One of the biggest challenges Church of God members have when they start making the decision to exit from whichever group they are in are the ramifications of what those actions will cause, to them personally and those they have been surrounded by for many years.
Stories abound on the internet of people who have bravely stepped forwarded and freed themselves from Armstrongism. They made the decision knowing that it would rip family ties and church ties apart.
For those in Flurryism, those church ties will immediately be broken because the church directly tells members to break all ties with family or friends who no longer attend PCG. Grandparents will turn their backs on grandchildren, parents will turn their backs on their own children. It is not the traditional "marking" that Herbert Armstrong created, but something even more devious as it is used as a method of extreme control.
Others who have left may also have been employees of various COG's who have seen the inner workings of their employers. Some have even been ordained and held high positions.
Regardless of one's position in the various groups, the decision to leave is one fraught with loads of costs and promises. The good thing is that the promises override the costs. Freedom is a powerful motivator and it has nothing to do with a person turning their back on God as some love to label those who have left as doing.
Below is an excerpt from Kevin Denne's blog where he has a post describing he and his wife's (David C Pack's daughter) decision to "jump off the cliff into the abyss" as they left the Restored Church of God. The joy of freedom trumps!
June 17, 2016.
D-Day in the life of Jennifer and Kevin Denee. It was a turning point, the biggest single moment in our lives. A day where we were saying goodbye to our jobs, but also our careers, to our friends, but also our family, to our community and even our church. Really, we were departing from everything we had ever known. We jumped off the cliff into the abyss, and hoped for the best.
Though we had our nerves, June 17 was not as difficult as we had expected. By that point, all the machinery was moving, the snowball was rolling down the hill and gaining speed. We walked out that door, walked off the compound and never looked back.
How did we do it? What gave us the strength to make such a dramatic change in our lives?See the full story here on Kevin's public blog: Storm the Beach
23 comments:
People who attend RCG should at the very least go and join a less oppressive cult.
When I quit WCG, nobody in Tupelo even noticed. Of course it was because I was never part of the clique.
What a strange article. I know of 3 people, including myself, that simply walked away from Armstrongism without a hitch. I even have family scattered in various splinter groups and we still enjoy one another's company. Very strange article.
I hope Kevin’s experience turns out to be a tremendous positive example for the rest of the people enmired in RCG. It is great that he is not exercising his right to remain silent.
BB
Kevin's "Storming the Beach" sounds all very noble and lofty, but it would be nice to come down to earth and share the why's of his leaving DCP and the Restored Church of God. He notes years of problems. While I am sure we can imagine them, such as DCP can't hold on to an office staff more than two years etc, Kevin if family, so perhaps some insights into what it actually is about Dave (which we all know probably) that got to him.
leaving Flurry or Pack is not leaving The Church...it's leaving their church, which might give them the opportunity to fellowship with The Church.
So now that UCG and CGI (Teds old church) are playing footsies, when do the old "disfellowshipments and marks" get rescinded?
Aren't they still technically in place? Is there a time limit on disfellowshipments and markings ? Do they sort of wear out like an old shoe, and then they are tossed out?
Or is it more like when old WW2 vets from Germany and the USA got together in the 1990s, cried together, showed pictures of the grandkids and realized that a big part of their life was spent "in the war" and that life has now passed them by, and moved on. That they had more in common with their old adversaries than they do with the current world?
I suspect this is the case in the COG, for both funerals and reunions.
I think they were afraid of Slender Man
I appreciate Kevin's courage. He was always a person of high integrity. I left a few months after he and his wife did. It was the best decision I have ever made. My physical, mental and spiritual health was far more important than anything the church had to offer. We knew we would lose our friends and we did. No one speaks to us from the church or from the office I was in. It was a clean break for us as we will not under any circumstance ever associate with a COG again as a faith community.
It would be interesting to assemble a panel consisting of Kevin Denee, Kieran Underwood, and exiters from UCG, COGWA, and LCG. People in LCG, UCG, and COGWA are conditioned to believe that PCG and RCG are unhealthy cultic environments, but that their churches are merely suffering from the ordinary problems of human nature and the extraordinary problem that Satan wants their church to fail. If members of the "less cultic" churches could see that their churches have much more in common with RCG and PCG than with normal healthy churches, perhaps more would develop the courage to leave.
When someone leaves the false prophets (GRF, DCP, REW, RJT, etc.) and their satanic imposter cults (PCG, RCG, COG-PKG, CCG, etc.), they should go and sin no more. That is, they should not support any more false prophets or satanic imposter cults.
“For those in Flurryism, those church ties will immediately be broken because the church directly tells members to break all ties with family or friends who no longer attend PCG. Grandparents will turn their backs on grandchildren, parents will turn their backs on their own children. It is not the traditional 'marking' that Herbert Armstrong created, but something even more devious as it is used as a method of extreme control.”
When apostates like the Tkaches tossed out everything that HWA had taught, false prophets like Gerald Flurry claimed to be holding on to what HWA had taught even as he made his own massive doctrinal changes. The apostates came to do away with HWA's teachings. The false prophets came to utterly pervert HWA's teachings.
Any kid after the age of 13/14 can see what kind of parents they have. Even though Pack's kids remained close to the fold for a lot longer than I ever imagined, my own children knew them as young teens, and the boys knew their father was a whack job big time. Staying in their church, close to Dad, was probably an easy paycheck, but after awhile, even for them, they weighed it out and luckily got the hell off that crazy train. Congratulations to Jenny and Kevin!
When I quit WCG, nobody in Tupelo even noticed. Of course it was because I was never part of the clique.
I attended Tupelo for several years under Boyd Mansanarez. What a dead, lifeless congregation. Of all the WCG congregations I ever attended Tupelo (and Columbus, from what I can remember) had the least connected group of people. Difficult to speak with, difficult to connect with.
To compare leaving attendance of RCG to the young men who gave their lives storming the D-Day beaches is an insult to their shed blood.
8:49
I believd the event for Kevin was very impactful. Far more than my experience of just walking away.
Good thinh you point out that the d day analogy is a little bit pathetic. Still for this young family and three children and the position he served in I acknowledge an amount of "facing the umcertain."
Nck
The big problem with Kevin's blog article is it all about saving him/her self - all plan A, plan B, plan C, and plan D of it. Where was the all out storm of articles detailing all the problems with his Father-in-law's grand vision and doctrinal dalliance?
When Kevin and family left, Mr. Pack was endeared all the more by his admiring membership who flooded him with condolence cards and notes.
The following Sabbath after Mr. Denee's departure, Mr. Pack, the most ardent believer in the one true church doctrine which in his eyes is of course his church and a firm believer and teacher of the loss of the Holy Spirit and eternal life for leaving his church, threw his son-in-law and daughter a life line when he said a person could still be a part of God's Church and not be physically in it. A shocking statement for all in my congregation and no different than what Joe Tkach proclaimed over 20 years ago when he said "we are not all there is to God's Church".
So Mr. Denee worked out a grand plan to save his physical life and his Father-in-law gave him a free get out of eternal death ticket to save his spiritual life and Mr. Denee did what for the 1500 poor people that are forced to follow an idol?
Well, WATT, the very acts involved in helping others are only possible if done from a position of strength. Kevin Denee somehow became stronger under the adverse conditions of an ACOG, perhaps the worst of all ACOGs, and now, possibly for the first time in his life, is able to truly help others. I believe he is in position now to follow Mark 12:30-31, loving his neighbor as he loves himself. Hence, Kevin is correct in enumerating his plans A,B, C, and D on his blog.
We should be just as happy for him as we would be for someone raised in a militia or in the Third Reich who grew enough as a human being in substance and stature to recognize right from wrong enough break from and repudiate a toxic environment, and its leaders.
BB
Byker Bob said...
Well, WATT, the very acts involved in helping others are only possible if done from a position of strength.
Kevin Denee was in the ultimate position of strength to help others in the RCG. He was an ordained Evangelist considered second in command in the hierarchy of the RCG. He was the son-in-law and father of Dave Pack's grand children. Who more would be considered an accepted voice in enumerating the multitude of "problems" his Father-in-law is perpetrating in the name of God?
The strength of courage in his leaving is unquestioned. He knew full well the RCG policy of no contact would cutoff his children from a Grandfather and Grandmother.
But Kevin Denee sat in the room and listened to his Father-in-law verbally castigate many times, all 47 former Evangelists of the WCG for not standing up to Joe Tkach to save the destruction of the WCG. So whether he stood up within or stood up without he could of made a difference in the lives of many suffering physical destruction and spiritual perversion.
In the end, the real courage to help comes from weakness of strength. Give me a fellow soldier all shot up and going on nothing but adrenaline to save me. Or give me a parched firefighter enduring no sleep for days and raging heat to save me. or give me a widow lady with a dying child and one last morsel of bread to save me. Or give me a horribly beaten and ripped to shreds and bleeding perfect human being to save me.
As I recall, I read a story about a fellow with a gas guzzling pick up truck that had a faulty fuel gauge that came to a drifting stop running out of gas. He asked all the well dressed people of strength for help and was quickly spurned by them all. It was the old not so well dressed man in the old truck who in all facets would be considered a person of weakness who took the fellow to a nearby town to fill a can of gas and return who saved him that day.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
What a strange article. I know of 3 people, including myself, that simply walked away from Armstrongism without a hitch. I even have family scattered in various splinter groups and we still enjoy one another's company. Very strange article.
December 3, 2018 at 3:02 AM
...and the gaslighting continues...
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