Today, as a change from the usual sort of message given on this day, in the afternoon service our local pastor gave a personal historical account of how he came to leave the Worldwide Church of God, and pointed out some parallels between the journey and how it mirrored the departure of Israel from slavery and oppression in Egypt. Rather than go over those parallels in detail, what I thought it would be worthwhile to explain a bit my own story about leaving Worldwide in 1995, and what it meant for me personally. Since people from the Church of God love sharing war stories, and since a traumatic experience that continues to shape us 20 years on is less traumatic when shared with others, and since oversharing is a large part of what this blog is all about, here goes.

It is hard to say when I first knew that something was amiss in the Worldwide Church of God. Of course, as an outcast and peripheral member of the congregation I grew up in, I suppose something was always amiss. I remember my maternal family discussing matters regarding the notorious “God Is…” booklet in about 1993, and reveling in their connections in the grapevine to stay involved, but for me, it was the Feast of 1994 in Niagara Falls that was the first clue for me that disaster was ahead. It was not what was said, aside from the chumminess and the lack of seriousness the Eighth Day was given, but what was not said, an inspiring vision about the world to come. Only one speaker rose above the general milquetoast and ho hum going through the motions. The feast remains my worst feast ever, and given my experiences at the Feast, that is a high standard of low achievement.

By the time that December rolled around, the congregation was in a fair amount of turmoil, as were neighboring ones. It was still beneath the surface in Lakeland, though, given the fact that the majority of the congregational leadership was either going along with the doctrinal changes or so loyal to the organization that they did not make waves. I made waves as a somewhat loudmouthed 13 year old who alone among the teens of my congregation stood loyal to the beliefs previously taught. It was a lonely time. Being a kid, I did not have much ability finding like minded souls in the days before the World Wide Web and with no e-mail access, but I felt the stress of an intolerable situation that needed to be resolved. I was friends with the minister’s son, despite being on opposite camps of the doctrinal divide, but he revealed how his family ate pork and had Christmas trees even before such matters were openly discussed in public. It was not until the infamous 3 hour long Sabbath sermon that matters were ratcheted up another notch.

By the time March of 1995 rolled around, it was very clear that matters were being brought to a head. A man named Friddle was brought to our area to explain and justify the doctrinal changes, and at the last minute our congregation was told to attend the district Sabbath service in St. Petersburg in order to set a good example of quietness and support for authority. The message involved splitting hairs about the meaning of podium and lectern, and my family and I walked out before it was done, our time sufficiently wasted. I attended the Passover that year as a guest, and the atmosphere was extremely tense. By the time the First Day of Unleavened Bread rolled around, there were openly divided messages, and it was clear who was on which side. Soon thereafter my mom and I attended bible studies at a community center for a trailer park that was used as a hall until more permanent arrangements were made after the Indianapolis conference in May 1995. Shortly after Pentecost, my nuclear family at least was out of Worldwide for good.

There were other complications of this divide. For one, I was decisively cut off from being in Lakeland, and having my focus directed towards the country of Central Florida, and my focus was redirected towards Tampa, and the city, a chance that would prove decisive in my own transition from rural dweller to city person. After some years of being disconnected, my mother and stepfather reconnected and had a whirlwind courtship greatly aided by their conversations over shared beliefs within the traumatic experiences of leaving what for me had been a lifelong church my family had been a part of for generations. That kind of experience is going to leave scars and harm lives in terms of reduced friends and peers because of division and fragmentation, reduced trust in authority, greater wariness and skepticism about change in general, and other like outcomes. The repercussions of such experiences spill on for years and years, far beyond their initial influence. Perhaps this is why we continue to ponder why we were cast out of where we came from to become vagabonds on the face of the earth, suspicious strangers and broken wanderers, whose bodies and hearts and minds and spirits and relationships only God can possibly repair and make whole again.