Walk in the freedom of who God made you
You know I actually have turned LFF into some of the major News Stations of
TV asking them to run stories on churches like this. I don't know if
anything will evolve out of this but it would open many peoples eyes to what
is happening. It truly is like a cult which is something I was warned about
when I first moved to Pullman. God will blow this whole thing wide open and
when he does it's gonna be ugly for a lot of people. I can't say that I
feel sorry for any of them because I truly don't. I've had a hard time
forgiving what has happened to me. I was suicidal for a short while and had
to go on medication for it. I have since then bounced back and am moving
forward in freedom but not without many difficulties in forgiveness. I know
many people are mad at God for all that has happened but God is not people.
I have faced many hardships in the past 2 years. My younger brother passed
away in a tragedy and he was 22 years old. My husbands Grandpa passed away
just a few days ago and his grandparents raised him so it was like his dad
passing away. It has been a nightmare to say the least but God is God and
always was and really pulled myself and family through. The things at LFF
seem so small compared to this and I found that I was very selfish and
holding on to things that I should let go. Those people don't care about
you and they never will and when you hold a grudge or bitterness or hate you
are not hurting them at all cause they are horrible people, you only wasting
your time and life keeping those weights on your shoulders. I know this
truly is not what you want to hear and I wouldn't have wanted to hear it at
all 4 years ago either and would have been angry at someone who tried to
tell me these things but those things will eat you up and you will spend the
rest of your life living your life as a victim and never a victor. If that
is one thing my brothers death proved was life is short and you never know
when you are going. God could close his hand on your life today. Don't let
those people continue to run your lives and how you function in everyday
life 1,2 or even 10 years later. I let them run my life for 3 years after I
left. That to me now looking back was 3 years too long. Don't let them
have the satisfaction. They are just stupid sheep being led to the
slaughter. Walk in the freedom of who you are and who God has created you
to be. Your personality does not need to be harnessed, you don't need to
work on your servants heart, you don't need to focus on God more and quit
your job or school so that you can be more involved in church. You can do
whatever you want. BUT!!! do it for yourself!!! DON"T LET THEM WIN!!!
~ If you want to contact me you can at Ra14589@gohighspeed.com. Otherwise
have a great day just doing whatever!!! :)
Craig Elliott
16 comments:
we don't care about you and never will? how many of us grieved over the loss of your brother, and supported and loved you and your family through his tragic death? if i didn't care about you, i wouldn't have sent you a wedding present. we wouldn't have sent your family a gift that we thought might help you see what a better place your brother is in now. and now you are calling me stupid and horrible? we loved you for who you are, and still do. i am sorry that you could not see that.
I believe that the intent of the original poster was toward the senior pastors not to everyone they encountered at LFF although I may be wrong since that is just my speculation. And I have to admit there were times that I felt that once I left - that they were never truly my friend.
However, I can see where the second poster would feel as if any effort they and their family put forward was thrown out along with the baby in the preverbial bath water.
I don't know that I am contributing anything productive to this conversation but I am highly unmotivated today at work and felt the need to do something else so I have intervened.
Whoops - wiley 'e' got away form me - I meant proverbial.
Those people don't care about
you and they never will and when you hold a grudge or bitterness or hate you
are not hurting them at all cause they are horrible people, you only wasting
your time and life keeping those weights on your shoulders.
If you believe this- even about the senior pastors, then I think you are holding the same grudge, bitterness and hate that you are preaching to people here.
I truly doubt there is a single person who knew you or your family that didn't/don't care about you and never will.
I don't believe that accepting you were treated as chattel and as another number by a organizations that seems to be more in the business of getting money and complete devotion of said chattel toward leadership is holding onto bitterness as much as accepting reality and the cold hard fact that you can be abused 'in the name of God' today just as much as anytime in the history of organized religions.
I don't think it's necessarily an "all or nothing" situation. One of the things that caused great confusion for me at LFF was that I knew that some people didn't care at all about me, but I felt deeply loved and cared for by others. Finding that I was just a number, a source of money and free labor, to some at LFF shook my trust in everyone there at times. However, time has proven that some were sincere - they are people that have remained my friends over the years.
While I don't deny that there was abuse that went on, I still don't believe that people were just merely numbers or more income or whatnot to Pastors.
Oh, and I posted on the comments under "The Impact of the Blog" I don't know if people go back and read old threads, but I didn't want my comments- especially to Stacey- to get lost in the shuffle.
It is hard for money not to be an issue at all. The overhead with staff and building expenses was/is astronomical at lff. One fact is that over the majority of years (first 30...?) wasn't there all of them, but many of those years there were very few stay-at-home moms. I personally was encouraged to work. I was told I couldn't afford not to. Being involved in leadership, I was never encouraged, nor was anyone else I ministered to, or knew as a friend, ever encouraged to be at home with their babies, toddlers, or school-age children. I don't know if there was intent behind this to have additional tithe money, but it seems odd to me that any church with so much involvement in people's lives wouldn't encourage mom's to take care of their children at home. I understand when people need to work, but for many that would have liked to be home with their kids, they were encouraged in the opposite direction. It was sad. I brought it up at times and it was always about families needing the double income. I realize now that it is not about that at all. There are always choices in life. We never discussed them at lff. Everyone worked outside the home! I sometimes thought it was due to daycare income as well. We were always told what a wonderful environment and opportunity that was for our children. Motivated by the need for money? I don't know. Whatever it was, it was sad. I'm glad that more moms are home with their kids now (those that want to be!) I understand not all want to be, or can! I'm not Dr. Laura!! ;) But for whatever it's worth, I did feel that there was a financial motivation for both spouses working and having the kids in daycare and pcs. I can't comprehend why you wouldn't support a mom wanting to be home with her kids, especially when both the mom and dad are wanting to do that. Why would you council against it? Doesn't make much sense. But it happened with multiple layers of leadership knowing and agreeing via the agendas the hcl's wrote every 6 weeks or so. LFF seemed to think it best for parents to work and let the church raise your kids! Sound spiritual advice? Sound financial advice for the family, for lff?
I'm not opposing you by saying this but....You know I and (you know who else) grieved over your brother. Even though I never met him, I grieved for your family. You mom and I could relate to such a deep pain. As far as your comment to Demet...maybe you meant that he's the only one who's still and LLFer that knew him?
Anyway,
I miss you. Sucks we didn't get to see each other when we we're down there last summer.
KAL
Not Demetrius. I'll email you soon to explain.
As for turning LFF in to major news stations and TV, well, that could be interesting. It seems it would be helpful for more people to know the truth about LFF before getting involved there.
Like so many people, I do wonder about the sincerity of the pastors who are (or were) there. The Bardens started out with a bible study in their home in 1971. Were they sincere initially, just trying to get closer to God and to serve Him? When did things get out of hand? When did their motives change (if they did change)? When the abuse and manipulation at LFF started, were they aware of what they were doing, or were they majorly self-deceived? I certainly don't know, but I wonder.
Turning LFF into major news and TV stations has been done. LFF was even brought up by the SF Gate when Matthew Williams and his brother ended up killing two homosexual men and burning down synagogues. People were blaming the teachings of our church on leading Matthew to hate homosexuals. I don't think anything could be further from the truth. I was still cordial to him after he left and after he went to the Daily News w/ his feelings about LFF. He started spiraling down quickly, though- telling me about government conspiracies and how the King James' bible was the only correct translation and other weird stuff. It kind of makes me ill that I was friends w/ someone who could murder and commit arson to another church, but LFF was not the source of his psychosis. He was a little off to begin w/.
Anyway, I don't think going to the news again would have a big impact now. Maybe a few people would be more leery about attending. But there are still rumors going around that we have to give the church our paycheck and they'll give back to us what they think we can live on, that we baptize people in the nude, that there are snakes in our basement, that the ushers carry guns... So if people can get past that, I don't think a newspaper article about how a few people's feelings were hurt by a church is going to kill it. Look at the Mormon church, they have books and more books written about how cultish they are, and they aren't hurting in their membership growth.
To the 10/24/06 4:30 poster with the motivation questions:
After my husband and I left, we ran into some interesting people from the community who knew a lot more about the origins of LFF than we did. One man was friends with Karl and was in the room when Karl's lawyer was encouraging Karl to look for ways to save money on taxation since he was a dentist. One of the suggestions was in home church I believe. Anyway, it sounds like shortly after that they started having church in their house and used it as a tax write off. The community members struggled with the sincerity issues of Karl as a pastor.
At LFF we were told he was prophesied over "oh though reluctant shepherd" as someone who wouldn't step up to the plate and be a pastor. That's not how the outside community saw it.
Anyway, I am not sure of exact details but from what we were told, it explains the skepticism in the community.
I also heard about the skeptism from the Pullman community from folks I worked with outside of LFF and WSU. All they would say was something along the lines of "he's not doing bad at all up on his hillside with and indoor pool, etc...." When I look back on the membership - the CCLs and HCLs, JCDs - all of those people were not community members from Pullman. Well, maybe the Hills and the Mildrens - but the rest were all college folks from outside the area. And I seem to think the Mildrens were not from the area originally but eventually moved their. I don't know for sure.
yeah, they moved to Pullman from Spokane when Jane came to college.
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