My Testimony and GC ExperienceI grew up on a small farm north of a tiny town in the Midwest of typical Christian Midwesterners. We went to church sporadically, until I was 15 when we joined a Lutheran church as a family and were very regular ever after. The morals my parents passed on to me? We can’t stop you from doing what you want, but don’t embarrass the family.
At 18 I went off to college, totally unprepared for the freedoms there, and ended up majoring in drunkenness and debauchery. I was involved in the occult, and although it was a pretty pathetic group we formed I saw enough to know that demons are real. Unsurprisingly, after a mere three semesters I was out of school, at home with my parents (now moved closer to the town with the Lutheran church), and suffering severe depression.
I got active in the church, got counseling and meds, but was still perennially lonely. I met some Charismatic Lutherans who invited me to meetings. They would pray over me to cast out the devil, which was fine by me, but didn’t seem to help much. I tried going back to school, and was working some, but generally I didn’t keep my jobs very long and kept bottoming out.
In 1985 I met a GC’er who was working in my town for the summer. She was so excited when she learned I was a Christian. Well, what else would I be? My Midwestern town had no Buddhists or Jews, nothing but Christians where I come from! Then I came to understand she was one of
those Christians, you know, the crazy born again kind.
She invited me to come to a series of meetings at her church that she was driving home for (over an hour away). Well sure, why not? I didn’t have any friends and appreciated the invitation. I got to hear messages by Jim McCotter and others. Over the course of the next couple of years I attended several student conferences with her, and was disappointed when I had to miss one because of work.
In the spring of 1987 I attended another student conference. This was not long after I’d been fired from one of my two jobs and had a bad review at the other. I was no longer on antidepressants or receiving counseling, but I was still so very lonely. At the conference they sang Psalm 46 straight out of the NASB (which I don’t believe I’ve heard sung since) and Ps. 46:10 leapt off the page at me: Be still and know that I am God.
By this time I really wanted to be saved. At first my friend and her friends were “those crazy born againers.” (Playing soccer, ball’s about to go out of bounds: “Save the ball! Share the gospel with it!”) At every meeting there was always an invitation and prayer, and I’d always pray, and my friend would look out the corner of her eyes and wonder. At this conference, though, I finally saw that these people had something I didn’t, which I wanted (the Holy Spirit!), and I really was trying to get saved. My friend kept saying that if I’d prayed that prayer, then I was saved. I kept saying, no, I don’t think so. God was saying, “Be still!”
So, after having a fight with my friend I ended up on a porch at 3 a.m., wishing I could have an angel, but thinking I didn’t deserve something like that. A guy came up and asked what was on my mind… oh, where to begin? He wanted to pray for a “heart on fire for people.” I thought, yeah, a nice noble Christian thing to pray for. So, we started praying. When it came time to pray for me, I didn’t know what else to pray and found myself praying as my Charismatic friends had, casting out the devil.
When I stopped, the guy said, “He’s gone.” And I felt something go! So my salvation prayer was, “God, if that was Satan, get in here really quick!” And He did! And… Wow! No wonder I had been so lonely! And now I’ll never be lonely again!
So I ran around the last day of the conference all excited and happy. I went back home and started reading my Bible and it was amazing and fresh. After having had arguments with my friend about baptism (which she was ill equipped to debate while I went to a local seminary’s library to learn both sides of the issue), within ten days of getting saved I became convinced that God was calling me to get baptized.
So, a month after I got saved I drove the hour plus to my friend’s church… only to find that it wasn’t Baptism Sunday but Friendship Sunday. No baptisms today. So, we had lunch (the sisters made spaghetti for the brothers) and hung out. All day long I’d had this little bubble of joy, and this little voice would say, “I’m going to get baptized!” And all day long I tried to squelch it, but it wouldn’t go down. I’d ask, “Doesn’t anyone in this church have a jacuzzi? A bathtub even?” And all day long my friend would say, “Just submit to the brothers.” I didn’t like that part much, but I was willing to try.
Quite late in the evening we were on the phone with a brother and it came up. This was before I learned to speak in born-again-Christian-lingo, so I didn’t know the term “conviction.” I tried to explain that all day I just felt that I was going to get baptized. The brother asked to speak to my friend, who kept saying, “uh huh, uh huh…” The brother came back and said, “Do you want to go get baptized?” It was 11 o’clock at night, dark, cold (there was snow on the ground), I was tired, and I said, “Yes!!”
So that is how I ended up at a duck pond in a city park at 11:55 p.m. I’d never actually seen a GC baptism. They said, “Share your testimony, and keep it short.” (I can be long-winded…) I said, “I got saved, it was nice.” Then a slightly longer version saying how God had used many of the seven people there with me to bring me to this point. I jumped in, too excited to notice the cold, and it went fast. As soon as we were done they wrapped me in a blanket and put me in a car with the heater running, prayed quick and were ready to go. Later a brother told me we’d gotten to the park at 11:55 and left at 12:05… which means I got baptized at 11:59 on the day that God said I would.
I went back and told my third-shift part-time minimum wage job that I was going to quit and go to LT 87. The same ones who had given me the bad review said, “Please don’t go. We’ll give you a 25 cent raise and put you in management. I had changed that much!
I was broke, and every deposit and payment needed for LT 87 was a miracle. And in every case God brought the money on the day I needed it. I even left without enough money to pay the first payment, but the saints in the big city had collected some money for me. I also drove someone there, who helped pay for gas, so when I arrived I had enough to make the payment and get by until my first paycheck.
Upon arrival I prayed and asked God for a job that was full-time, indoors, air-conditioned, paid at least $7/hr (more than twice what I had been making), and would start on Monday. That Monday I started a job that fulfilled every request I’d made.
The girl I’d driven and I hit it off and we were delighted to find out that we’d been assigned as roommates. As a person who was not a student, and in possession of a car, I had a blast at LT. I was newly saved and crazy in love with God. I met a ton of interesting people, a few of which are still my friends. I stayed out late at night with my roommate, slept til the last possible minute, and drove a car full of people everywhere I went. (We regularly packed six or seven people in a tiny car built for five.)
At the end of LT I decided God was calling me to stay at my job. (I ended up staying more than six years.) So, I started praying about where to live. A week before it ended I told a friend I needed a roommate, a place to stay near public transportation, and money for the deposit by the following week. She thought it was impossible. One week later I moved in with two roommates (which made the cost even cheaper).
I share all that to explain that I came into GC on kind of an individual track. In age alone I had more maturity than a lot of the people around me at LT (I turned 23 that summer). But those seven years in the Lutheran church gave me more Bible training (the weekly church readings go through the entire Bible every three years) than some GC’ers ever receive. Plus I had a car. And I very quickly became accustomed to praying and seeking God for any major decision, knowing His voice, and following His direction no matter how crazy it sounded. I am very grateful for that beginning!
That summer I did experience some of the behaviors described elsewhere on the site, but it didn’t occur to me what they meant. At one point I decided to go check out the Mormon temple… such a cool building. My friends were concerned, because those Mormons would try to sway me away. Sway me? After the joy of being saved and all the miracles God had done in the past 3-4 months? Impossible! I went and enjoyed reading about how the temple was built and picking out the heresy in their literature.
Also that summer I got rebuked for “dancing too much” during the worship songs. Now, I wasn’t doing a grapevine up the aisle, but you can understand why I was very enthusiastic in worship… front row, swayin’ with a crazy friend, and lovin’ every minute. I can see that if I’d been in a campus fellowship with that kind of rebuke all the time that I would have very quickly have become demoralized and down on myself. As it was, I simply tried to be sensitive to the boring people around me. But I never had much respect for that leader afterward.
It was probably that fall when a friend and I sought counsel about dating. I’m not sure if one of us suggested seeking counsel or if it was suggested by friend (I think probably it was). Was there prayer? Seeking of God’s will? Of course not! What happened was the “elder” turned to my friend and said, “You’re not ready to be
her head.” I suppose in the ultra-submissive-wifey-with-a-husband-who-runs-the-show-way, he wasn’t. He’s a good guy, though, and would have been a fine spouse. (We’re still friends, too.) Lesson learned… the next time I found a guy a liked (Christian, but not GC) I didn’t bother asking. (I’m sure leaders dreaded having a strong woman like me in their small groups.)
So, there I was in this yuppie church, while I tend more toward hippie. They, meanwhile, were moving more and more toward a seeker service, which I detested. I should say we, because my husband (eight months from met to married) didn’t like it either. As another poster had commented, “Gee, all the singers are so good looking.” Yeah, no accident there. I absolutely love singing, but I am neither gorgeous nor highly trained. One of the biggest hurts I experienced at GC was when I went to “audition” for the music team. As a new Christian I didn’t know a lot of Christian music, and I probably didn’t pick the best song. I bought the backtrack, went up there, began singing. After one line they said, “Next!” and I was outta there. In tears. Thinking, this is a church? Where is compassion and mercy? Do they have so many people lined up to sing that they have to run it like a Broadway production? But while the “people running the show” were callous and insensitive, my friends supported and loved me so of course I didn’t leave.
I don’t like seeker services because my salvation happened once I was able to see that this group of Christians had something I didn’t. I firmly believe that our most powerful witness as Christians happens when we are real Christians. Hurting, forgiving, growing, loving Christians with the Holy Spirit empowering us. I don’t watch TV, and I don’t go to church to be entertained. (Can you say “dry ice”?) People aren’t hungering for fake stuff. It may attract, but then what? Say to them, “Oh, yeah, we look really cool but underneath we’re these hard core ultra-conservative born again Christians who really think our women should wear head coverings”? It’s so deceptive!
Then they had the building program, with the professional fund raiser and the big pledge drive. As you can imagine, a lot more formula than prayer, and strong arm tactics for pledging.
Finally, a new church was planted, one that was not a seeker service. We were there with bells on. (And our dreaded building pledge was out the window!) And while my husband was not as happy there as I was, we were very blessed to be a part of a great church. One reason he was less happy is that there was still the occasional GC craziness (like the sister who thought women shouldn’t collect the offering, but who was the longest-winded whenever there was open mic), but we had two humble and sensitive pastors we could connect with, an unprofessional but sincere music team, and a spirit of love and acceptance no matter what you looked like or how much you made. I hated leaving there (eight years later) when we moved too far away to make commuting feasible.
It has been very interesting reading this forum. I didn’t know anything about spiritual abuse, but now that I do it gives me a framework to understand things I’ve seen and experienced. I think I have been extremely fortunate (blessed!) in my personal experience with GC, but I’ve known others not as lucky, or whose personalities simply made them more susceptible, and I am concerned about them (some still in GC, others long out).
Some general comments from my experiences and reading the forum here:
Starving – yes we were, until we got to the new church. The gospel needs shared, but do I need to hear it every week? I learned more than this as a depressed teenager in a Lutheran church.
Seeker Services – as I said above, deceptive, annoying fluffy entertainment. Ugh!
Rebukes –
Now I understand some of my girlfriends (one in particular). I would try so hard to make and stay at peace, and then some other issue would come up.
Discipling/Friendship – I also now understand why that same friend could never seem to get past our age difference (she’s older than I) and simply be friends. And why once we were no longer in the same area it was so difficult to remain friends with her.
Submission – Maybe I don’t have as many problems with submission as I thought I did. After all, I can submit to God! (I’d also be happy to submit to any man who’ll love me as Christ loved the church.) And strong women
can craft a happy marriage with laid back husbands! Twenty years and going strong!
Dating – I appear to have gotten off easy. But how my heart aches when I read the stories here! I know of a marriage that was not arranged exactly, but perhaps as ex-GC’ers you know how it was being around JM… It has not been an easy road for that couple, yet God gives grace. It’s been pretty tough for their kids as well.
Reformed Theology – my husband used to be staunchly anti-Calvinist. Then one day our good friends (ex-GC by that time) took him to an R.C. Sproule conference and he came back a “Reformed Theologian.” When pressed to explore the topic I realized that I’ve been reformed all along. And since I’ve been that way all along, its no big deal to me. But it is to others! Because when you become reformed you realize that God’s in charge and that you can cease striving and know that He is God. Since that was the basis of my salvation experience, I’d never been caught up in having to do this and that and everything else or the world will go to hell… yet another reason I was less under the GC spell than others I knew.
We were still in GC at the time… and found that while our pastor was pretty much already there (at least, very comfortable with God’s sovereignty), he wouldn’t teach the subject, at least in part because it goes against the overall direction of GC. We note that HM is particularly anti-Calvinist (my husband feels it’s due to his Anabaptist upbringing) and this has set the tone for pretty much all of GC. Because what HM wants, happens.
MD’s Teachings – You know, I heard MD talk about doing everything possible to remove any hindrances to the gospel, including brushing his teeth frequently. I guess it didn’t take with me as I never really started dressing fashionably or any of the other changes that would help make me more “attractive.” Perhaps it helps that we didn’t have a yuppie church. But I guess I probably had it in the back of my mind that perhaps I should… It’s nice to realize (duh!) that that teaching was waaay off.
I’m wondering if I heard the church is the pastor’s bride thing… I’m thinking I did and I should have caught the heresy and didn’t. It’s a shame that someone so enjoyable to listen to should teach so off base. But I, too, have been under the GC spell at times.
Scripture Songs – I really, really miss these. I am so grateful for all the verses I have memorized because of them. I wish I could sing Rev 19, or Jude 24 again… (or Ps 32, 84, or 100).
So, since leaving GC we attended a Baptist church… which I now realize was also spiritually abusive, but in different way from GC. We’re in a good Lutheran church, at least for now. I miss the fervor, and the sense that I can be assured that anyone I talk to is definitely saved. But we appreciate the Bible readings and the solidly orthodox position of the church, and have been able to find sincere believers within the church that we can be friends with. My husband has finally found a men’s small group with men who are sincerely seeking to follow Christ.
As I posted to Dr Sam, I am not angry nor bitter. My hurts are not that many, and most of them were a long time ago. I feel strongly that God had me where I was, and I’m certainly grateful for my salvation.
And now I understand why this one left, why that one is struggling, why this other one makes me nuts… I can see how GC has affected their thinking, their choices, and their relationships.
So while I have no great issues, this site is helping heal some old wounds by putting them into proper perspective, as well as giving me a context for some more recent wounds caused by a person who would still be right at home in a 70’s style small group.
Thanks and blessings to all for “listening.”
