The Current Enigma in the Restored Church of God Under David C Pack: Why Do They Stay?

We've all asked the question as the madness of David C Pack unfolds week after week, "Why do they stay?"  

For many reasons I suspect, all grounded in "I can't turn back now",  like being heavily invested with "Send it in!" and the foolishness of "Common". Once you have given all, you can't give it again and denial of such a mistake in giving has to be put aside with maybe the next edition of Dave's, 'We never saw it, but now I do" will be correct. Of course, it won't. Not now and not ever. But that's not important yet...

While one of Dave's keep you in your seats techniques is to mock those who say, "I can't take it anymore!" as if that conclusion is some kind of deviant view, it should be the obvious view of a clear thinking human being sincerely stuck in the wrong place. Dave has and will give one plenty of reasons to not be able to take all this BS anymore. It's ok to conclude that and leave. The evidence is in.

https://exitsupportnetwork.com/expose-of-clarion-call-the-time-is-now/

Being warned and personally convinced that there is only one true Church, and it is the Restored Church of God will keep some in place. After all, the NT church had problems and were mistaken about a lot of end time things, but it was still the Church. Even Paul was mistaken so it is no problem that Apostle Pack is mistaken over and over. 

Threatened with the loss of Eternal Life will keep one in place. And then there is the "fact" that you'll probably consider suicide if you leave. Fear, guilt and shame is the glue that holds many a butt to a seat they need to actually free themselves from.

And of course, "If my friends are still here, then it must be right, or will be at some point, because my friends are able to not be troubled by one failed prediction after the next by Mr. Pack. I mean, he's just human (for now) too and means well. If my friends can dismiss Mr. Pack's erroneous predictions and understanding, title taking and the general waste of our time week after week, I can too! 

Or..."Maybe I just don't have enough faith, like my friends seem to have..yet"

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Following is a study related to why do they stay that can be helpful in answering this question as to "Why Do They Stay?".  

While the concept of getting more and more people to join the church as a method of dismissing the reality of one failed fairy tale dreamed up by Dave is not a big factor with RCG at the moment, it might need to be in the near future.  Dave left the studio and that which drew people to RCG, evidently, long ago and opted for this in-house lunacy, which is proving costly. 

Now it is resulting in both monetary and member losses without the compensatory value of new people coming into RCG. They simply are not, and this is one reason why, as desperation grows in maintaining the Church and physical plant, paid for with "The Clarion Call" of years gone by, the danger inherent in Dave's delusions of who he believes he is in scripture and how short he imagines time to be before his Christ returns to Wadsworth grows. 

It is also, however, conceivable that Dave Pack will panic at some time realizing that it's all falling apart and return to the studio and booklets to attract and replace the losses he currently is suffering and continues to suffer. 

Desperate times require desperate measures and Dave dropping the current foolishness with a revelation from Christ that, "We never saw that all this prophetic inspiration was Christ showing me that I needed to preach the Gospel again to the world! But now I see it!....Who has the keys to the studio?" 

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

Festinger, Riecken and Schachter were already studying the effects of prophecy disconfirmation on groups of believers, when they read a story in a local newspaper headlined "Prophecy from Planet. Clarion Call to City: Flee That Flood. It'll Swamp us on Dec. 21" 

The prophecy came from Dorothy Martin (1900–1992), a Chicago housewife who practised automatic writing, and it outlined a catastrophe predicted for a specific date in their near future. Seeing an opportunity to test their theories with a contemporary case study, the research team infiltrated the group of Martin's followers in order to collect data before, during and after the time the prophecy would be refuted.

... As anticipated by the research team, the prophesied date passed with no sign of the predicted flood, causing a dissonance between the group's commitment to the prophecy and the unfolding reality. 

(Note: To date, RCG members have experienced 47 failed returns of Dave's Christ just this year alone)

Different members of the group reacted in different ways. Many of those with the highest levels of belief, commitment and social support became more committed to their beliefs, began to court publicity in a way they had not before, and developed various rationalizations for the absence of the flood. 

Some others, with less prior conviction and commitment, and/or less access to ongoing group support, were less able to sustain or increase their previous levels of belief and involvement, and several left the group. 

The findings of the research team were broadly in line with their initial hypothesis regarding how believers might react to a prophecy disconfirmation if certain conditions were or were not in place.

Hypothesis

Festinger, Riecken and Schachter used the study to test their theories on how people might be expected to behave when faced with a specific type of dissonance, arising from a failed prophecy. 

The team had seen that in some cases the failure of a prophecy, rather than causing a rejection of the original belief system, could lead believers to increase their personal commitment, and also increase their efforts to recruit others into the belief. They identified five conditions that they proposed could lead to this type of reaction:

Conditions for increased fervor after disconfirmation

(i.e when the prophecy fails)

Condition	Effect
"1. A belief must be held with deep conviction, and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves."	Makes the belief resistant to change.
"2. The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief."	Makes the belief resistant to change.
"3. The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief."	Exposes believers to the possibility of their belief being disproved.
"4. Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief."	Exerts pressure on believers to abandon their belief.
"5. The individual believer must have social support."	While an individual might be unable to resist the pressure to abandon their belief in the face of disconfirming facts, a group might be able to support each other to maintain the belief.

In the case of all conditions being in place, their hypothesis was that believers would find it difficult to abandon their beliefs in the face of disconfirmation, would use their available social support to maintain their beliefs, and would try to increase consonance by recruitment through proselyting, on the grounds that "If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must after all be correct."

The research team considered that all of the conditions were likely to be fulfilled in the case study involving Martin and her followers. 

In this case, if the group's leader could add consonant elements by converting others to the basic premise, then the magnitude of her dissonance following disconfirmation would be reduced. The research team predicted that the inevitable disconfirmation would be followed by an enthusiastic effort at proselyting to seek social support and lessen the pain of disconfirmation.

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Maybe Dave will come to his senses. Probably not.