Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by:
changedagain
()
Date: July 07, 2019 01:52AM
From September of 2018:
Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Posted by: reveal
Date: September 06, 2018 09:37PM
I love what everyone has been posting lately. I feel like so many of us have been holding our tongues for a very long time and we have somehow collectively realized that the time has come to SPEAK UP! Someone mentioned recently the concept of "doing your own thing" and do I ever relate to that. I was certainly labeled as such on many occasions. Oddly, when I look back at the times when I wasn't super involved in the church and wasn't submitting to any shepherds (tsk tsk) those were the times when I was actually functioning the best in my life. Sure I had ups and downs and heartaches, regular life stuff...but it wasn't this intense psychological war zone like it was for me when I became involved and submitted to TLWF leadership. To be honest, the only reason I did give myself to submit in the first place was because I was made to feel so "less than", so unloved, so marginalized by the people that were supposed to be my family because I wasn't. I came to the conclusion that well, this is what I had to do to be accepted so I had better get on board. And thus began the worst years of my life. No joke.
I spoke recently with an old friend of mine who was never in the church, and when I was finally honest with her about how I had been raised in this bizarre cult, she felt free to be honest with me. She said that once when she and her boyfriend came to a church sponsored function on my invitation, on their way home she said to him, "I think she is in a cult!" We had a good LOL over that, but it also saddened me. She could see it so clearly, but I was completely blind. How could I not be? We were completely immersed, discouraged from relating to the outside world in any real way, made to fear it even. The truth is that the friends I have made outside the church over the years have oftentimes proven to be far deeper and more genuine than those I had in the church. It made me realize how shallow so many of my church relationships really were. We were fed lines about being family, and told that the relationships are born out of the work, and so we labored together and built Rick three bars to get drunk at church, and five-star facilities for the pleasure of a relatively small group of elite, and made Gary & Marilyn's meals, cleaned their house (while they had two assistants on staff) and any other number of endless projects that were put before us. Not one of which involved helping ANYONE in the community, no encouragement to get out there and help the underprivileged or be socially conscious. I realized one day that, for the most part, all of these people I had worshipped with and labored with for so many years didn't even really know me, nor I them. We weren't given the time! We were too busy laboring for Jesus! This became all the more evident when we left the church, because NO ONE has even asked us why they haven't seen or heard from us. Family my ass.