Asking what's your story? You should post it somewhere. We'd love to hear it.
Well, I'll need to be -- discreet, I suppose -- as I'm still in this church. My husband and I were in a VERY conservative church, the total opposite of GCM churches. It appeared that our previous church was full of "perfect" Christians (you know, the kind that put on their very best Sunday faces each week!), and we were well aware that WE were certainly not "perfect" Christians. A mother I had met in my son's school class had just moved to our area and asked if we knew of any good churches in the area. I sarcastically told her that if she found any, to let me know!
She called me several months later, told me about this great church she'd found and invited us to come sometime. A few months later, we did -- and never went back to our old church. The people were so kind, so friendly, the children so well-behaved, the music great, the sermons "relevant", and it seemed at first like we'd found church utopia!
Almost from the beginning, I had some concerns about the accuracy of some uses of biblical "twisting", but my husband was really learning, growing and changing, so I had no motivation at all to upset the applecart. We stayed at Valley Brook Community Church for nearly 9 years, under pastors Dennis Clark, Steve Hogan, Danny Baty, Rob Lamp, and Steve Huhta. When the church "split", we went with Dennis and Steve Hogan to the new church, Oak Ridge Community Church. This is where we still are right now.
As I read through lots of posts on this site, many of the things that I found "new" and "exciting" years ago have come back to me as weird and askew. I remember after we'd only been attending the church for a few weeks, and one of the men got up to give his "testimony", discussing various personal issues in his family and most specifically his wife's nervous breakdown in the past. Knowing what I know now of most GCM families, it doesn't surprise me! However, at that point in my life, I was thinking, "Wow -- a Christian who is honest; who doesn't mind saying that yes, I have problems."
I recall during the height of our marital problems, my husband and I going in to see Steve Huhta, who was handling most of the church counseling. (Steve passed away a few years back, for anybody that might not know about that.) Anyway, even though there were some very serious issues in our marriage that should've been discussed, and biblical reasons why I could've left the marriage, I was basically told that I needed to forgive, move on, and if I was still having problems, "I" could get counseling -- even though my husband had serious issues that needed to be addressed. I did get counselling for MY share of the problems -- however, I chose to go to a private Christian counsellor in the area, which was probably the wisest move I could've made. I just didn't feel that anyone at the church was taking my concerns seriously -- that if I'd just forgive, submit, move on, everything would be OK.
Fortunately again, since I had been raised all my life in conservative churches, I knew there were LOTS of other Christian resources out there to take advantage of, and I did! Attending the Family Life Seminar was probably the real moment of final break-through in our marriage. Interestingly enough, our church chose to hold a marriage seminar in the area that same weekend, but when I looked at the schedule, it just struck me that there was so much "group" time, so much emphasis on shared meals, etc., that I just knew that my husband and I would not have the "alone time" needed to face our issues head-on. So I know that was probably the first of many times we disappointed the leaders (oh, well!), but it truly was a turning point in our marriage, and I'm glad we made the choice to attend the seminar that we did.
Over the years, I've seen so many things, large and small, that I just couldn't figure out; the "split" in the church, and who went with which church; a new person being brought in, seemingly out of nowhere, to be groomed for leadership in the new church (I had no clue who he was, but he turned out to be Herschel's son-in-law!); suggestions that I felt were reasonable requests that were shot down or ignored; people mysteriously leaving the church, never to be heard from again; and on and on. There seems to be an odd mixture of "spiritual growth" related messages for periods of time, then some more basic "seeker style" messages for a while -- but looking back, I think I've really only heard one or two messages in all this time that clearly communicated a message of salvation.
So now, what is my family doing? We're not sure yet. There are several things that have happened here that are worrisome to us -- the style of music keeps getting louder and more aggressively contemporary, to the point of pushing the oldest members of the church out; with the change of leadership has (interestingly and oddly enough) come LESS of an emphasis on how to raise the kids, more acceptance of public/private schooling -- but at the same time, I've seen a HUGE increase in wild behavior by kids at church (of all ages), a few out of marriage pregnancies, vocabulary used on and off podium that may be "culturally acceptable", but is offensive to many. Maybe I'm becoming an old prude, but I don't think saying things like "that sucks" needs to be said from the platform at church! The church has gotten into a shared-building situation with two other churches, in a move that my husband and I didn't consider to be a very wise move -- but of course, it was "God's will" that this be done. Now that there are some serious financial issues, I'm willing to bet that it was not GOD'S will, but the desire of the leadership to get out of rented facilities!!!
I also read with interest posts about fund-raising efforts at other churches. At least one post may have come from someone else in my church -- or we're definitely having the same problems in other GC churches!! We had a pretty slick, fairly high-pressure professional fundraiser come in to convince everyone to "give to God's work" and the story about the father of six who stood up to announce how much money he'd taken from his retirement account to help out -- either that came from our church, or we have a clone somewhere else! As I listened to how much money others were giving (why were they sharing this information publicly?), I was so disheartened that I could give so little. We had kids in college, kids we were still homeschooling, two vehicles over 12 years old that constantly needed repairs, and coming off some major and unexpected bills. The "best" we could come up with was about $2,500, and I actually felt inadequate pledging that amount.
This is getting huge, and I'm probably dumping more out here in public than I should!! However, I was looking for info on the church, just because I was starting to feel things were not right -- but I had no idea that the issues went so broadly, so deep and so far back into the past. I guess it's time for me to share what I've been learning with my husband, and start making some informed decisions for the future. We'll have to see where God leads -- and this will have to be between us and God, NOT the leadership, obviously!!
For anyone who's stuck around this long, thanks for listening!
