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Post by Admin on Sept 21, 2014 18:01:24 GMT -5
There is a bit of discussion about this on another thread, so let's collect ideas and discuss them here in the one place. For instance, faune wrote: You asked me to arrange a gathering with f&ws. I gave you the opportunity to do something in the 'real world' about that which you have been posting for many years about on tmb. An offer to place your concerns before the f&ws you live amongst...and you have responded as I expected you would.....decline that and continue your 'Walter Mitty' existence on tmb. Although I am able to agree with little the likes of Elizabeth Coleman posts I do have respect for her in that she has courage of her convictions. She expresses the same in 'real life' as she does in her tmb posts. There is integrity in that. Review005 ~ Perhaps you should read Elizabeth's book when published to get some ideas about what needs changing within the 2x2 organization, in case you haven't figured it out by now? She does a fine job of expressing in words her convictions in real life along these lines, I must admit, and I praise her efforts and integrity in doing so. Also, maja along with some others here at home have shown the same zeal within the U.S., which I feel is also praiseworthy in letters to the overseers and elders within the church meetings addressing these concerns among the friends. With such an interest being shown among the friends at this present time, I'm astounded that more hasn't been done to improve upon things that definitely need changing within the 2x2's, before they do become like the "Message People" associated with William Irvine in the past. The reality of the decrease in number of workers and friends, closed convention grounds, and consolidated fields for workers should speak for itself, IMHO? Two moderator rules for this thread: 1. on topic; 2. keep it nice. We know that God is unchanging, but our natural form of fellowship has aspects that can be a help or a hindrance in our spiritual lives. Not everything must stay the same, in a world that has changed dramatically. Sunday meeting time used to be Sunday afternoon in places around the world, for convenience, before changing to Sunday morning. What things would you like to see changed for the better? What things are ordained by God and hence are not open for us to change? Many who read here, Friends and ex-Friends alike, retain a love for the church and its fellowship of our upbringing. How can it improve? Over to you.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2014 19:15:09 GMT -5
well Christ did rise on a sunday morning and the apostles were gathered to talk about what happened on sunday morning so the "tradition" is to hold it on sunday morning, there is also the meeting held on sunday( day of pentacost)morning where the wind rushed in and little tongues of fire appeared above everyones head...
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Post by bubbles on Sept 21, 2014 21:26:02 GMT -5
Prayer united in agreement. Prayer meetings. Acknowledging the holy spirit the power of god. Applying scripture in proclaimation and declaration. Speaking out loud. Rather than hearing from us overseers being open to workers and friends hearing from God. I'm sure they do in dreams and vision. Overseers learning to minister via the holy spirit. TRY laying hands on people and pray believing for the power of god to touch them. il stop so I dont take over.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2014 12:14:15 GMT -5
Maybe a good start to looking at any ways of improvements would be to read again Matthew 23 and try to understand and absorb what Jesus told the multitude and His disciples on that occasion. There is a powerful message there and a very good guideline as regards leading and following, saying and doing, saying one thing but doing the opposite, ( actual words versus deeds). Dare I say it, not trusting those who speak the words but who do the opposite. A case of don't do as I do, but do as I say situation.
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Post by What Hat on Sept 22, 2014 16:21:41 GMT -5
Things I wouldn't change: Workers, conventions, any doctrine, baptism, anything about meetings and how they are held.
Things I would change: Move any assets, administrative, financial and other matters to a board appointed/ elected by the friends. - I think this was a miscue in terms of restoring the NT church. Clearly Acts 6 indicates the apostles at the time did not deal with many of these matters.
The workers should read more doctrine, at least from the perspective of how their movement stands in relation to orthodox Christianity. - The early workers were raised in established churches and their movement was a reaction against established doctrine. Each subsequent generation of workers risks losing how the church (at large) has changed throughout its history, and where the friends' movement is situated in relation to that history. They also become successively less effective in explaining their point of view to friends' and those interested in the church. - However, I don't believe the friends' church should have a written doctrine. This is something personally that I liked about the church. It would be fine for workers to write or publish their thoughts and experiences, though.
Cease the prohibition on recording the history of the movement and the workers, as it goes along. Encourage the recording and publication of the present day history of the church. Reconcile themselves to the history collected and recorded by Cherie Kropp and others. - Clearly it was okay to do this in Bible days. Why is it not okay now? The problem is that without an actual history, the movement is susceptible to fables. If people don't have an explanation for something, they tend to invent one.
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Archie
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Non,je ne regrette rein!!!!
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Post by Archie on Sept 22, 2014 17:09:38 GMT -5
Preach Love and Acceptance to all. Not Love and Acceptance with conditions.
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Post by fixit on Sept 23, 2014 1:16:08 GMT -5
Alfred Magowan's Letter to Wilson McClung, Headworker of New Zealand, is worth taking a look at...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 4:38:25 GMT -5
well Christ did rise on a sunday morning and the apostles were gathered to talk about what happened on sunday morning so the "tradition" is to hold it on sunday morning, there is also the meeting held on sunday( day of pentacost)morning where the wind rushed in and little tongues of fire appeared above everyones head... Okay that takes care of Sunday AM meeting. How about Sunday evening meeting over here in the UK!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 4:50:39 GMT -5
Wow! fixit, this is very powerful stuff and a warning and eye opener that is most relevant to the present day situation. It is a likely explanation as to why and where things have gone wrong In the fellowship since its inception. This brother was a visionary, in my humble opinion, he got it so right. There is a lot of truth in that letter. It really makes sense to me. Thanks for posting it fixit.
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Post by ellie on Sept 23, 2014 5:32:30 GMT -5
Cease attempting to build the workers and meetings up by making negative comments about non-F&W churches or pastors. Attempting to reduce another’s credibility does not enhance our own.
Please stop lumping all non-F&W churches together, or generalising, as though they are all the same.
Please don’t try and disguise ‘put-downs’ of non-F&W churches in anecdotal stories.
If it’s negative and about someone else don’t say it!!
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Post by bubbles on Sept 23, 2014 7:10:14 GMT -5
How about a special meeting where there is an open forum for questions to workers. These can be quite productive in resolving misunderstandings.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 7:22:26 GMT -5
A very good start to seek to offer meaningful improvement of the F&W's fellowship as indeed improvement of the TMB board would be to seek to avoid using the tongue too loosely and inadvertently committing sins of the tongue; obviously the tongue is substituted by fingers on the forum via the computer. Sins of the tongue may be explained on the following site: bible believers.com under "Sins of the tongue."
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 8:54:20 GMT -5
well Christ did rise on a sunday morning and the apostles were gathered to talk about what happened on sunday morning so the "tradition" is to hold it on sunday morning, there is also the meeting held on sunday( day of pentacost)morning where the wind rushed in and little tongues of fire appeared above everyones head... Okay that takes care of Sunday AM meeting. How about Sunday evening meeting over here in the UK! i would be hard pressed to find any hints in scripture to having a second meeting on sunday, that doesn't mean its not a good idea though. gospel meetings should happen any day of the week at any time...
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Post by christiansburg on Sept 23, 2014 9:13:57 GMT -5
While we do value the spiritual uplifting of fellowship meetings I think we can go a step further. I have found through the years that when we each take part in meetings we are usually so uptight about saying something that just merely sounds good. A majority of participants are so nervous about that that thoughst are sometimes incoherent and sometimes people get so weepy that a lot is missed. I would like to see an informal get together, at least by the elders, once a month or so simply to discuss just doctrine and interpretation rightly dividing the Scripture. I say that because I have found that many of us do not know what we believe beyond what we hear from workers in meeting. Asking simple questions and giving Scripture supporting reasons for why we see things the way we do. We too often base our stand on someone else's conscience.
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Post by mdm on Sept 23, 2014 12:31:00 GMT -5
How about a special meeting where there is an open forum for questions to workers. These can be quite productive in resolving misunderstandings. Opening the door for and allowing honest discussion even of difficult topics would help a a lot. At this point, this doesn't even exist at the ministry level, let alone church level (before someone says it's not true, let me say that a worker has told us that "it is not safe" to talk about CSA and immorality issues and that he doesn't have anyone in the ministry he can talk to about his concerns regarding it). After we spent a year trying to discuss issues that concern us with overseers, and after concluding that it was not productive, that we were running in circles and effectively at a dead end, we asked elders in our field to join the conversation. We wanted to find out if these issues are important to anyone else, and if anyone agrees with us, asking them in the first place to inform our overseer about their views. Naturally, someone forwarded our email to our overseer, and the next thing was that we received a phone call from him, asking us to meet in private with one elder present in order to "get on the same page." We replied that at this point we didn't see a benefit of continuing a conversation in secret, and that the whole church needs to be involved. That was the end of that attempt to start open conversation about church issues we personally found extremely important. (There were actually some emails exchanged where elders were on the recipient list, but they didn't participate, other than to express unconditional trust in the workers and to ask us to remove them from the recipient list.)
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 15:53:54 GMT -5
Okay that takes care of Sunday AM meeting. How about Sunday evening meeting over here in the UK! i would be hard pressed to find any hints in scripture to having a second meeting on sunday, that doesn't mean its not a good idea though. gospel meetings should happen any day of the week at any time... Any time, any day; when the sun shines on its way, is good enough for meeting. Sunday am is a good place to start, but we shouldn't be making it all important.
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Post by fixit on Sept 23, 2014 17:35:55 GMT -5
How about a special meeting where there is an open forum for questions to workers. These can be quite productive in resolving misunderstandings. Opening the door for and allowing honest discussion even of difficult topics would help a a lot. At this point, this doesn't even exist at the ministry level, let alone church level (before someone says it's not true, let me say that a worker has told us that "it is not safe" to talk about CSA and immorality issues and that he doesn't have anyone in the ministry he can talk to about his concerns regarding it). After we spent a year trying to discuss issues that concern us with overseers, and after concluding that it was not productive, that we were running in circles and effectively at a dead end, we asked elders in our field to join the conversation. We wanted to find out if these issues are important to anyone else, and if anyone agrees with us, asking them in the first place to inform our overseer about their views. Naturally, someone forwarded our email to our overseer, and the next thing was that we received a phone call from him, asking us to meet in private with one elder present in order to "get on the same page." We replied that at this point we didn't see a benefit of continuing a conversation in secret, and that the whole church needs to be involved. That was the end of that attempt to start open conversation about church issues we personally found extremely important. (There were actually some emails exchanged where elders were on the recipient list, but they didn't participate, other than to express unconditional trust in the workers and to ask us to remove them from the recipient list.) I feel sorry for the sincere and diligent workers who publicly advertise their gospel meetings, and distribute thousands of invitations in letter boxes, with the hope of attracting the Majas of this world to the fellowship. Their leaders spend months at a time tripping around the world having fellowship with their colleagues, yet they're unwilling or unable to deal with the issues that are driving the Majas of the fellowship away.
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Post by bubbles on Sept 23, 2014 17:45:13 GMT -5
Wally
There is a scripture "forsake not gathering together as often as you wish" I did a study on it once.
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Post by bubbles on Sept 23, 2014 17:52:11 GMT -5
While we do value the spiritual uplifting of fellowship meetings I think we can go a step further. I have found through the years that when we each take part in meetings we are usually so uptight about saying something that just merely sounds good. A majority of participants are so nervous about that that thoughst are sometimes incoherent and sometimes people get so weepy that a lot is missed. I would like to see an informal get together, at least by the elders, once a month or so simply to discuss just doctrine and interpretation rightly dividing the Scripture. I say that because I have found that many of us do not know what we believe beyond what we hear from workers in meeting. Asking simple questions and giving Scripture supporting reasons for why we see things the way we do. We too often base our stand on someone else's conscience. Gosh I can rember how nervous I was. I didn't take part for almost 10yrs. There was also the local guy who spoke to long that everyone whispered and complained about. There should be teaching themes to help people learn and grow. Personally the meetings were too short. I was in churches that prayed an hr before the service. Church was an exciting place to be.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2014 18:19:38 GMT -5
Wally There is a scripture "forsake not gathering together as often as you wish" I did a study on it once. i think the verse your looking for is this one... Heb_10:25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
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Post by fixit on Sept 23, 2014 18:45:17 GMT -5
I feel sorry for the sincere and diligent workers who publicly advertise their gospel meetings, and distribute thousands of invitations in letter boxes, with the hope of attracting the Majas of this world to the fellowship. Their leaders spend months at a time tripping around the world having fellowship with their colleagues, yet they're unwilling or unable to deal with the issues that are driving the Majas of the fellowship away. Fixit: Have you had any personal experience of what you write of? Or is it all that which you would paste and post from what you have read on the net? If you have any personal experience in what you write of, it would be helpful and meaningful for you to share that here. Glad you brought that up. Its a tactic used to shut down dissent. If evil and injustice and spiritual abuse doesn't touch me, then it doesn't exist?
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Post by fixit on Sept 23, 2014 19:10:47 GMT -5
Fixit Appreciate your reply; I understand you have no personal experience of what you have posted of. Your post being based on what you have read of other's writing and perception of their experience. thanks! Are you interested in meaningful discussion on TMB? Or is your only purpose for being here to intimidate members of the fellowship?
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Post by fixit on Sept 23, 2014 20:19:38 GMT -5
Are you interested in meaningful discussion on TMB? Or is your only purpose for being here to intimidate members of the fellowship? I find nothing for meaningful discussion in Their leaders spend months at a time tripping around the world having fellowship with their colleagues, yet they're unwilling or unable to deal with the issues that are driving the Majas of the fellowship away. The claim you have made certainly has no basis on personal experience to it and at best is a dubious disputable statement. The standard of discussion on TMB will be improved when such statements are questioned and posters such as yourself asked to provide reality based evidence or justification for their dubious and disputable statements thanks! Is the fellowship no longer "the same the world over?"
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Post by Mary on Sept 23, 2014 21:09:36 GMT -5
So you are nullifying the experiences of others on the TMB review005? Are you saying you do not believe them. There is inimising, denial and yes spiritual abuse in your tactics. It is people like fixit who tell me there are still some honest people in the fellowship. Trying to shut him/her up is abuse. Typical worker material.
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Post by Roselyn T on Sept 24, 2014 0:04:24 GMT -5
Great idea Ross
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2014 1:19:50 GMT -5
How about a special meeting where there is an open forum for questions to workers. These can be quite productive in resolving misunderstandings. i find that Jesus answers my questions, there is no misunderstanding when we have faith enough to wait on Him for the answer isn't He the way?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2014 1:26:01 GMT -5
Opening the door for and allowing honest discussion even of difficult topics would help a a lot. At this point, this doesn't even exist at the ministry level, let alone church level (before someone says it's not true, let me say that a worker has told us that "it is not safe" to talk about CSA and immorality issues and that he doesn't have anyone in the ministry he can talk to about his concerns regarding it). After we spent a year trying to discuss issues that concern us with overseers, and after concluding that it was not productive, that we were running in circles and effectively at a dead end, we asked elders in our field to join the conversation. We wanted to find out if these issues are important to anyone else, and if anyone agrees with us, asking them in the first place to inform our overseer about their views. Naturally, someone forwarded our email to our overseer, and the next thing was that we received a phone call from him, asking us to meet in private with one elder present in order to "get on the same page." We replied that at this point we didn't see a benefit of continuing a conversation in secret, and that the whole church needs to be involved. That was the end of that attempt to start open conversation about church issues we personally found extremely important. (There were actually some emails exchanged where elders were on the recipient list, but they didn't participate, other than to express unconditional trust in the workers and to ask us to remove them from the recipient list.) I feel sorry for the sincere and diligent workers who publicly advertise their gospel meetings, and distribute thousands of invitations in letter boxes, with the hope of attracting the Majas of this world to the fellowship. Their leaders spend months at a time tripping around the world having fellowship with their colleagues, yet they're unwilling or unable to deal with the issues that are driving the Majas of the fellowship away. for a start as you well know it is God who does the attracting and it is God who is the one who answers the issues if one has faith to take the problem to Him, after all there is no greater problem solver that this world has known ah but alas this place seems to be where answers are sort
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2014 1:29:06 GMT -5
Fixit: Have you had any personal experience of what you write of? Or is it all that which you would paste and post from what you have read on the net? If you have any personal experience in what you write of, it would be helpful and meaningful for you to share that here. Glad you brought that up. Its a tactic used to shut down dissent. If evil and injustice and spiritual abuse doesn't touch me, then it doesn't exist? talk about an over reaction No identifying of posters is allowed. Scott
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