As usual the leadership of the Living Church of God is blaming members for the drop in attendance (i.e income) during Holy Days that fall on week days. It seems that the church has been unable to get its message clearly across to the Laodicean members in it's midst. Weston blames it on so many of them being new to the faith. They apparently are too dumb to understand the reasons why they should be attending instead of going to work or to school.
Even worse though is the fact that many "old time" members are doing the same thing! Heathens! James Malm will NOT be happy! Where is the ZEAL????????
Could it be that they are all sick of being yelled at? Could it be that they are sick of every single sermon that Meredith preaches has to denigrate gays, women and other Christians? Could it be they are sick of the endless drivel about jackbooted Germans and rampaging Muslims in every single sermon, article, tv show and tweet?
The ministry of the Living Church of God has spent decades trying to scare people into believing their baloney. Fear no longer seems to have a stranglehold on members as it did in years gone by.
...I have noticed a different trend over a number of years that when a Holy Day falls during the week, we consistently have a lower attendance than when one falls on the weekend. This pattern is likely related to newer people who haven’t yet come to understand the importance of God’s annual Sabbaths, but some members have been around long enough to know better. Paul tells us in Hebrews 11:6 that it is impossible to please God without faith. Let’s all step out in faith this Monday for the Feast of Trumpets and October 12 for the Day of Atonement.—GEW
Gerald, face the facts. Many people come to LCG on the Sabbath to visit with their friends. They don't come because they think Rod Meredith is going to teach them anything new or solve their problems for them.
ReplyDeleteDuring the work week, people often have something better to do than listen to you or Rod Meredith. By the way, having two services on a Holy Day doesn't help your LCG partisanship. In fact, what it does is make it easier for people with friends in other groups to spend one service with their friends in the other group and one service with their LCG friends. You know this happens, even with a couple of LCG HQ employees. If you don't give your own HQ employees grief for doing this, how do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you complain about ordinary members not showing up? As your boss likes to say: GET REAL!
the fact is if they would spend half as much time focusing on issues of fairness and equity internally, the duty of ministry to behave themselves, and avoiding the appearance of evil behavior, e.g., nepotism, racism, hypocrisy, etc., they would have more cred...
ReplyDeletehave they not read Malachi 2 ??? have they not also read James 1:27 ??? and 1 Corinthians 13 ???
or maybe they have and simply do not believe or flat out reject the Scriptures...
you people reap what you sow!!!
The ministry gets nervous with lower attendance because it's 8 whole days of the year they think they have something to do with their time unlike most of the rest of the year
ReplyDeleteDoes Weston really believe it's because new members are coming into LCG as to why attendance is down during the week? I haven't seen a new member step into our congregation in years. The messages today are BORING. There's no life in what's being presented each week. Looking around the room and you notice half are sleeping and the other half are in some zombie state or trance. This is a dying church, if not already dead. The messages are recycled from 40+ yrs and have become watered down chalk water. It's not close to being milk or meat. HQ can look to blame the people but the tone and example is set from Charlotte.
ReplyDeleteeeewww watered down chalk water... Enough to make one vomit. Same old, same old everywhere. Please Lord deliver your people from such, we carnt bare it a moment longer.
DeleteReminiscent of HWA yelling at us, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT!!
ReplyDeleteIt's all about the money....people don't show up on a holy day, they also don't put money into an envelope, especially after the plea / threat / ??? is given to give, give, give and all the other drivel repeated 7 times a year. Faith = Money, but only when the membership is giving, not by the leadership that should have faith, without a monetary factor.
ReplyDeleteWhen you can justify taking the 3 times in a year OT scripture and make it stretch to 7 holy days of NT giving, it doesn't take a mental giant to do the math...attendance on these days gets even deeper into the members pocket, beyond all the tithes and other offerings and it gives you one more opportunity to justify your own existence, as a ministry.
I actually know of an offertory one time where it was told to everyone to turn to Deuteronomy 16:16 (3 times a year), it was read and he said they could probably stop right there since this was the focus anyway, without all the other stuff that usually went with it. The deer in the headlights look from the members was priceless, as they didn't know how to react when they weren't being beat up for more money.
GTA made people feel like they were smart to believe in the Radio Church of God. He spoke in a warm and friendly and thoughtful way about what was going on in people's lives and in the society around them.
ReplyDeleteEven HWA made people feel like they were part of something special, as each tithe-payer or co-worker felt invested in subsidizing the trips to world leaders and a media effort that rivaled much bigger churches and worldly magazines and television programs.
Listening to Rod Meredith makes nobody feel special. It is something people endure. Rod sees the world through the perspective of his carnal, stupid children, and paints a picture of the world that most normal people don't recognize. Maybe Rod was current in the 1950s, but time has moved on and he has not. Rod's media effort, too, is ridiculous compared to what GTA/HWA produced.
LCG: Are You in An Identity Crisis?
GTA: Trinity Origin Exposed
During His ministry, people flocked to Jesus Christ to hear Him and to be near Him. He attracted people. Rod Meredith, by contrast, according to HWA , repels people. If people don't feel (rightly or wrongly) that they can look up to the leader and identify positively with him, there won't be huge attendance or big donations. That, in a nutshell, is LCG's problem, and neither Meredith, nor any of his sons, nor any of his ministers, can fix that.
Um, some people actually have jobs on weekdays and don't want to risk losing them to listen to some boring sermon about being obedient to authority...
ReplyDeleteIt's simple: If they don't show up disfellowship them.
ReplyDeleteThere.
That solves that problem.
Of course, they will continue not to give you money....
GTA was a skilled con man.
ReplyDeleteMost likely, it's because he learned the con game from his father, also a successful con man.
Maybe a little "nature" was involved, but it was mostly "nurture"
The same applies to how GTA completely disregarded sexual taboos.