Left and feeling lighter

I recently left the Great Commission church that I had been involved in for nearly 2 and a half years. In that time period, I attended several retreats, leadership conferences, faithwalkers and so forth. Before joining a GCM church, I had been part of a wonderful Christian fellowship with other believers with a sincere passion to follow and learn about Jesus Christ. At the time, I was involved in an on campus ministry, but did not have a church home. I was pressured quite a bit by some friends I knew from the GCM church to "get plugged in", and in my weakness to please I conceded (which is a terrible idea). I quickly became involved (as if going along with the crowd) and had my doubts all along the way. I had a thirst for the gospel, for Jesus Christ and for sincere fellowship but I didn't feel like that resonated within the ranks of this church. The extremely difficult thing about the underlying thoughts and beliefs of those in leadership is that on the surface, they claimed to believe what I believed but in a slightly distorted way. It was an extremely damaging time in my life, one that I believe God allowed for his glory, but painful nonetheless. I can now see that this fellowship was something incredibly evil and that real fellowship does exist---where the Word of God is preached the way that God meant it. I see the value in training leaders to understand what the Word says---doctrine is very important, not something to discard. I also now see that doctrine is not worshipped, nor fellowship, nor a quest for knowledge but the living God. God loves---He does not manipulate and He does not use his spoken Word to control his people. It makes me pretty mad when someone uses God's Word to control others---that was not His intent. I am eternally grateful that I am no longer where I was and hope to continue to discover the truth of Jesus Christ.