Genevieve Jones' introduction: Top 10 Reasons I Left

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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[Genevieve]

I left a Great Commission Ministries (GCM) church in the midwest in the recent past, but I still can’t read the Epistles without cringing. I didn’t realize the effect the church had on me until after I left.

So, for my first post, I’ll give the top 10 reasons I left:

10. Women’s submission was emphasized to the point of being extreme.

9. Parenting was a duty necessary for staffing the army of God rather than a joy and a blessing.

8. It was a “bait and switch.” The group spent a lot of time trying to lure new people into the group by acting postmodern and liberal, but once you were in, it was a high pressure and fundamentalist group.

7. Once someone gets saved there’s tremendous pressure for that person to “grow in the Lord” to become a leader and incredibly involved right off the bat. There’s so time for growing into the relationship or uncertainty. The person is immediately plunged into groups and “apprenticeships” in life groups. They expect everyone to immediately have the faith it takes a lifetime to have.

6. Marriage was treated more like a business/ministry partnership than a relationship built on love and friendship.

5. They don’t take seriously the suggestion that they have cult-like tendencies. It’s viewed as persecution and misunderstanding by outsiders not as zealous as they are. They hide their past and don’t even have their 1991 apology statement posted.

4. Certain pastors and members were believed and emulated like they were gods. They were listened to like the voice of God about who they should marry, where they should live, and what they should do with their lives. They were rock stars in the association who everyone wanted to be close to but few were able to.

3. “Cool” people with a zealous, outgoing personalities were valued over “nerds.” Even if nerds were living godly lives and doing everything GCM asked, they couldn’t ever rise to the top tier. People tried to change their personalities to fit the ideal.

2. Every decision had to have a basis around the church. You couldn’t just do something (go on a trip, attend a non-church event, hang out with someone) without a church or evangelical reason. Personal pleasure, joy, and desire had no place in the life of the church. Of course, if you did everything you were supposed to, you wouldn’t have time for anything outside the church anyway!

1. It felt very shallow. The messages were all the same–loyalty, submission, evangelism, purity–that didn’t meet an inner longing for God.

[AgathaL'Orange]

Doesn’t it feel good to be free? Now you can live according to your own convictions, instead of feeling the need to be better or ask permission all the time.

And if it is hard to read books of the Bible written by Paul, I think it is perfectly fine to steer clear of them. That is a common result of people who have been in unhealthy groups. Certain passages of scripture that have been used to keep people submissive and unquestioning can keep that same “feeling” years after the fact.

Just remember though, Paul was not a member of Great Commission. He was a member of the true early church. And he was a true apostle, not a made-up 1970’s apostle.

Dear Genevieve, may you find the freedom your soul longs for and the true worship of God, without coercion or guilt.

[Gary Matthew Miller]

Genevieve,



Thanks for your courageous blog. As a former aspiring pastor at a Minneapolis GCM church I was complicit in many of the “top 10 reasons I left” list.



It was sexual improprieties on the part of one of the foremost leaders in the GCM movement, an “apostle”, that opened my eyes to many of the other things you listed.



While I have a feeling we may not be in agreement on all matters of faith (I suspect I am a fair bit more “fundamental”), I salute you for your willingness to give voice to the powerless souls who are still trapped in GCM churches.

[Genevieve]

Gary, thanks for your thoughts and encouragement.

I wanted to clarify that it wasn’t the fundamentalism of the group that bothered me. I joined the group confident that they were a strong, Bible-believing group similar to the church I had grown up in–only cooler.

But, as I got more involved, I got the feeling that they were trying to act very “postmodern” and “relevant” (how I grew to hate that word!) to attract people and then showed their true colors later.

(I’m thinking particulary of very conservative courtship practices and pressure for women to have lots of kids and homeschool them.)

These beliefs and practices would be very surprising to someone just getting involved; thus, the bait and switch.

[AgathaL'Orange]

I was wondering if you could talk more about why it is hard for you to read things written by Paul. Do you remember times when passages were used to pressure you in some way?

[MamaD]

I have been haunted by Gary’s refeference to “sexual improprieties” on the part of a “foremost leader” because it reminds me of something one of the ECC founding pastors said to us at our last meeting with pastors.

I read him an newsletter we had just received from our nephew Jon who has spent the last 20 years in Japan planting churches and working to free people from cults. It was a letter about a “Christian” cult in Japan that had a leader who was highly authoritarian. In this case the “do what your leader wants” teaching involved raping young girls and eventually put the man in jail. However, the “obey your leaders” concept had been so highly preached that many of the church members felt those who exposed his horrific deeds were the ones in the wrong!It became a huge story in Japan.

I read this newsletter to the founding pastor and warned him that this is where highly authoritarian teaching can take people.

Then I told him about how the plurality of elders thing can also work as a cover up group. The example I gave was how when this man gave a message at an all church gathering and referred to ECC church members by saying “you are my bride” not one elder called for a public correction…three knew our concerns and agreed this teaching was “off”.

So, what response did this elder/pastor give that troubled me? I said, “It seems that the elders have each others back to the extent that an elder could have done something like have an affair, and still be a pastor, and no one in the congregation would ever know about it.”

To which the founding pastor replied, “I’m sure it’s happened.”

I was flabbergasted, and as you can tell, still troubled, but since we knew at that point we were leaving, it was not something for us to pursue.

I would just say to any GCM leader reading this that things that are kept in the dark hurt people and the truth sets people free. And, if the plurality thing has become a “cover up” thing…it’s not right.

[Genevieve]

Wow, MamaD, that’s a powerful story. I can’t believe the pastor admitted that something as horrible as covering up an affair has probably happened.

It’s one thing to be caught up into something and not realize what it could mean; it’s quite another to recognize the dangers and not try to stop them!

Thanks for sharing.

[exshep]

Good post.  Certainly describes things to a tee.  Thanks for sharing.  Got a lot out of it.

[plaidcymru]

I absolutely agree with Genevieves top 10 reasons I left when it comes to point # 3 in particular. That was how I was treated at one of the GCM fellowships that I was involved in. I was a shy,quiet,sensitive,melancholy type personality that had always been somewhat of a loner and kind of uncomfortable in social situations. I came from a broken home and had a challenging childhood and adolescence. At the age of 22,I had no direction in my life at all. I moved to a certain place and got involved with a GCM fellowship and just happened to find a job as a motel desk clerk making $4.25 per hour. This was in a community with a huge state university and so the fellowship was primarily college students. The pastors at the fellowship were graduates of this university. I never felt like they really wanted me. They did not discourage me from attending the GCM fellowship,but they made no effort to reach out to me,get to know me,minister to me,etc. If I did not show up,they did not try to pursue me or anything. It did not matter to them whether I attended or not. And I think that it was because I did not fit into what they wanted around. They wanted intelligent enrolled college students who were outgoing,socially aware,had their act together and had dynamic,magnetic personalities. I was just a 22 yo guy that showed up in an old car and was working a minimum wage job not in school that did not have my life together. I was needy in every way possible. Thats why I was never pressured,recruited or encouraged towards discipleship or leadership because I didnt fit the "type" that they saw as worthy of all of those things. This is just my opinion. I cant say for sure. Its just my suspicion. I did have a roommate that was part of the fellowship too and he was in school getting his civil engineering degree. But he was never in the inner circle either because he was as needy and troubled as I was. He came from a broken family and had even tried to commit suicide at one time.