Mode of Exit

Welcome to De-Commissioned, a place for former members of the Great Commission movement (aka GCM, GCC, GCAC, GCI, the Blitz) to discuss problems they've experienced in the association's practices and theology.

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[miserere]

One thing that was telling to me was the way in which people would leave.
Often it was unannounced and clandestine.  Has anyone been witness to this?

[MidnightRider]

One thing that was telling to me was the way in which people would leave.
Often it was unannounced and clandestine.  Has anyone been witness to this?

Not firsthand. I was told there was a family that left that way in my GCx church. The church had a weekend conference. This particular family did not go to the conference. When everyone got back, the family had left town. They just packed and moved over the weekend without telling anybody. That would have been in the late 1970s or very early 1980s.

Why didn't I see that as a big red flashing warning light?

[lone gone]

Are you talking about how a person or couple would leave the GC church ?

I knew many couples and individuals that left without an announcement of any sort. One day they simply didn't come to small group or bible study.  There would be some questions between individuals about " where is so and so".  If someone knew something it would get shared privately.... ( oh they had a problem with ______( person, teaching,commitment) ) and that would be it.

If it was a problem with sin in a person's life, it was announced publicly but only after the church discipline route had been taken.

When I left, I simply wrote a letter to the elders thanking them for the teaching and fellowship and to let them know that I was leaving. I never heard a thing from anyone again. Over the next year whenever I bumped into someone from the church, I was treated like an invisible person. Perhaps we made eye contact but then they looked away and didn't say a thing.

It hurt, but I also liked it as I was equally uncomfortable in their presence. After all, I was dealing with the whole "being outside the center of God's will for your life" issue.

[EverAStudent]

In our assembly, when people left, there was never a public "announcement."  The elders would slowly circulate among the flock and discreetly say how sad it was that so-and-so left, leaving the impression that doing so was almost as sad as as leaving the body of Christ.  No one ever contacted these people at a social level again.

[Nonny Moose]

I just stopped going.  About a month and a half later, after not having showed up to anything, one person IM'd me and commented that they hadn't seen me around.

I still talk to a few people, but for the most part, that entire social circle has just vanished and doesn't attempt to contact me or see what I'm up to.  It's rather sad to see what "friendships" of almost 10 years were truly made of.