Leaving and exhausted

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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[theresearchpersona]

Or perhaps both:

     The physical stuff of the brain does affect the mind, but the key is the mind is above the physical, in a sense, as in that as far as can be figured or seen, it's an emergent property itself, transient not fixed, tied somehow to the physical, but not subject thereto: treating, as so often the health establishment does, mental illnesses merely as a physical ailment, rather than the spiritual affecting the physical (well, in psychology they take a vague "spirituality" into account, but the problem there is to them it doesn't matter what spirituality, just as long as it makes you happier; it just goes to show the problems with trying to make Christianity into a message about solving all of one's life problems and imparting meaning, rather than about what makes the faith in Christ unique: saving souls who cannot merit such salvation, bought by the blood of Christ for all who believe).

     Personally, I think we should be glad for mental deficiencies, panic, depression, etc., as it puts one out of comfort zones (and keeps one out), and forces one to be examining and contemplative (well, ideally it should) of one's situation, etc.. Not that I would ever support GC or others advising people to "just come off your meds", though...though I've known GCers who did just that, though when they did so, they did so more slowly.

[exshep]

Healthy churches recognize their mental health limitations.  The GC stance on depression is just as injurious as the faith healing groups saying that medicine is of the devil. 

As time goes by, I'm more and more convinced that "mental" illness is really is just another type of physical illness. The brain is no less a physical organ than the heart, the lungs, or the pancreas. The problems may be genetic, they may stem from a brain injury, or the brain's neurotransmitters may simply have been depleted by prolonged emotional stress. In any case, it's wrong to prevent the sufferer from getting medical help.

Just my opinion.

One has to strike a balance between, physical, emotional, and spiritual.  Your comment seems to me to be quite accurate.   At first I fought medication tooth and nail.  Once I got the right set, the quality of my recovery took off. 

[plaidcymru]

When I was in a GCM fellowship,I had a roommate that was also involved with the fellowship. He had had several more years of exposure to the group that I had had. My roommate was a true Christian. There is no doubt in my mind about that. But he had come from a very dysfunctional family. He had managed to get thru school,but he was very needy financially. He did not have a car. It was not unusual for him to have wide mood swings. Anyway,prior to us becoming roommates,he had been living with other GCMers in a roommate situation. He had told me that sometime during that time period,he had tried to commit suicide. His roommates found him unconcious I think and managed to get him to hospital before he died. He probably needed to be on some kind of medications and under the care of medical professionals,but after his suicide attempt,the elders at the GCM church told him that he needed to quit reading all of the various "books" he was reading(I assume they were theological books)and start focusing on Psalms and Proverbs. I dont think that advice was necessarily bad,but not to counsel him to look into some kind of medical help seems unwise after he tried to commit suicide. My 71 year old father has been a Christian since he was 23 and yet he is on prescribed anti-depressants after he suffered a breakdown about 10 years ago. I would never encourage him to get off of those medications,especially after his doctors recommended he stay on them for the rest of his life

[Anonymous]

I've seen multiple attitudes that are similar. That being "if it's a mental issue (either depression, some other mental illness, etc) you don't need doctors."

Kinda reminds me of this story -

There once was a man stranded in the middle of the ocean. His ship had crashed and he was left with nothing but the clothes on his back and a slowly deflating air tube. So in this hopeless situation, he prayed, "God, please bring me a miracle! Rescue me! Send angels to help me! Get me out of here!". No more than five minutes later, a boat came by to rescue the man; but the man didn't get in the boat. When asked to get in he simply replied, "I don't need your boat! God is going to save me". So the ship went on. Exactly an hour later, a helicopter flew right above the man. The man in the helicopter begged the desperate man to climb into the safe helicopter, but the man just replied, “No! God is going to save me!". So the helicopter went on. After another hour of floating aimlessly in the ocean, the man noticed a small island off in the distance. As he began to drift towards it he rapidly started paddling the opposite way, thinking, "I don't want to be on that island, God is going to save me!”. Shortly after that, the man drowns. Once he got through the proverbial pearly gates of heaven, he went straight up to God, infuriated about his death. "Why didn't you save me like I asked?", the man said in frustration. God just looked at the man, and replied by saying, "I sent you a boat, a helicopter and an island! Why didn't you use them??"

[DevastatedTC]

I just found this thread. When I was in DesMoines, a young man had to be talked off of a roof because he couldn't take the pressure. I am aware of a person who has recently sought professional help for the same reasons. The sad thing is, there is spin put on these incidents and in some twisted way, leadership seems to feed off of those incidents.

I want to make a whole thread that says Downtown Church Des Moines Cult or Walnut Creek Church Des Moines Cult, and just repeat it 100 times and have everyone visit the page so that whenever some googles it, the first thing they see is something that links to this site. I don't know how else to stop it.

[Linda]

Haven't we all heard the "spin" that they come up with when people leave.

"That person was unstable."

"They had marriage problems."

"That person was unfriendly to the Gospel."

I have never heard anyone in GC leadership publicly admit they were wrong AND make public correction through word and deed.

My heart breaks when I hear about incidents like those you just mentioned.

When a group separates young people from their real family and claims that a person is now part of the "family of God" bad things happen. Students become distant from their families and because of the distance, there is no accountability with their parents/siblings. Things can head South really fast. Then, guess who is there to put their life on hold, pick up the pieces, and sometimes even pay for the counseling needed? The parents. Guess who disappears? The church. The pastors. The small group. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

[EverAStudent]

When a group separates young people from their real family and claims that a person is now part of the "family of God" bad things happen. Students become distant from their families and because of the distance, there is no accountability with their parents/siblings. Things can head South really fast. Then, guess who is there to put their life on hold, pick up the pieces, and sometimes even pay for the counseling needed? The parents. Guess who disappears? The church. The pastors. The small group. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I agree with this completely.  But I also wanted to add that this is not exclussive of GC churches.  Atheist groups did exactly the same thing to my son, driving a wedge into family relationships and then dropping him cold when trouble began. 

It would be my guess that most groups that exist on personal power instead of on true Christian love end up treating the membership this way.

[Linda]

I'm really sorry to hear about your, son, EAS.

Identity with the group, isolation from family/friends, no legitimate reason to leave (the person leaving is always in the wrong), these are all warning signs of potentially unsafe groups.

The Rick Ross list is pretty good. We've put it up before. Here it is again as a refresher:

http://www.rickross.com/warningsigns.html