MrDarkKnight: In my 15 years as an elders I served with many spineless men with no backbone and no ability or desire to act on their own. They did not like confrontation and cowered when meeting with "free thinkers."
No kidding!
When I started fading out slowly (first, I stopped attending Thursday night meetings, then only stayed for public talk on Sundays, then every other Sunday talk, etc...), not one elder approached me to talk about it. This went on for almost a year and a half. I even sent a letter to the GB laying out my grievances. That letter never got a responce. I understand letters like that are passed on to the CO and then back to the originating congregation (information I made sure was on my letter).
One time, an elder followed me out in the parking lot after the public talk and asked if my arm was still bothering me. (I had surgery to fix a ripped tendon three or four months earlier). That was it. Nothing else.
NADA!
Unless you count the messages that were sent home to me via my female housemate to ask how I was doing, would you like to talk, the elders are always here for you. Yet, for a year and a half of this process, I was sitting right next to my housemate in the back row, easy to spot and NOT ONE ELDER approached me. NOT ONE!
No exageration.