Relief

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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[AgathaL'Orange]

In recent days, with the new information that has been posted, I have struggled with my emotions a bit.

1.  I truly miss elements of my life at a GC church.  Sometimes I had warning bells but I could shove them down and when I could, I really felt happy at times.  I loved many of the people.

2.  We didn’t leave due to church abuse, but after we left we saw how harmful it had been.   We spent about two years with no friends or community after we left because all of our time and life had been wrapped up in our GC church.  And as we gained distance, we also gained essential clarity over the heavy handed presence of GC in our lives.  They’d inserted themselves into our marriage, child rearing, financial decisions, life choices, career plans.  In the some of the most formative years of our lives (19-27 for me and 22-30 for my husband) we were in this harmful place.  I feel regret over the lost time, missed opportunities, strained family relationships, and what sometimes feels like lost years.  My life would be dramatically different in ways I can’t say because it would identify me, but suffice it to say, almost everything would be different I think.

3.  I feel deep regret over learning to “follow authority without questioning.”  There were very important, life threatening situations where my mentality was wrong, and I dropped the ball.  I screwed up.  People got hurt.  And it was largely because I didn’t know that as a woman and a grown adult that I could be assertive, confrontational, and demand safety and protection for my loved ones. I’ll never know what could be different, but someone I love is hurt forever, and I wonder what could have been, if I’d known my rights and power as a young, adult woman.


4.  But that said.    We are free.  I keep coming back to this idea.  I am free.  I am wiser.  We made it.  Through grief, depression, financial struggle, health struggles, and relational issues.  We are free.  We have knowledge of our own authority and rights as people.  We worship at a church who ordains women.  We got out.  We found dream jobs. We travelled.  Now, 13 years or so later since we left.  We. Are. Free.  And I can say mostly healed.  We kept our marriage.  We made it.


I let myself grieve.  I support victims who come forward, but that doesn’t change that I’m free now.


Even if battles are lost here and there.  There is hope, new life, healing, reconciliation.  



We can all be free and heal, and we can address the problems at hand without compromising our healing.  Reminding myself of this is important.

[Huldah]

Thanks, Agatha. I feel much the same.

My life, too, would have been radically different without my involvement in Solid Rock. It's not just what happened while I was there, since I only lasted there for a few months. But on leaving, before I had given myself a chance to recover emotionally and spiritually, I made some additional life-altering choices in an attempt to cope with the trauma. One thing led to another, so that now, entering on my elderly years, I still wonder from time to time what my life would have been without the destructive teachings that I subjected myself to.

Some good things have come out of it, of course. I've had many discussions with Jehovah's Witnesses where I've tried to share the gospel and refute some of their error. I'm not sure I would have developed such concern for JWs and other cultists if hadn't been part of a cultish church myself. I might have just been one of those Christians who refuse to engage with them.

All the same, I wish something like this forum had existed back then so I could have known what I was getting into. I wish there had been books or other resources I could have turned to. I wish a lot of things had been different. Sometimes I feel like Frodo, who knew he would never be fully healed until he reached Valinor.

[Rebel in a Good Way]

AGATHA, your #3 defined most of my adulthood (the first 15 years of it, anyway).  It grieves me to think of other women being made small, and for both genders being quashed in their confidence to use their own discernment.  As image bearers and children of God, our identities and personhood is not to be defined by another human, but rather formed and developed by God.  And we need to learn when and how to use our voice or engage in conflict.  I misunderstood the true meaning of peace and what it often requires.

And the loss of #1 was very hard, but for me it was easier because we simply moved away for school and didn't realize the toxicity of the environment until we were somewhere else.  Well, I suffered from burn out and the shame-based environment, but I just thought that was what Christianity was about, I didn't realize it was the church.

But your reminders of freedom are important!  My heart truly breaks for people who are captive and don't know it.  I never heard of GCC's abusive history and no one ever made that claim to me, so I'm not sure how I would have reacted to that while still inside GCC.  Given #3, I probably would have defended the group also.  Thankful for freedom and a voice. 

[Linda]

Agatha,

Thank you for communicating what many of us are feeling.

Your writing, insight, and kindness are a gift to me.

You and your family have been a gift to us. One of the best things I can think of about leaving ECC is getting to know you, your family, your parents, and your sister. Cyber friends becoming real friends. We love you all.

Thank you (and Bertrand, and Gene, and Genevieve ) for starting the decomm blog (after ECC asked Terry to take down his blog post and you decided there needed to be an anonymous place for all of us to speak). Thanks to Google for helping us find each other! Thank you to Puff for morphing the blog into this forum and taking over as administrator and for keeping it going all these years.

One day, we will all get together and have that conference we were going to have.  As I recall, we were going to call it "Slanderpalooza"?

I'm glad you are free.

[AgathaL'Orange]

Thank you, Linda, Huldah, and Rebel.


I know I speak for everyone when I say I hope Scout and the others who come forward can experience freedom, healing, and justice as well.

I want freedom for everyone here. 

[Huldah]

Agatha, I just re-read your first post. I don't know how I missed #3 on the first read-through. My mind must have been going in too many directions at once, trying to process everything you were saying.

I could have written something nearly identical. This is what I had in mind when I wrote something in another thread some time ago. In that thread, someone quoted the following from a GC publication: "We should submit to any command that is not a clear violation of God’s will as revealed in His word, believing that God will use our submission even to a command that we view as harmful. Typically, such submission, even to an unwise or hurtful command, will cause less damage to us, to others, or to the glory of God than would outright disobedience."

My reply at that time was, "...There's no understanding of the depth of damage that can be caused by bad leadership, or the way that that harm can ripple out to affect multiple people across decades and generations." When I wrote that I was thinking of my own #3 experiences. I still feel just as appalled at the callousness of the leadership as I felt when it first became clear to me. It's a feeling that doesn't diminish with time.