Can Healing Be Found Here?

I am filled with a heavy heart as I sit down to write this. For many years I invested my life into a group of people that I came to love, and believed they loved me. That group was said to be a place where the many become one . A place where people could belong. A group that states it wants: “To be known by love”. Yet, over the years, as I have met people, the mention of this organization often times stirs up fear, hurt, disillusionment, and even rage. As a person who had a significant role in this group, myself along with other leaders, passionately embraced the name for this organization, because we thought that it would personify the image of what “Church” should be - a place where the broken can find healing. Instead, under the leadership of the pastor and his team, too often they have inflicted emotional and spiritual wounds; leaving people to fend for themselves. I have agonized over writing this, because I am grateful for the way that this collection of people invested in my life as a Christian, and I have not wanted anyone to misunderstand my sorrow, confusing it to be bitterness. However, the reason that I grieve is because I know good people who have been manipulated, rejected, and abandoned. I have done, what far too many have done over the past years, when it comes to their negative experience with this organization - nothing. In the past, I chose to be silent about a place that emotionally abuses people in the name of the Church. I was led to believe that it was wrong to ask questions about the actions of its leaders. I was told that I would be considered an ungrateful, rebellious, or a bitter person. It upsets me to think that there are still individuals who are being treated in this manner. For example, I have talked to many people who were readily embraced for their talents, yet were quickly discarded when they were no longer of use. I am grieved to realize now that I naively participated in, and sat by watching, as good brothers and sisters were emotionally broken for the benefit of this group. It deeply concerns me to think that there are hundreds, if not thousands of people, that this group influences. I invite you to respond to this blog. There are many good people who are unaware or unwilling to recognize the abuses that have occured, and continue to occur, in this organization. Please share your personal experiences concerning this group here (with respect and all honesty).