or figure out what’s going on, because if they become the new messenger, then they are the ones who get shot instead. It really makes for a bizarre situation.

[Trapped]

To me, the question itself is just a deflection. It puts the focus on the status of the ones hearing the rumor "which may be unfounded" (note the tricky wording keeping it ambiguous whether the rumor is true or not), rather than on the truth of the rumor itself. The question really should be "when we hear rumors about the leadership, what is the process to determine whether or not it is true? Whether or not actions should be taken? How will we know the situation is being handled correctly?"

Once the truth is known, then you can help the saints with their reaction to the truth.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by Trapped

To me, the question itself is just a deflection. It puts the focus on the status of the ones hearing the rumor "which may be unfounded" (note the tricky wording keeping it ambiguous whether the rumor is true or not), rather than on the truth of the rumor itself. The question really should be "when we hear rumors about the leadership, what is the process to determine whether or not it is true? Whether or not actions should be taken? How will we know the situation is being handled correctly?"

Once the truth is known, then you can help the saints with their reaction to the truth.

During time periods like the late 80's, I don't know what percentage of those who left did so quietly vs. vocally, but the actual concerns that led members to leave in either of these cases were the same concerns underlying concerns.

It seems that WL had a tendency to approach these types of situations by either not acknowledging the problem at all or he would scold anyone who was speaking up about "unfounded rumors" without providing the opportunity to get to the bottom of the so-called rumor.

I think that when the average rank and file members sees this type of pattern happening it often becomes ideal to make the decision to leave quietly and just move on. So the LC then finds itself in a position where it is bleeding members and many of them never explicitly stated their reasons for leaving. Leadership knows what the concerns are, but instead of addressing those concerns, they blame the people who leave. Or they blame current members for not having enough increase.