My Wife and I are in Late 20s We both grew up in the Churchlife

Thank you for sharing! A few months ago I had written a lengthy post about my experience, but I felt kind of uneasy posting it, but I think this post is a good place to share a more truncated version of my experience (sorry after writing this all, I realized this is still quite long).

My wife and I are in our late twenties as well, both grew up in the church life. Ever since high school, I had wanted to serve full time. I went to the training, where I met my wife. BTW my wife is incredible, seriously a gem in the "church life." She also can't stand it anymore, so it's nice that we are going through this together on the same page. Anyways, my locality was a mess, nobody was on the same page. There were a few brothers asking me if I wanted to serve full time, while others felt like I should work. I "fellowshipped" with an elder, he basically told me that he prefers everyone to work first before they serve full time. Ok fine, I pick up a job, and at this time my wife and I were long distance and were not yet engaged. My hours were kind of weird too and varied from day to day. I mostly had to wake up between 4-6am, so I had to sleep early, but it was impossible when the weekday meetings would run late and I wouldn't even get home until 10pm, and I'm one of those people who needs to kind of wind down before I can fall asleep. If I had not been in a relationship, I probably could have taken a nap after work, but I always made sure to spend time with my wife after work because that was really the only time we both had available each day. I was getting exhausted trying to both work and attend meetings at the same time, but it gets even worse. I had a strong burden for young people (the young people loved me because I was super chill with them, didn't put expectations on them, we played video games, sports together, etc.) so I was very active in that service and I called one YP every day. I was by far the most active serving one, not including the couple that were the coordinators for the YP service. But then I was asked to help with campus too, which I didn't really want to do, but I ended up giving conclusions for the Bible studies. At one point I was doing it every other week. I was like ARE YOU KIDDING ME. First of all, my focus was not even campus. Before the semester even started, there were like 5-10 brothers who said they were burdened for the campus, and I was NOT one of them, and they were not doing anything with campus at all (btw I have no issue with them, they basically did what I should have done to begin with, which was stay away and prioritize their personal life; my issue is with how my situation was handled by the elders and "leading brothers"). So now suddenly when it matters, I'm the one who has to help out? So how was I suddenly not only the most active one for YP, but now practically the most active one for campus outside of the full timers? And actually, as you'll see after this, I was doing more than almost all of the full timers as well. So I'm doing this while working full time and have a long-distance relationship (btw also with a pretty big time difference), and then it gets even better. I'm asked to coordinate both piano service and ushering, and both with brothers who were not really meeting much. So guess what? I'm basically doing both of these ON MY OWN on top of everything I already mentioned. And then I was also doing intro/conclusion for Lord's day once a month. All of these combined, I was getting seriously exhausted, so I decided to "fellowship" with one of the "leading brothers." So I basically told him how I was struggling to handle all of the above items, and he says, "You know, some of us do more than you do." I couldn't believe it. This was his response? I had just opened up all my struggles to him, and all he had to say was ohhh some of us do more than you do. A couple weeks later, the elder who had asked me to work wanted to "fellowship" with me. I didn't want to go, but my wife said just to go and see what he would say. He asked me how I was doing, and I opened up to him in the same way that I did to the "leading brother." After hearing all that, he said, "I don't think you're doing enough. You should be doing more." I was speechless. Like I didn't even know what to say to that. After that, I stopped going to meetings. Shortly after, I read the Jo Casteel open letter and the John Ingalls account, and I officially decided that I was completely done with it all.

There is a lot of detail I am leaving out with how the elders and "leading brothers" were in my experience, but this is the crux of it. To me, if you really needed this much help with all of these different services, why not just let me serve full time to begin with? The fact that you are struggling to find people to help out and are literally asking one person to do all of these things is a serious problem. Btw, for YP, there was barely anyone helping either. If I hadn't been there to begin with, they would have probably been begging for my help as well.

Anways, it has been quite a while since I have gone to meetings, and I have noticed how much happier I am overall and how much lighter I feel not feeling the burden of having to meet some arbitrary standards set by the "church life." My wife and I still pray and read the Bible together, and it's been so nice to do so without constantly thinking oh we HAVE to do it today to meet the church life quota. I personally have spent a lot of time on my own personal interests, and my wife and I watch TV shows, sports, and Youtube videos together, which are now so much more enjoyable when I'm not constantly thinking "oh no I shouldn't be wasting my time on such worldly activities." I once thought there was no life outside of the church life, but I am now seeing that my life has just begun. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to rant, and if anyone actually read this, I appreciate it!

[PriestlyScribe]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

So I'm doing this while working full time and have a long-distance relationship (btw also with a pretty big time difference), and then it gets even better. I'm asked to coordinate both piano service and ushering, and both with brothers who were not really meeting much. So guess what? I'm basically doing both of these ON MY OWN on top of everything I already mentioned. And then I was also doing intro/conclusion for Lord's day once a month. All of these combined, I was getting seriously exhausted, so I decided to "fellowship" with one of the "leading brothers." So I basically told him how I was struggling to handle all of the above items, and he says, "You know, some of us do more than you do." I couldn't believe it. This was his response? I had just opened up all my struggles to him, and all he had to say was ohhh some of us do more than you do. A couple weeks later, the elder who had asked me to work wanted to "fellowship" with me. I didn't want to go, but my wife said just to go and see what he would say. He asked me how I was doing, and I opened up to him in the same way that I did to the "leading brother." After hearing all that, he said, "I don't think you're doing enough. You should be doing more." I was speechless. Like I didn't even know what to say to that. After that, I stopped going to meetings. Shortly after, I read the Jo Casteel open letter and the John Ingalls account, and I officially decided that I was completely done with it all.

So glad that you and your amazing wife were able to escape the "hamster wheel" of the Lord's Recovery!


Your story sounds similar to what happened to Mario and Dora Sandoval in California.
I will post just a part of their account below.

..."From that time the decision was for us to stay in Ontario to serve the Lord. We worked seven days a week with no day off. We thought that this was part of the training. In the first term brother Samuel Liu mistreat us so bad, he loosed his temper every day, when some papers were not done the right way, he will burst in anger to the point of not controlling himself, making us to do one paper sometimes 15 times over and over again just for one little error. When he demanded some worked we needed to have it done right of way not matter what. He did not care if we have eating or rest, he wanted the work to be done, for example at the Chinese Conference in Feb. 18th-20th, 2005, he made us to email all the statistics and how many group meetings we have in Ontario, even though the information in the statistics were not accurate, to so many churches. After all that labor at the end of the conference on Feb. 20th, at noon time brother Samuel Liu lost his temper, yelling, screaming to me, (Mario) in front of some of the local saints and the saints from Baja California, even the brothers from Baja California told me, “What is wrong with Samuel? Why he is so angry and upset for such small thing? What brother Samuel Liu wanted for me to do was to find immediately 20 brothers to clean up the windows in one of the buildings in LSM Center. He made such a big show and display of his inappropriate behavior in front of all the saints from the churches in Mexico"....

Here is a link if anyone would care to read the entire series of documents called "The Sandoval Letters".

P.S.