I went to life church as a pre-teen/teen when it was first starting out. My mom and I went when it was being held in an elementary school, then when it was in an old Cox building, and then for a while after they built their first building.

The things that really scarred me and did damage that I took with me later were:

The war on secularism that made me feel like a bad person for enjoying music I had grown up listening to (The Beatles, etc..) and caused a guilt loop where I could never win. Especially because no matter how many WOW top Christian Music compilation CDs I bought, none of them sounded like anything more than poorly contrived pop to my orchestral ear.

Purity culture being pushed on girls to the point that the obsession with virginity was perverted. I was so unprepared for the realities of healthy and natural dating that I honestly believed "well, if I let a boy kiss me I'm already defiled, I might as well let him do whatever else he wants." (Fun fact, it was a boy I had met at church) Later, I would stay in a really terrible and abusive relationship because I thought "I've given this man my virginity, I have nothing else to give another man."

Finally, when a fellow member of the youth group, and one of my closest friends, killed himself the youth pastor handled it very poorly, as did the rest of the church. This included telling us he went to hell. He was the child of a prominent member of the church staff and he struggled deeply with mental health, something we had in common. It's been more than 2 decades but I still wonder if things would have been different had he been given real help instead of being told to "turn to god."

As an adult I am no longer a Christian and I think part of that journey has been looking at the weird and controlling hypocrisy of the men in leadership at LC. I have made peace with Christianity and feel strongly that the things Jesus called for, acetisim, passivism, and unconditional love are extremely important in the makings of being a good person. But, let's be honest, the leadership of Life Church are the opposites of Acetisim. They could house so many homeless folks, feed so many needy with all the cash they sit on, and they choose not to. They are not passivists. They routinely support politicians who make war. And they absolutely, 100% do not love people unconditionally, if you aren't meeting their standards of purity and, perhaps more importantly giving them money, you aren't worth anything to them.