Does anyone go to Bayside? I haven’t been to church in a few years, and it would be great to go…..

Hi Shane

I was brought up Catholic but felt from a very young age that the church was cold and that there needed to be life and real relating there. Being in the youth group made things a lot better and my social life opened up hugely. I was always searching for something more than though. A work friend introduced me to a Christian Revival Crusade (CRC) church and I soon made some lovely friends there and settled in. I loved the emotional freedom, that we could interact with the preaching, that there was actual biblical teaching and preaching that was interesting and there was a huge amount of creative outlets. Most of all people were kind and accepting and the love there was palpable. I loved the fact that there were lots of experiential and self development opportunities, that praying and interceding for others became fun and I had lots of purpose in my life. I got involved in the worship team as a singer and then later as a youth leader. I had many happy, blissful years of reaching my fullest potential creatively, even invited to prophetically dance (we did a lot of dancing in that church). despite not being trained. I never noticed however that as the church grew, the leaders became gradually more rigid. I was so involved in church activities that it was difficlt to attend other things outside there. I started to feel trapped. I met my husband who had come from other churches and used to visit ours sometimes. He noticed things that weren’t biblical and actually quite wrong. People were made to feel that they weren’t committed enough unless they attended every single event. The leadership preached on titheing and there were seriously disadvantaged people adhering to that while the senior pastor had expensive church-funded holidays O/S, with new cars paid for, including fuel, again paid for by the church when others were struggling to make ends meet and yet faithfully serving in the church. My ex husband challenged some things that were happening and the leaders were threatened. They made life very uncomfortable, trying to pit us against each other, which didn’t work. They had spies making lists about him, which included the most trivial of things and then conspired against him. There were meetings held that we were not invited to. D warned me what would happen. I couldn’t believe him and was worried that the stress of the harrassment had made him overly negative. We went to a meeting that we were led to believe was one for working through any differences. It wasn’t that at all but one where leadership had decided to kick D out, (exactly as D had said) offering that I could stay if I wanted to!! They called him “a cancer in the body of Christ” when he’d done nothing wrong. Well I completely lost it, telling them how evil they were and how they underestimated that my very loyalty to them had backfired and I would of course be loyal to my husband. We were instructed not to talk to anyone inside or outside of the church. So-called friends stopped calling. People who’d been closer to me than my own family deserted us and there was no one I could talk to. I had nightmares for ages, was on an emotional roller coaster, couldn’t stop crying and didn’t know what to do. I tried talking to a pastor at a nearby AOG but he was tightlipped, not wanting to hear us for fear that he’d be involved in speaking against a fellow pastor in his community network .

Well that’s the first installment with more to come later.

Thanks for asking Shane.

Ann Maree

Hi Geting there

Great idea! I’ve just put Part 1 in Sharing our stories. I might even ask my ex husband to share some of his side of things.

Thanks for suggesting this.

Ann Maree 🙂

Does anyone go to Bayside? I haven’t been to church in a few years, and it would be great to go…..

I believe that there are a number of Melbourne Freedom 2 b[e]er’s who go to or have attended bayside.

Hey Ann Maree,

Thanks for sharing your story about church. I know so many people who have been kicked out of churches because they challenges the way things worked. I believe all churches need to be open enough to listen to people and their concerns and not just turn their backs on them. I can see now why you would feel the way you do about churches. There is always hurt when people are involved in churches because we all make mistakes. We just need to find a way for it not to damage others like it did you Ann Maree.

Thanks for being honest, it must be hard to see good in churches. I still have issues seeing good in churches as we were very hurt by our last church too.