Posted by:
Greyfort
(
)
Date: June 05, 2012 11:29PM
During the time that I worked for the Church, I began to recognize things about the organization that I'd never noticed before.
The first thing was what a good old boys club it was. When one of the long-time Church employees applied for the top position in the office, she was basically patted on the head and told that she needed the discernment which holding the Priesthood would give her, in order to do that job. Therefore, she shouldn't bother applying.
She did, and they indulged her by interviewing her, but they had already made up their minds even before they interviewed her. Yes, there were some women holding that job in the Church, so it wasn't as if you had to be male.
The other thing was the pressure to do a perfect job, while not being given the resources, nor the time to complete such perfection. I had people calling me in tears, feeling that they were letting down the Church because they couldn't complete the job to their expectations.
A GA came in from Salt Lake and pretty much laid it on the line for us. If during our performance evaluation we received a poor rating, we'd be bringing down the scores of our entire office. Heck, we'd be bringing down the scores of our entire region.
But why stop there? We'd be bringing down the scores of the entire country and it would be our fault. That was another thing which appalled me.
My testimony was beginning to falter at this point. I began to think of the Church as nothing more than a corporation, with their product being their brand of eternity.
My attendance suffered a bit and my tithe-paying as well. Because of that, they put me on probation from my job, telling me that I was worthy to go to church, but I wasn't worthy to work for the Church. You had to keep absolutely temple-worthy in order to work for the Church.
I'm sure that my friends still believe that it was being put on probation which made me leave, but that's not true. If I really believed that the Church held my eternity in its hands, I'd simply have said, "What a jerk," when that Bishop said that to me and I'd have continued going. I wouldn't have let someone being a jerk keep me from my eternal destiny.
What made me leave was that I finally realized that the Church was damaging to ones self-esteem. I thought to myself, "Why am I doing that to myself? I should leave," and so I did. I just walked away and never went back.
From the moment I left, my self-esteem began to heal. It wasn't until 4 years later that I found out many truths about the Church I hadn't known before and that's when I officially resigned.
But it was shortly after leaving Church employment that I left and never went back. I guess getting a job for the Church woke me up. I used to tell my friends, "If you want to keep your testimony, keep your employment and your Sunday life separate. Don't ever work for the Church."