Long time Lurker, first time Poster

[PikaMario]

Wanted to tell my story, I am currently in the process of leaving the recovery. I haven't gone to a Lord's day meeting in a few months, but I don't consider myself fully gone as I still have some relationships in the church life. Some people know of my feeling, others I have not told at all. I have been on my way out for a few months and have been visiting other churches on Sundays. This is not something I have conducted lightly as the church life has been a big part of my life as I am in my mid 30s.

A little bit about me - grew up in the recovery starting from around middle school, went to college and was part of Christians on campus, went to FTTA, had many responsibilities in the church life, been to all seven feasts, been to ITEROs etc. I was a big defender of the church life and was armed with all the right words to say to inoculate people against poison they would read online.

I never really doubted the ministry's truth, but I felt that there was too much admiration of witness lee that made me uncomfortable. They don't even hold Nee with as much regard as they held Lee. For example, whenever I share, I never say 'brother lee says...' as many others do. I always try to support my sharing with verse references, but MANY people quote Lee as if its on the same level as scripture. It's undeniable that saints do this.

Back when I was a defender of the recovery I would say that well, every christian group follows someone, so its perfectly okay for us in the Recovery to follow Lee the way other Christian groups follow their charismatic leaders, but I do feel like we went way above what other groups did. For example, when I was in the FTTA, you can schedule appointments with coworkers to ask questions or fellowship. In my fourth term, I innocently brought up to a coworker that although I am one with the ministry that it does seem like there is a lot of uplifting of Lee that I can see why opposers think we exalt Lee over the Lord and I gave him a specific example of what a trainer said during class that I had a problem with. He calmly replied to my perspective and I thought that was the end of it. Then about a month later I was in the FTTA office to fellowship about one of my services with the head of the training and then he brought up "oh BTW - brother So-n-So told me about your question and I'd like to schedule time to fellowship more with you on that topic". Immediately I felt like I was in trouble and that they were keeping a list of potential future opposers. (I graduated the training more than 10 years ago).

anyway, every time I go to a seven feast now, it feels like the leading brothers are always talking about rebellions that happened 50 years ago. Geez, give it a break. It gets tiring and offers no life. The feasts have not been enjoyable for a long time now. The last feast I probably enjoyed was probably around 2012 and since then I have been going thru the motions mainly because I love the people in the recovery. Well - I did love the people, up until I changed localities about five years ago.

A big part of me leaving the recovery now is because I am now in a big locality that has no care for people - so its actually the OPPOSITE experience many people have. Many people here testify of 'love bombing'. Well, the locality I was in prior to my current one was a very wonderful place and we were extremely close with everyone in that metropolitan area that was a part of the church. Then we moved to a new area for work, we thought it would be an easy transition since we have both been in the recovery for a long time and we knew a few people at our new locality, well the opposite was true. There was no care, no reaching out.

I personally like to do things like picnics and social gatherings, and this new locality didn't believe in anything like that. Anytime I tried to bring up an idea, I was immediately shot down with the phrase "well we need to fellowship with the brothers". Well that is what I am trying to do! I'm surprised how big the locality is giving their propensity to NOT do anything. It seemed like they just relied on existing saints moving into the area due to the strong economy. In actuality, if you look at this particular locality per capita, its a lot smaller than what it should be and smaller than other comparable churches.

"You shall know them by their fruit". I actually want to know the Lord, and it began to seem like the Lords recovery is becoming one big social clique where you have to know people. People go to the semi annual, don't go to any study times, and just go to the beach. I'm not interested in being part of something people are not serious about. If it was not for the fact that I met my wife through the FTTA, I would regret my time there.

One of the reasons that finally pushed me out is that I have a disabled child - and this ministry offers no care to him. There is no humanity of Jesus to care for my son. In fact I was offended by a serving brother in a situation that involved my disabled child, I will not go into detail here, but I tried to bring it up to several leading brothers that know me and I assumed that I was important enough to receive a call from the elders for an apology and nothing like that happened.

I have been church exploring in my city and found there are many dear believers outside of the recovery, many of which are more serious of pursuing the Lord than many in the recovery.

Anyway, I have more to say, maybe I will post again. Another topic I would like to discuss eventually is the low bar the FTTA has for attendees.

[gr8ful]

Hi, PikaMario - thank you for sharing your story! Your experience of the lack of care for a disabled child matches my experience, especially in the larger churches in Southern CA near the LSM center. Cold, distant. Our child was disruptive (due to ODD, and later diagnosed with ASD). The serving ones told us to not bring him to the meeting — which ironically softened my *must attend* mentality and allowed for a gradual transition away from the churches.

Your story is different than mine, too, in that I finally left due to my own struggles with destructive behavior and finding no relief within the Recovery. I detail my experience in my first post to this forum (see my profile).

At the core, I see a common realization: the claims of special standing as a ministry and as a group apart from all other Christian ministries and Christian groups just fell short.And it was these claims that justified strict adherence to One Monistry, One Publication… but if it’s just another group of people believing in Christ, why all the warning of other groups? Why the insistence on isolationism?

This doesn’t mean we drop everything we enjoyed or felt led to honor, but it does mean we gain a bit of our agency back to follow the leading from the Head, or from our heart, directly.