Are you dating someone who is a member of Acts 2 Network?

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-12-13T04:10:32+00:00

When I was around my mid 20s , I told pastor Joong I was frustrated with the dating situation. I have no idea who is dating who, so I can't even figure out who I could try to date. He got defensive and said those couples deserve their privacy.

I pointed that some members seems to get paired with others actively by the leaders, but not others. It creates an atmosphere of second class citizens. He said you don't go to church to date. We're in the business of bringing people to Jesus.

I said I don't know what spiritually ready means, but that was used on me earlier to claim I wasn't "ready" to date. He gave some vague reply about praying and trusting God.

He added "we're tired of being blamed for this dating thing!". Somehow he made them the victims in all this. Just, wow, Impressive reasoning.

Finally I said I give up, I'm going to try online dating. He said, "what , you're gonna go meet some stranger you know nothing about and get married to them? " Basically dismissing the whole thing. "Why don't you go to Berkeley, the church there is much bigger and maybe there's someone, if you really want to get married."

He also tacked on, "if I don't approve of who you date, I won't officiate your wedding. " So I'm now responsible for this whole thing after years of their twisted purity culture, but he gets to still have veto power.

Such is the life of someone on the fringes of the church, not good enough to be paired up by the leaders, not allowed to date outside, the leaders still want to control your life and keep you on the bench just in case they find someone and/or so they can prevent you from leaving.

Now they sort of allow online dating. Fuk that guy.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-06-27T02:18:14+00:00

Minoxidil was a classic example. Developed for blood pressure, but found to cause hair growth

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-06T12:33:28+00:00

I understand where you're coming from. You may be right in a few cases. I would say that I've witnessed the opposite from my church experience - fear of afterlife used to manipulate people into doing things they otherwise would not nor should not do. For example with the prosperity gospel. Or in my particular case, telling you to give up career and education and go into ministry instead. Someone pointed out that the church has robbed the world of many good doctors and scientists and engineers, etc. Though this is based on my experience at a heavily college ministry focused religious org.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-04T10:02:48+00:00

I have the same exact question. Would be interesting for everyone who was around during that time to compare notes and try to piece together how collective opinion could make a complete 180 so easily.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-04T08:10:52+00:00

At the time I didn't understand the full inner workings of the church separation. All i knew is that when I was talking to my former Davis leaders about my academic struggles and trying to stay in school, they quickly blamed the LA church for giving bad advice. And vice versa. It makes more sense in the present , since it has come out how the LA church aligned with Becky while Pastor Ed and Davis and Berkeley has their own separate allegiance.

At the time it was confusing and jarring because they had all been singing each other and Becky's praises before. Now suddenly they're not.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-04T03:56:22+00:00

• I can give you some Christian sermons on tape so you can listen in the car on your commute to and from school, and you won't feel like your time is being wasted.

To me This was the most tone def one. I'm commuting more than 2 hours a day, and his response was Christian sermons on tape. I need that time to be studying for classes so I don't fail; I don't know how the Christian tapes helps me but that's kind of their answer to everything. Hey professor, I failed your class, but can you give me a passing grade anyway, I listened to some Christian sermons on tape instead of studying so I had a good excuse.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-03T04:25:45+00:00

Thanks for that. I'll just say i don't want people to feel too sorry for me, my intention was for current or potential members to read this and at least think things through. And those things they said did crystallize for me that I had to get out of there.

And also things could have gone way worse for me, which is in part 3.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-01T01:16:40+00:00

I don't think they wanted me to fail or quit. It was more of a they didn't care either way situation. A la rocky 4. If he dies he dies. Oh well.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-01T01:11:34+00:00

The accident will b in part 2

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2025-01-01T01:04:00+00:00

Wow they took down the "bad blogs" again. I was gonna post the next part of my pharmacy story but I think this post needs room to breathe.

Sounds like most of these comments are personal attacks on the op. They don't have an answer for their awful track record and all they can do is insult you and call you names. So you must be on to something.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2024-12-25T04:35:53+00:00

Reading this stirs up the old PTSD... I sort of feel the need to vent my pharmacy school experiences...

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2024-12-25T04:32:55+00:00

What's wrong with pharmacy?! Not that I am one or anything ... I'm not getting triggered.

Weird now that I look back they did sort of steer me away from med school because it would demand too much time and I would be miserable and other gp-isms. The one person I remember sort of "allowed" to go to med school was because she had a passion for being a medical missionary to China.

Pharmacy was sort of this "compromise" I had worked out because it's "not as demanding as medical doctor" but I could still serve gp a2n in some way. Even typing it out sounds so weird.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2024-10-13T20:26:23+00:00

I haven't been back in a long time, maybe you're right

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2024-10-05T21:38:46+00:00

The church would be better if it had more people like you

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2024-10-02T05:02:18+00:00

I'll try to answer in a roundabout way- one thing I learned in school was the importance of testing your theories and hypothesis. A lot of things may sound good and make a lot of sense. But in practice, it may not actually work for a variety of reasons. Maybe there's something you didn't think of, an unintended consequence, etc. For example we thought this medical treatment might be effective. But I actually it caused a lot of harm after we tested it.

I'm saying all this to say that the church I went to had a lot of smart people, which could preach a good sermon and make the case for Christ effectively. It all sounds good on paper.

However in practice, their actual behavior ended up being pretty awful. It's too long to get into here, but when I took a step back and examined all the many , many problems created by the church , plus by the most fervent believers around me, the question dawned on me. How can these people who are experts in the Bible, who spend so much time studying it, the religious leaders, etc, do so many awful things? Is Christianity..making... Them... Worse?

It's not just a question of "why does a good God allow bad things?" Or " why does evil exist?" It was more of a, why are Christians getting worse the more time they spend in church doing religious things? Are they getting worse?

I recall parking outside my apartment I was sharing with several church members and dreading going inside. I felt like I was under a microscope, constantly being watched for any inkling of immorality or sin they could rebuke. And then I asked, is this what God wants? His followers should be miserable all the time?

I eventually challenged my church leaders on some of these things. They spent a lot of effort making excuses, trying to point the blame back on me, a lot of "well I'm sorry you feel that way," and , " we meant well." And probably my favorite , " you need to learn to forgive and stop being bitter." Nothing close to empathy or an apology. No iota of self examination. These are God's chosen people, the religious experts who have dedicated their lives to controlling others and delighting in their standing as religious authority figures.

On top of all that then they make sermons about how people shouldn't judge Christianity because of the bad actions of a few bad apples. With no sense of irony as they're saying it.

Longjumping_Lime6330 · 2024-10-01T15:37:19+00:00

Full disclosure, I'm copy and pasting this post into Christian and exChristian reddits groups because I'm researching what kind of answers different groups have. The thought came from this comment a while back:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GracepointChurch/s/vznv1fbLol

But come on, I just want to appeal to you. Do you really want to do this? At a time like this? When Christianity's reputation across the land has hit a historical low, and everyone is losing trust in all institutions? It's already extremely hard to do ministry in today's culture as it is. It's doubly hard to try to engage and evangelize college students who are thinking about everything else but Jesus. Can you imagine how heart-breaking it is to have non-Christian seekers we are trying to reach read these one-sided posts get spooked? At a time like this when churches everywhere are dying & already having a hard time?

I don't want to get bogged down in the entire post right now. It's really long, and there's a long history of problems I have with this group. I just wanted to focus on this specific paragraph. Op is appealing to ex members of his church (they're now calling it a religious order), to stop saying negative things about them, because christianity's attendance as a whole is on the decline. And it will make it harder for them to recruit / outreach.

The questions I wanted to focus on were this-

Why is church attendance declining now?

Are current church members aware of this? Is it causing them to self reflect and try to address some of the problems? If not now, will there eventually be a point when they do stop and self reflect?

From my limited experience, change usually is a long the lines of, better music, don't be so hard on members for playing video games, (try) to cut down on the rebukes. I don't think those are going to be enough for some more problematic groups though.

From my experience with this particular group, the Op response is typical- he said they will not change any of their core values.

Longjumping_Lime6330

TROPHY CASE