When I first started 'pioneering' at aged 19 I was encouraged by my so called spiritual leaders(elders) to do window cleaning. Which I did but could never make enough to support myself, so I had to take a second part time job which was also a cleaner at a primary school. I was always broke and always poor.
What never really clicked with me until many years after leaving was that none of these so called elder spiritual guides did window cleaning or pioneered themselves.
In fact they did the very opposite and lived very full and rich lives.
One ran his own building firm and dealt with milt-million pound contracts, another had his own very successful double glazing business, another was some kind of mechanical engineer who worked for some big multi-national organisation, another was a chemical engineer, another owned and ran his own very busy printing firm. In actual fact almost all of them were either directors and owners of their own companies or had very senior positions and high paying salaries in worldly organisations. Those that ran their own businesses all employed other pioneering brothers or sisters and paid them all a meagre wage for working hard and long hours.
All of them were married, had numerous children, owned their own beautifully furnished 3 to 5 bedroom homes, all wore quality and immaculately tailored suits, owned multiple cars (which they used to drive past me while waving in foul weather while I walked the 6 miles to and from hall) and took their families on several holidays a year which explained the constant healthy tanned complexions. Their also immaculately dressed kids were the first to have cars the moment they left school and were old enough to drive.. they walked straight into the best jobs in other brothers businesses, and had their dating and marriages arranged by and with the cream of the congregation and were the constant stars in all demonstrations on the platform.
Yet they constantly encouraged and steered me into remaining single and forget all thoughts of dating, become a full time preacher and maybe missionary, ride a bicycle everywhere in all weathers, get my clothes from second hand shops and be menial cleaner to support myself as it would make God and Jesus very pleased with me. Yet somehow I was still not good enough to ever date anyone's daughter or to be invited anywhere. I'd say these people made the few years I spent with them the saddest, most lonely, depressing and miserable I have ever experienced in my entire life. I have kept detailed diaries since I was 13 years old.. and if I read what I wrote during that period you would think I was about to commit suicide such was my heart rupturing sadness and misery.
It I had remained there with those people, as a single person with no family in the organisation I would have condemned myself to a life of utter loneliness, abject poverty and complete social rejection even in the congregation for being a broke ass nothing orphan.
How on earth could we ever put ourselves in a situation where we allowed to be manipulated and wrestled from our grasp total power and control of our lives, if we date, if we marry, who we marry, when we marry, what work we do, how we dress, how we speak, how we think, how we feel, who and the very definition of what we are even to some overweight, lazy, privileged self-important hypocrites?
Dam...
The best thing I ever did was leave and get as far from these life crippling, brain dumbing, talent killing exploitative pretenders and impostors as possible and liberate myself from what could only be described as a form of modern slavery.