Why I Dropped Out from the Full Time Training

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by HERn

I know three young people that started the full time training, but dropped out before completing. One young person said she struggled with depression which the training did not help, I'm not sure about the others, but the general feeling was that something negative happened.

To help bring light to bear on this part of the Lord's Recovery, I wonder if any of the young folks who dropped out could share a bit on this. May God bring rest and recovery to all those negatively affected by the full time training. If this has been included in another thread please let me know.

What follows are just some thoughts that came up about this post, rather than an answer to the subject of it. Some of this I have heard through the grapevine, although I trust the grapes through whom it came. Some of this I know firsthand.

1. I have heard graduated trainees lament the sheer number of other FTTA graduates who leave the church after the training.
2. I am aware of one smaller graduating class (like a spring graduation term) that had something like a 50% loss rate - half the class is no longer in the church.
3. I know that the FTTA is not set up to handle attendees with human issues - depression, anxiety, addiction, abuse, trauma, mental health issues, etc. They try to weed people with those kind of things out before accepting applicants because they don't have (or want to have, I guess) the personnel and/or finances to provide help in those kind of areas for trainees. They are aware of the need, but just say "we don't have resources to help so we don't want those people who need that kind of help". They just want people with no issues who will take in the kool aid of the ministry wholesale. Hm....."people with no issues"......does that kind person even exist?
4. Something like 70% of trainees graduate with a known mental health issue. This is a known statistic to those involved in running the FTTA. Many of them begin taking mood-altering prescription medications during the training (prescribed from within the training) and graduate still taking them.
5. A common phrase I heard years ago from graduat-ing/ed trainees was "I don't know how to BE." This was said with fear, worry, and anguish in their eyes. The FTTA was so strange that going into the real world to live an actual human life wasn't something they thought they could handle after a couple years in "the best place for a young person in God's plan."

Reasons trainees leave the training:

1. Some of them are relatively new off the campus and have a genuine heart for God, and have been in a locality that hides the exaltation of Witness Lee too skillfully. They go to the training thinking they are on the best path to serve and love God, and once they are there, the reality of what it is hits them and.......they leave.
2. Some of them are preyed upon by sexual predators and get blamed by the trainers and co-workers who cover the predator and show the victim the door.
3. Some of them are introverts who need more decompression and down-time than the training provides for. They simply can't handle the schedule, and constantly being slapped with the resulting punishments affects them too much. They feel like they are a failure before God and leave defeated.
4. Some of them don't have the foundation of a real personal relationship with God, and so the pressure of having to perform and be perfect and shepherd children and young people makes them feel acutely like they are a fraud, a performer, living a double-life, and they leave.
5. Some of them are put with children and young people who are desperate for someone genuine and caring that they can look up to. These kids bring their shocking home lives and serious personal problems to the trainees, looking for help, and the trainees are not equipped in the slightest to handle them. I don't know if this is necessarily a direct cause of trainees leaving, but it is one of the intense pressures they are not told about when applying.
6. They have a mind and can see that the interpretations they are taught are not according to the Bible.
7. Even though the FTTA tells young people not to go to the training to "fix up their spiritual life", I think a percentage still do. They go expecting to finally get right with God, and......are disappointed because that's not the point of the training, which is simply to indoctrinate them about Lee and the Recovery.