Withdrawal
Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:12 pm
The whole idea behind withdrawal never made any sense to me. Someone would leave, and then subsequently be "withdrawn from". But, if someone left on their own, didn't they withdraw themselves? It's like the cOC feels the need to go on record and say "well, lets get something straight here, we kicked them out, they didn't quit". I had someone tell me that withdrawal was supposed to be reserved ONLY as a last resort for those who were in the congregation, and were not living right and would not fess up and repent. But, the thing is, I never saw it practiced for that reason. The only withdrawals I ever saw practiced had to do with people who had already quit coming. And in some cases, it took YEARS before any sort of announcement was made. A lot of times, (during the withdrawal announcements) some people would look at each other and say "now who are they talking about?", because so much time had gone by since that person had quit coming that people had either forgotten, or new people had started going there and thus had never heard of the person that was being withdrawn from. My poor mother got withdrawn from simply for changing cOCs. She had "forsaken the assembly" by not making it official that she has made a change, or some such. So, FOUR YEARS after she made the change to a different cOC, they announced that she had been withdrawn from! Two of the elders had the gall to show up at the cOC that she had moved to four years earlier and tell her "we withdrew from you today". That was followed by them being escorted out of the building by the preacher and a couple of other guys and told that they had taken things too far. Now, think about that for a minute. When one hard line conservative cOC thinks that another has gone too far, well that says it all! How in the world to you withdraw from somebody who is gone? That would be like an employee resigning from a company, and then, AFTER the employee is gone, the company decides to terminate them. 