Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Date: January 02, 2016 06:17AM
I think many who have posted on this site found themselves in positions of some type of leadership, as well as being a follower while in TLWF. There was always someone over you as well as you being over someone else in TLWF hierarchy. I don’t recall ever having a sense of freedom as a leader to initiate an action without the direction of those over me. Any type of personal creativity was discouraged and you basically thought of yourself as a slave. You just did what you were told or followed the example of those you were accountable to. If you expected to function in an inner circle relationship – the reward for good behavior - there could not be even a slight deviation.
Many times, when your leader would no longer talk to you or even make eye contact, you had to guess what you had done incorrectly, rather than be effectively trained with some level of compassion. By incorrect, I mean not doing something the way they would have done it - not that you had necessarily done it poorly or with bad motives, just not the leader’s way. (It was good training for a bad marriage!) The big penalty was no longer being invited to special meetings where you talked about those on a lower level who had been excluded from the special meeting. God forbid you were on a low level! If you happened to be on the out, only after you had completed successful boot licking training were you allowed to return to the holy of holies. In hindsight, relationships were very conditional and very toxic - not really a relationship at all, but a weird dictatorship that somehow you had come to believe was God.
We were finally only left with one choice if we wanted to maintain any sense of personal integrity – you had to leave the fellowship. Most posters observed many damaging situations in the years prior to finally leaving TLWF. Granted, there was much wrong in the leadership. However, the light for leadership errors needs to shine directly on G & M who were directing everything, not the middle management who were trained to be yes men. Unfortunately, G & M have been exceptionally good at evading responsibility and transferring it to “false shepherds” they were actually directing behind the scenes. I think all of us have a measure of responsibility for not questioning the things we knew down deep were wrong. I would suggest the reason we are now finally having this dialogue in the first place is that at some point we did accept personal responsibility and broke free from the bondage.
I realize it’s not PC to accept personal responsibility – it’s much easier to point fingers at especially leaders to whom we’ve relinquished that personal responsibility. The problem is that if we don’t learn from our mistakes, the next “G & M” will come along and we will repeat the process. For me, the foundational error was allowing another human to take the place of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. What first appeared to be almost a shortcut to a walk with God by following John and believing he could impart it, ended up in the long run costing me decades. I honestly think I matured more in the couple of years after leaving TLWF than the previous 30 years of being “shepherded”. The spiritual MLM plan, like the business model, only works for the few at the top. When the parent/little child relationship extends into your 60’s, that is not a parent or child you want to boast about. It’s more an indication that both parties are dysfunctional. As a father, I’ve done my job when my children can stand on their own two feet, not become my dependents.