Helping current CM F members to think about reality.

In a post below Achieck says, "I read someone saying this once and it's so true. They tell each other how free they are now and how changed they are. But it's all bogus.... They still have a ton of rules they must abide by to enjoy their so-called freedoms.... (home life) is run just like it always has been."

A few weeks ago we decided to give a CM member, who was here from China, a place to stay for a few days. In our conversations with her about why we left, it seems that one of the things that made her think the most and which she didn't have an answer to was when I described how frustrated I finally became at not ever finding a long term ministry, not ever seeing the fulfillment of our dreams, and the fact that things didn't really change. On a regular basis we still moved from one mission field to another, one country to another, or from one city to another. In spite of the messages from the top, the promises of glorious success and fruitfulness both spritirual and material that are published in the GNs, in spite of the hype F members tell each other about how great things are, that is not the way it really is. They F is not really what we as F members would tell each other that it is.

Then I gave a concrete example to illustrate how tragically the F fails their own. The best thing about the example I used is that it's about someone whom she knows too. They are big family who had sacrificed a lot to pioneer an African country. They had gone there for the Lord, endured a lot of hardship and were faithful witnesses there for several years. But due to a serious medical need that had to be taken care of in their home country, and due to some other factors involving their older kids, they had to leave the mission field and had to start all over again from scratch on their own with their big family in a country where the cost of living is daunting. The emergency funds of course stayed in the home in Africa, and through the whole process they had not one iota of support from F leadership or resources. They were only able to barely manage to get situated because they went through a difficult procedure to obtain state social service assistance.

When they first move back to the home country, they wanted to remain in the F as FM members, but because they had pledged and promised support to F missionaries in Africa, they requested WS if the donations they sent to these missionaried could count as their 10% tithe, because they were broke and in debt due to moving, medical, and the myriad of costs relocating had necessitated. The answer was "No" because of Charter rules, so this this wonderful family was relegated to ex member status. (A tongue in cheek comment: no wonder the F has to keep having purges to get rid of the "bad branches", they inevitably cut off their best.) Needless to say, since then they have changed a lot of their ideas about where the F is really at.

So when I related their story of how the F doesn't seem to have any resources or interest at all for helping people in situations like this needy family, and that things just have not changed and don't change year in and year out, the CM member with whom I was speaking was quite simply silent. I think she was agreeing with me without expressing it. I believe that's the way to get through to them. Not by questioning F doctinal belief systems, but by getting down to the nitty gritty of real life experiences, and what daily existance is really like for most F members no matter how great the testimonies "from the field" sound.