Ten years ago, Truthseeker and his family and other witnesses who were moving to different congregations were given a congregation leaving party at a community hall in New Jersey.
I had been planning my slow fade from the congregation for a while. I grew up in the south coast of England as a third generation JW and moved to America in July 2001.
I had doubts as early as 2000 when I first stumbled on this forum. Before that I was a member of Witnesses.net and Hourglass2 outpost. I had doubts but hoped that reform and change would make the Society a better organization but as the years went by I realized I was in a cult.
I moved to a congregation in Northern New Jersey which was also the home of many Bethelites. The congregation liked me at first and I felt I had potential but deep down I could not bring myself to stay in this religion any longer.
I could not imagine my daughters leading the king of soul destroying life that I had lived growing up as a witness. So I formulated a plan to leave.
My congregation happened to have an elder and his family who were moving to a nearby hall and a young brother was moving to another congregation. I figured now was the time to also “move” and told the elders we’d be moving. The distraction of so many movers might take their eye of us as our attendance was weak. The elders decided to organize a congregation get together for those who were moving to new congregations.
I didn’t feel comfortable at this event for obvious reasons but what made it worse is the elders gave all the leavers a microphone and asked us to tell everyone where we were moving to. This was exactly the sort of aftention I didn’t want. When my turn came I just told them what they wanted to here. It would be the last time I saw these ppl until the Memorial of 2009.
In the ten years I have been out I have learned so much. I am currently writing a JW book which I have been meaning to write for years.
Truthseeker