My story why I left

[ex-shep]

To answer the question, it was a whole chain of events. It was 1984. The bible school had turned down my request for admission. I felt sad, but quickly got over it. I called Tammy. She invited me to move out to the "Midwest City Church". What bugged me was her vague and evasive answers. Another thing which gave me pause was everytime I had a question, she would refer me to the leadership. "The elders have all the answers". I made plans to fly out to join the church. The night before I was supposed to leave, I received a call that they did not have any room for me now, but I could come out later. Tammy was irritated by the developments. I called another college buddy and was shocked to hear, "My prayers have been answered. I knew something was wrong with going to Midwest City".

Needless to say, that was enough to stop everything and get down to the bottom of what was going on in Tammy' group. It was nutty that I could not even get the name of the church. I had enough interest in cults, that I resigned myself to contacting my cult research connections. I received a letter stating that Tammy was in a shepherding group. I had already heard info on shepherding on the Walter Martin era Bible Answer Man. I was praying for answers when I received a collect call. It was from a cult researcher who had information on Tammy's group. Tammy and I had made a vow to always watch out for each other in prayer and to keep each other from harm. I borrowed money from my parents to fly out west. I met with a cult researcher and the father of a former member of Tammy's group who was counseled out in an intervention. I was crushed to hear what was happening. I was devastated.

Since I had a few days, the cult researcher decided to go over Lifton's criteria for cult involvement. He also wanted to take notes about the situation. What transpired was a revelation that the groups on campus were involved in shepherding. I finally came to realization of the mind control when I came to realize my efforts to evangelize a coed on campus was actually stalking.

I had lost Tammy and two thirds of the campus evangelical fellowships were involved in legalistic coercive discipleship. The worse was yet to come. I returned to classes at the bible school in the evening division. I had also received information that several graduates who absuing their members. I saw the mind control dynamic at work in the worship in the Bible school. There was no denying it. At 1:30 AM November 11, 1984, I came to the realization that I was in a cult and could not go back. The revelation hit me head, stomach, and kidneys all at once. I was in shock. I lost Tammy, stalked a coed in the name of God, and walked out. My world came crashing down.

That is my story. More can be said about the recovery process in another post.

[SpinningHead]

Hi X,

Do you mind a question?

Just read your story and felt your horror...what was it like for you to realize what was going on...but no one else could see it or would listen to you. Eventually you left it all behind in tact.

Thanks,

[hornblower]

To answer the question, it was a whole chain of events. It was 1984. The bible school had turned down my request for admission. I felt sad, but quickly got over it. I called Tammy. She invited me to move out to the "Midwest City Church". What bugged me was her vague and evasive answers. Another thing which gave me pause was everytime I had a question, she would refer me to the leadership. "The elders have all the answers". I made plans to fly out to join the church. The night before I was supposed to leave, I received a call that they did not have any room for me now, but I could come out later. Tammy was irritated by the developments. I called another college buddy and was shocked to hear, "My prayers have been answered. I knew something was wrong with going to Midwest City".

Needless to say, that was enough to stop everything and get down to the bottom of what was going on in Tammy' group. It was nutty that I could not even get the name of the church. I had enough interest in cults, that I resigned myself to contacting my cult research connections. I received a letter stating that Tammy was in a shepherding group. I had already heard info on shepherding on the Walter Martin era Bible Answer Man. I was praying for answers when I received a collect call. It was from a cult researcher who had information on Tammy's group. Tammy and I had made a vow to always watch out for each other in prayer and to keep each other from harm. I borrowed money from my parents to fly out west. I met with a cult researcher and the father of a former member of Tammy's group who was counseled out in an intervention. I was crushed to hear what was happening. I was devastated.

Since I had a few days, the cult researcher decided to go over Lifton's criteria for cult involvement. He also wanted to take notes about the situation. What transpired was a revelation that the groups on campus were involved in shepherding. I finally came to realization of the mind control when I came to realize my efforts to evangelize a coed on campus was actually stalking.

I had lost Tammy and two thirds of the campus evangelical fellowships were involved in legalistic coercive discipleship. The worse was yet to come. I returned to classes at the bible school in the evening division. I had also received information that several graduates who absuing their members. I saw the mind control dynamic at work in the worship in the Bible school. There was no denying it. At 1:30 AM November 11, 1984, I came to the realization that I was in a cult and could not go back. The revelation hit me head, stomach, and kidneys all at once. I was in shock. I lost Tammy, stalked a coed in the name of God, and walked out. My world came crashing down.

That is my story. More can be said about the recovery process in another post.

Praise God you are out and safe. Ultimately ex shep you and others on here continually bring me to the realisation that we have to be responsible for our own desicions and our own actions with these groups. I look back on all of the things I did and let people do to me and Im amazed really that I am sitting here maybe alone and lonely but at least I AM FREE!


Here I am in this country and I dont recognize the wonderful gift I have been given in being free to pursue my own way. Who knows how much longer this gift will last for us all to be this free.

Freedom is not easy its hard work and it will most certainly blow up in our faces when we try to help others get free too.
Unfortuantely that is their loss if they remain in their situations. My heart breaks for all of them but at least I am beginning to be a little prouder of myself for sticking up against groups, authorities, and individuals, all of these years. No wonder the persecution has been as hard as it has been for me.

Your story helps me immensely. I think it is time to bring out more of my own story of abuse.
If we stick together here in this freedom we have now and continue to heal and to grow.....we may actually be of some use some how. Im speaking of myself of course im sure you already are of use.
What a day. Some good things are coming my way and one of them is this new ability to see that I am not a bad person there is nothing wrong with me. I have let this abusive situation happen to me over and over again. I see now where the root of it started.

When I was very small I hated my Mother and because of this I fel that God would never be able to love me or let me in so to speak. I believed that all bad things happened to me to punish me for the way I was ..........My Mother often told me I was bad and was bothering her, making her sick, causing her to drop things or I was always a mess. I believed her.

Its always seemed such a childish thing that I just went on living with these notions deep down inside of me. So........when I get angry at someone for trying to control me or trying to belittle me a big part of me accepts it as all so true. I feel I dont have the right to fight back. I do fight back way too hard at times with way too much emotion which makes me even more vulnerable because then I heap abuse on my self for that too.

My friend that is giving me this generational crap has told me........"dont give me that God loves you junk thats YOUR problem not mine I have always known God's love in my own life" If she does why is she so unloving and so angry? Why is she trying to change me and everyone else? Why is she obsessing over people?
Our actions should speak louder than our words............I see no love in her at all, only yelling, and empty arguments trying to control me.

I want to hold on.........I want to hold on to her abuse to me.........because its all I know. Its all too familiar to me. Peace and quiet and having a nice afternoon are foriegn to me so I allow her to keep it up.
Time to grow up and learn to be quiet and have faith. Faith that God is saying to me those loving words to me in my quiet times and He means them! He is the voice I should be listening too not hers.

I think so often these are the reasons people flock to the abusive shepherds. We say we know God loves us but do we??????????????????
I think we dont have the foggiest notion of what love even is, we have all been abused by this world and dont know who we really are at all.

[mary]

I think so often these are the reasons people flock to the abusive shepherds. We say we know God loves us but do we??????????????????
I think we dont have the foggiest notion of what love even is, we have all been abused by this world and dont know who we really are at all.

Hornblower, you are correct.

Do we flock to these abusive shepherds because that type of behavior is familiar to us? It's like "comfort food" to us, isn't it? I still "miss" the verbal abuse that "pastor" heaped on me... My father did that sort of thing to me all of my conscious life until he died three years ago and "pastor's" telling me that he was going to "take me down" (although that could have a couple of different meanings in the context of the relationship I had with "pastor"), that he was going to beat me in a wrestling match, etc. felt so familiar. It felt like "home." Now I'm attending a couple of different congregations where no one threatens me or assaults me - and I feel like an alien in both places.

I can love other people, but there is no way that I can love or barely even tolerate myself. God as "Father..." - a loving Father? - NO! Fathers don't love, do they? They judge and then they beat up little ones, don't they? But then how to explain Jesus? There was no way for sinful "me" to approach a holy God except through the profound Gift of His Son... So God gave Him, and His Holy Spirit to live in me... What greater gift of love could there ever have been? Somehow, though, although I know I'm His child, I feel as though I'm on some other plane than other Christians. All other Christians. My father beat me up; nuns and priests beat me up literally and with words during my entire schooling; my "pastor" treated me as he did no one else in the congregation and threatened to beat me up. So how would it happen that God could love me, despite His Gift of Jesus Christ on my behalf? I read the Gospel of John and Romans over and over, especially chapters 5, 7 and 8 and I still don't know.

He has loved us "with an everlasting love..." and we'll not know the extent or even the character of that love until we no longer "see through the glass darkly..." But it would have helped some of us had we not been abused. Even there, though, God has promised to punish those who have hurt us...

mary

[ex-shep]

Hi X,

Do you mind a question?

Just read your story and felt your horror...what was it like for you to realize what was going on...but no one else could see it or would listen to you. Eventually you left it all behind in tact.

Thanks,

No, not at all. I definite felt like the emporer who realized his new clothes was nothing but the latest in Fruit of the Loom I also felt like the Maytag repairman. I was fortunate because when I left the bible school I already had a network in place while I trying to get Tammy out of her group.

There is a process called "snapping". This is where a cult member come to the realization of what he was in. A light comes on, the cold hard reality hits and there is no turning back.

When the reality hit, I immediately called the Goldbergs, social workers who treat former cult members. I already had friends in the anti-cult movement to check in with. There was a mutual friend of Tammy's who was a social work major. She was at first skeptical of what was going until she inadvertently received classified information on the group. She was devasted and tearfully apologetic. She spent many hours with me on the phone helping sort out my feelings. I was also blessed by the brief friendship with a woman my age who was counseled out. Went she was down, I was able to encourage her. When I was at wit's end, she was up enough to encourage me. We prayed and supported each other. It only lasted four months, but it was all I needed. I will forever be deeply indebted to her.

I had a the father of friend who was rescued out the same group Tammy was in Midwest City. He was a great father figure. Tough as rocks and a little hard headed, but ultimately with a heart of gold. His son and I are good friends to this day.

My parents want nothing to do with me. They had the attitude I got in this mess and all had to go was get over it. Fortunately my extended biological family was very supportive. I had a Quaker uncle from New Jersey who took the time to listen. That was better than winning the lottery.

I also talked to everyone I could about cults. I actually had a receptive audience on the bus or at work. I was getting it out my system and educating the public at the same time.

The best thing I did was move out of state. I was getting harassed by my parents who were shaming me with "you can't do anything right and you think moving to Ohio is going to change it?" If I were to make a clean break from the mind control of the group, I knew I was going to have to pack and leave. I was getting harassed by the pentecostal church ladies on the bus saying that I did not have my eyes on Jesus. I exploded at them, "the fact I had my eyes on Jesus if the reason I am out. Don't you dare question my salvation. If you have a problem with my walk with God, then you are going to have to take it up with the Lord." I had to threaten to one lady arrested before she backed off.

The first year was a trial to say the least.

Hope that answers your question.

[ex-shep]

Unfortuantely that is their loss if they remain in their situations. My heart breaks for all of them but at least I am beginning to be a little prouder of myself for sticking up against groups,....When I was very small I hated my Mother and because of this I fel that God would never be able to love me or let me in so to speak. I believed that all bad things happened to me to punish me for the way I was ..........My Mother often told me I was bad and was bothering her, making her sick, causing her to drop things or I was always a mess. I believed her.

I know how it breaks one's when they do not get it. There were days, in the early years where I could practically scream at Tammy for her denial. Over the years, I came to a place of acceptance by reminding myself it is was not anybody's fault. I grieved over the loss of friends from a oneness pentecostal group and the bible school.

The witchy poo at work, I suspect, had a similarly chilling upbringing. I could empathise with her, in a thick Yiddish accent, "Ariana, Ariana, You do not deserve that. You deserve better". [Personally I hope resonates with her for years to come] I too had a similarly deprived upbrining. I did learn I deserved to be around healthy people and be treated with dignity and respect-- although it definitely felt like learning Russian.

[Jo Jo]

Thanks for sharing this... you even have the time and the date when the realization hit you. That is so totally how it is. It's like the earth shifts on it's axis and nothing is the same again.

I'm sorry you had to go through all that and you were lied to, and trapped in all that. I'm so glad you are out now. The fresh air is good out here. :)

[ex-shep]

I'm sorry you had to go through all that and you were lied to, and trapped in all that. I'm so glad you are out now. The fresh air is good out here. :)[/QUOTE]

I have used the analogy myself or as a friend puts it, "It is nice to stop and smell the roses"