How Integrated Into Church Life Were You?

[Vomit Comet]

Also, how did your "rank" (or lack thereof) factor into the entire ordeal surrounding your deconversion?

[BlueGiant]

I was a lay member with the RCC, so no "rank" to speak of other than being a member of a prominent family in the parish among those in the know. I largely left town about the time I left the church, so can't say that there was any fallout in that respect.

[smellincoffee]

I was the soundman/general church staff at "my" church; I also helped out on work days and that sort of thing.

[L.B.]

As many people know, I was a full-time staff person. Among my various duties were:

 

Youth Pastor

Music Leader

Sunday School teacher

Church Bus Druver

Booker/Soundperson for church coffeehouse

Bible Study Leader

 

and so on. I lived in a church-owned house; the church paid all our bills except for a couple. The church paid for my family's insurance, etc. When we got run out of that particular job, we lost everything in a month's time. Yes, I'd say leaving the church had a pretty severe effect on us in many ways.

[Vigile]

Since I attended church from infancy I experienced a lot of different roles. As an early teen I was a member of cliques within the youth group. As a teen I got roped into volunteering for a few projects. As a young adult I became a church hopper, looking for some new message. I had heard every sermon possible at least three or four, mostly much more, times each. I wanted something that would make me grow. During this time I took to the periphery and would often sneak out the back door in disappointment or bordom.

 

I never ever got involved in church politics. It was of no interest to me and I probably would have considered it worldly at the time.

[xequar]

My highest "rank" came during my high school years, when I was heavily involved with the youth group, volunteer projects like Habitat for Humanity, various church functions, groundskeeping, things like that. When I went to college, I went to a church, but I didn't have the time to volunteer like I had previously, and then shortly after leaving college, I started deconverting and becoming less involved because of a number of things going on in my life at that point.

 

I guess it worked out with moving and stuff so that when I finally did break away, it wasn't a shock and there was no real "loss" from leaving.

[Deva]

The height of my involvement was 1997-1998 in the Episcopal Church. I was on the altar helping the priest with the eucharist (yes robes and all) and also helped record the takings (oops!, offering) and get it ready for deposit at the bank. I was also playing guitar in some of the services.

 

Possibly I would have been considered a core member, but I was accused once by someone for my "lack of commitment" merely because I wouldn't stay after the service for this woman's get-together.

 

Like every church there was a lot of backbiting and gossip and I was definately not in the "in group" because I disliked Cursillio. That was a movement in the church. I was coerced into attending a weekend of what was basically love-bombing.

[Jubilant]

My husband was on the worship team and we were the worship leaders at LifeGroup and for the middle schoolers when DH was not on the main worship team. We were asked, but said, "No" to being Growing Kids God's Way facilitators...lol, the elders and pastors prayed and felt we'd be great. We were on the bread delivery team. I taught children's church on Sundays and Wednesday nights 1-2 grade, and volunteered in the nursery. I was a regular VBS volunteer and teacher in our church home school group. And finally, we were co-facilitators for our life group that ended after the main facilitator bitched to the "upper management" that a women (me) taught one night.

 

I guess we were very involved but my husband was reluctantly involved.

[Eric_PK]

The "PK" in my name means "Pastor's Kid", so I spent a ton of my life in church, until I went away to college and stopped going.

 

PKs tend to be fairly rebelious in nature - they know that their data (*very* rarely, their mom) is a person just like anybody else and therefore tend to be a bit more skeptical about what they say.

[kozimoto]

I lead meetings, preached and prayed for people. Myself and a half dozen others had been chosen to be the young up-n-comers so we got "special mentoring" (read: personalized harassment by elders in the church) and were given lots of opportunity to run youth meeting and preach at "big church". The church couldn't afford to keep us all full time at that point, so this was all outside of normal work hours.

 

I really enjoyed having that responsibility at church. I love public speaking, I felt that when I prayed for people, it meant something, and it was nice to be respected by other youth at church. We were the popular, in-crowd. So, what went wrong?

 

The pastor taught us the ropes - that is, how to put on the show! He would give us the topic to preach on, tell us what scriptures to include, practically put words in our mouths, meet with us prior to and have us run through the preach for him, then critique it savagely afterward.

He would tell us who to call out a "word of knowledge" for. He would say "I know that Joe is having problems, say this and he'll come for prayer." He would tell us to say we had a word of knowledge about very common ailments. He would call and abuse you if you didn't attend every meeting/service/church-affiliated social event. He told us who to be friends with, or not.

 

And then it became apparent that even after all the grooming, he was still going to "bequeath" the church to his sons.

 

By that stage, my job was really engaging me, and when I stepped down, it was a relief. I felt like I got to enjoy my social time again. The pastor lectured me for about 3 hours about my decision, though, and accused me of all kinds of stuff, called me horrible names. And then, after that was done, made it clear that he still expected me to treat him like he was some kind of wonderful healer man.

What a loser.

[Crazycatlady]

I was an alter server and then later a choir member, "youth leadership team" member (head of community service), a lector/reader and several other ministries off and on. I seriously considered becoming a nun for awhile (I'm asexual, so I assumed I had to be a nun since celibacy wouldn't bother me). I'm not sure my involvement played a very big role in my deconversion. I think that rather, I deconverted at about age 7, refused to acknowledge it and threw myself into the church. I didn't reevaluate again until I started college, so there wasn't much of fallout there. When I go home for the summer, I'm still on the lector list, but I only read about two or maybe three times during the summer so it doesn't really bother me. Well, the first time it did. I almost lost my voice afterwards (purely psychological), but after that time there was no problem. I think I honestly half-expected god to strike down the non-believer. (He didn't though -- imagine that!) The choir meets at a different time and has made a large number of changes, so no one seemed surprised that I didn't come back into it. I think being very involved enabled me to feel more comfortable about leaving -- because I had "done it" so to speak. I knew wasn't going to find anything more in christianity.

[jdog]

Over the years, been in the choir, helped with childrens' church, helped in VBS. Wednesday night prayer meetings. Bible studies. social activities.

[Vendredie]

I'd consider my parents to be regualr members. My sister and I however (at ages 11 and 13 respectively) were pretty involved. We had parts in the Christmas play-thing, went to the church camp, did AWANA, and came out for youth nights at the middle school. My family also knew another prominent family, and several more from other chrches we'd gone to in the past.

 

This was all a year before I deconverted though, and I deconverted quite quickly.

[MesaGman]

I was on the outside pehriphrey, and I was a Arronic Priest. But they let me leave with minor annoyance fuss. had I been a member who tithed alot of money, and had skills beyond burger flipping, and other perks that made me make the church look good. you can bet they wouldn't have let me go so easily.