That fun loving Jonathan McNair, who got his job because of nepotism, is back encouraging the young men of the Living Church of God to waste one year of their lives, taking classes he helped design. Seriously! Why?
Is Rod McNair going to teach a class on how to find demons in nursing homes among the elderly? Or how about teaching the young men that they can't be proper witnesses of the gospel unless they have an org chart telling them who is in charge and what to believe. Will they have a class on how to malign church members characters and reputations, from the pulpit, like they did the Scarborough's?Living EducationOne of the most common questions asked about our on-site program in Charlotte is this: “Why should a young man take a year out of his life to come to Charlotte to study the Bible? That won’t help me get a job.” This is a good question. For a young man, whether just leaving high school or in the young adult years, his focus should be primarily on acquiring skills, knowledge, and experience. Without these three elements, he won’t be able to lead and provide for a wife and a family. But here’s a challenge to you as a young man: Don’t get so caught up in the rush to make a living that you forget the importance of learning how to live. This is what makes Living Education unique. Your local community college, the university you’d like to attend, or the apprenticeship you’re applying for will not teach you how to live. We will. Give us one year and we’ll give you a foundation for a lifetime. What about young women? We’ll address the benefits of Living Education for you next week!—Jonathan McNair
Next week we will be blessed by the highly encouraging message from McNair to the young women of the church on why they should attend for a year. What better place to learn how to cook for their husbands to be or to learn how to set a pretty place setting for dinner. Oh the joy!
39 comments:
Is this a joke ? Is this for real ? They will tell you how to live. Oh the joys.
I thought the whole point of God bringing the children of Israel out of Egyptian slavery was to escape task masters.
Kids, don't let yourselves be exploited.
The real purpose of Living Education in Charlotte is to work half-time, for $10/hour, for around 40 weeks a year. For less than the cost of one full-time employee, LCG can hire three of you for just $8,000 each, with no benefits, instead. If you are compliant you will do jobs that employees with much higher wages could be doing, but if they mark you as a kid with no future you will do the most menial work that the most junior full-time employees hate to do.
I wasted 7 years of my life in that Armstrong bull shit! How can I get those years back?!?!
Ever since reading an online Tomorrow's World article, I'm plagued by screen ads for same, but know what to do: Keep clicking on them to cost the Meredith cult money!
When their ads open in a new tab, just kill it quickly and then reclick and repeat ... until you get carpal-tunnel pain.
The $ix-figure-salaried Meredith cult leaders will be telling their tithe-troops how successful the online advertising is!
I used to do this to those annoying Pack ads until they went broke?
Ambassador College did teach its students "how to live" in a certain way. They were not taught much about making a living with the exception being those who would go into the ministry where Armstrongism was their career. Few majors with practical value were offered. Those that were offered closely paralleled Ambassador College operational departments and needs - business, computer operations, agriculture, home economics. Not really what you would call academia.
But "how to live" is a nondescript phrase by itself. Its meaning can be manipulated. In practice, "how to live" at Ambassdor College meant learning the value and practice of The Great WCG Caste System. The educational program was about a rigid hierarchy with the leadership and ministry in the bright and lofty heights and the lay membership in the miry and dismal lowlands.
AC implemented quite effectively a system that taught students that some people are much more important to the church and God than other people by the standards of the WCG. And understanding how and why is the most important issue in their lives.
The challenging sleight of hand for the AC faculty was to make the standards of the WCG appear to be God's standards. My guess is the educational programs of the church fragments track closely with the old, defunct AC.
I wonder what the recovery time will be for this year some will spend. How much damage can be inflicted by these academic poseurs? Will students lose key ingredients of their personalities that would have allowed them to become executives or company owners or just plain excellent in their careers?
There’s also the chance that the year turns into a screening process and recruitment for something else. All things considered, most will be better off if they choose to “pass” on this opportunity. There are many better things to do with a year that once spent you can never get back.
BB
McNair writes "Why should a young man take a year out of his life to come to Charlotte to study the Bible? That won’t help me get a job"
IT WONT!
Website for Swift Transportation trucking school...
https://careers.swifttrans.com/driver-jobs/student-hiring/?utm_campaign=Student_GoogleSitelink_GetStarted_V1_XX&source=SwiftLead&number=855-577-0177&ef_id=WVGOkwAAAEL9eBCQ:20180421155524:s
Swift is the truck line I drive for. :^)
Nothing new in this, Anonymous 4:01 AM, they did the same with the LU students for years.
Overinflated the fees for their tin-pot university and then used the students as very cheap labor. By the end, they were even replacing the skilled and experienced employees with this second-rate labor source, not caring that they then got second-rate results.
Still, after their complete failure to get normal church members to take over call-center duties for them (remember that? A few years ago they actually started considering having members answer the phones instead of paying professionals to do it), I suppose they had to find another way to cut their costs so that they could then waste money on employing Meredith family members and keep up with all the nice bonuses that the ministers have grown accustomed to.
Hmmm, this year of Living Education needs a name to make it stand out as an alternative to the Gap Year...
Teaching students "how to live" is pure marketing from ad man Herb. They expect members to look away from reality and blindly believe their nice sounding words. It's a manipulative ploy that they use again and again. It's like a minister telling a group of us that we should socialise exclusively in the church since members are so converted and correctable. This was just before the church fell apart in the Tkach era.
Bully ministers teaching members 'how to live' is a sick joke.
McNair is right on the money when he advises, "Don’t get so caught up in the rush to make a living that you forget the importance of learning how to live."
McNair is dead wrong in his contention that Armstronist organizations can teach anybody how to live--not in any healthy way.
Some better ways to spend a year:
Hitchhike around the country doing odd jobs, talking to people in all walks of life.
Enroll in a junior college and work on the general education requirements for an associate degree.
Tour Europe on the cheap; stay in youth hostels and take advantage of cheap public transportation deals.
Visit museums, libraries, and national parks and monuments.
Volunteer for groups and causes you have an affinity with: a food bank, political party, ecological project, homeless shelter. . .
Whatever you do, remember to get outside your own social milieu and talk to people.
Connie mentions, "Website for Swift Transportation trucking school..."
MY COMMENT - Apparently, there is a nationwide shortage of Commercial truck drivers. I commute regularly between my homes and businesses in Maryland and Florida on I-75 and I-95. I have seen several billboards for trucking companies searching for drivers, and have also seen the big rigs on the highways with "help wanted" advertisements on them seeking drivers as well. Trucking is an essential means to deliver products in the distribution chain.
My advice to young people in the Church is to forget McNair, and Living Education (remnants of the now defunct Living University which are remnants of the now-defunct Ambassador College) get an accredited education that will help you launch a career and get a job. How to live will happen along the way. Don't be fooled by those trying to justify their job or their position in the Church on your wasted year. Get the right kind of education. I was an Ambassador College reject in 1973. I went on to obtain my B.S. in Finance/Investments from the University of Maryland and my M.B.A. from Drake University. My "worldly" education did me well in life, and I thank God often for Ambassador College's William Stenger's reject letter.
Richard
Notice only the men are invited to get educated. Taliban women need not apply.
An AC grad (call him Jack) told me about this back in the Seventies. Jack felt that AC should have an employment placement office for graduating AC students like other colleges and universities. Jack suggested this to administrators and it fell on deaf ears. Jack heard later that another AC grad he knew had gotten a job with IBM. IBM had hired the grad but knew nothing about AC or its educational program.
Later Jack overheard Rod Meredith talking to a group of people informally and Rod mentioned the AC grad who had gotten a job with IBM. But Meredith embellished the account by saying that IBM now wanted to hire as many AC grads as it could get.
Jack approached Meredith, told him that the AC grad, whom Jack knew personally, just happened to get a job with IBM. And IBM knew nothing about AC and was not trying to hire AC grads. He also put in a plug for AC getting a much needed placement office. He said that Meredith had no response to his statement (I recall vaguely that Jack said that Meredith stared blankly at him for a few moments) and the conversation ended.
An AC education should have been connected with some kind of outcome - like getting a job. I heard several times from the pulpit that AC grads were all doing well and had great incomes. But I always wondered how many of them had another degree that they had gotten either before or after AC. Or maybe a family business.
Armstrong Formula Number 394........
Could this be the conversation that may have happened with some COG "Colleges"???
*********
"Hey, I've Got an IDEA!
What's that???!!
We need laborers, but we can't really afford professionals...... HEY! Let's start a college. THEY have to pay US, WE don't have to pay THEM! And then, we can make them work for FREE, while WE give them a totally worthless certificate! WHAT A GENIUS IDEA!!!!! They pay US to WORK!!!! Bahahaha!!!!"
Oh, that's just too easy. Could it work?
Well, they are getting an education. They just can't use it, you know. They'll walk away with good experiences. But, we can give them credits for the work they'll do which WE don't have to pay anyone for!
Wow. That sounds like we can legally get slaves to do our work for free??
Brilliant, huh?
*********
"Bash not what you understand not."
Who said that? Kant? Hulme? Schopenhauer?
"Apparently, there is a nationwide shortage of Commercial truck drivers."
Rubbish.
1) Soon the Google Truck will replace truckers.
2) Now, if there were really a shortage, why are the shelves not bare in the supermarkets?
3) Capitalism is supposed to be a self-correcting system. If there is a shortage wages will go up and more people will go into it. They are lying about the shortage in order to get government money and as an excuse to import cheap foreign workers and put our own people out of work.
I remember walking across the AC Pasadena campus with a couple of upper classmen sometime in 1966. The KJV was virtually considered to be “God’s version” of the Bible. The upper classmen had been discussing other historical versions that preceded the KJV, and one of them asked the other, “Hey, what was the name of the Syriac version?” The other replied, “Oh, you mean the Peshitta?” Being fresh out of public high school, where much explicit language was used, I assumed that he was trashing a “profane” version of the Bible, and derisively calling it the “Piss-shitta”. I began laughing uncontrollably, until one of them told me that the proper name for the Syriac Bible was actually Peshitta, and that it was significant because it did not contain some of the same books as the KJV (in fact, as I discovered later, the omitted ones were the very same pseudepigraphical ones to which Dennis often refers).
Much later, I became better acquainted with these different versions of the Bible because when I listened to Dr. Gene Scott, he would read the same verse from several early Christian versions of the New Testament for purposes of clarification. Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic were generally in the mix.
But I doubt that these would be covered, other than just in passing, in LCG or any other ACOG “college” courses.
BB
The ACOGs seem perpetually to be stuck a generation or two behind the rest of society.
Notice, for instance, how LCG has recently started to push hard the idea that God doesn't want you to use marijuana. They've always believed this, but lately it has become more and more of a focus of their media efforts. Never mind that marijuana use isn't condemned in the Bible. Never mind that Moses probably used cannabis in an anointing oil. Never mind that a marijuana brownie is far less of an intoxicant than a fifth of gin. At precisely the time when more and more people in the USA and Canada are recognizing that marijuana is on the whole no greater a risk than the also-legal alcohol and tobacco, LCG is taking a stance against its use, making the absurd case that it is a religious and Biblical duty to avoid marijuana. Ridiculous!
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Somewhat unrelated...
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1989-10-13/news/8910133307_1_worldwide-church-tabernacles-feast
1989 - 63,686 members? I thought we boasted nearly 140,000 in 1985. I know this has been discussed years past. Over-inflation of numbers to blame?
anonymous 8:21
That is close to the circulation number of the "WWN" at the time.
Also it speaks about the US members.
The number probably amounts to 63.686 "households" in the US. husband and wife receiving one copy.
At the time there were about 93.000 members in the US and Canada (7000?) and some 35.000 in the rest of the world.
20.000 europe (including england)
The later and highest 150.000 number was perhaps a "feast attendance" number.
nck
I is graduate of Living church of God bibble class. It is very good class. I am so educated my friends and relatives is very impressed. I wright very good englis too.
Much has been written and documented over the the past two decades by people who worked in actual departments involved that casts doubt about the accuracy of the old WCG’s official statistics and figures. In a way whatever the statistics were are even irrelevant today, because all of the splintering and shrinkage have reduced Armstrongism into something negligible, with nothing new or exciting, and virtually no street buzz. It’s purely a nostalgia act these days, only nobody really cares about the moldy oldies and golden gassers of Armstrongism.
BB
BB
The statistics are extremely relevant!
With the ongoing and current buzz nowadays on the perceived "racism" etc NON of the thousands of black NON AMERICAN members have stepped forward on this blog too speak out.
And this is only one example of why the statistics matter in current topical discussions and always intriguing how dissenters try to negate the facts and statistics that do not fit their personal experiences or narrative!
nck
BB
Other statistics on the dissident sites that are completely wrong and moronic are the ones about 30% tithing. It seems dissidents can't do math either.
nck
The only people who ever give a rat's ass about Armstrongism are Armstrongites, Former Armstrongites, and those who are related to the same. For everyone else, it does not even make a BLIP on Religion Radar.
Let's look at reality:
1. There are FIRST GRADE CLASSES which are probably bigger than this "bible class".
2. ONE Megachurch (pick a large city) is likely bigger than a WHOLE COG.
3. COMIC-CON Conventions are bigger than ALL the Feast of Tabernacles COMBINED today.
4. Armstrongism is now as divided as any other religion is or has been. No difference.
5. Cat Videos attract more viewers than a typical COG YouTube "evangelism" video.
6. The old Ambassador College Campus in Pasadena is practically completely gone.
7. Most of those who started WCG are also completely gone.
8. There is no weight to COG prophecies because history has deflated their power.
9. Those who leave COG's (including naturally) are more than those who enter COG's.
Even the largest of the COG's (PCG, UCG, LCG) are dwarfed in size and scope by many SINGLE non-denominational churches around the country.
The truth is, Armstrongism is not just dying - it's already dead. When you cannot distinguish Armstrongism from any other religion, and it takes on the characteristics of it's competition (division, multiple fragments, competing dogmas, small and scattered), it is simply ranked in as one of thousands of "fringe cults of Christianity". There is no one person who stands out to revive it - and those who have tried have failed miserably. And the most successful of them seem to be running on fumes.
This only raises the significance and importance of the COG blogs like this one and it's purpose - because the number of people who have awakened to the truth of what it was and is greatly outnumber those still inside the cult. For those who have died to Armstrongism and have now been reborn into whatever new belief system and reality they are now in - this blog's usefulness as a resource and a place of healing and conversation can never be underestimated. The Internet truly has become the force that brought the COG's to their knees.
Anonymous April 21, 2018 at 8:10 PM said Rubbish on Trucking shortage.
MY COMMENT - Suggest you Google "U.S. Trucking Shortage". There is plenty of information out there on the subject. Here is a link to one article: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-09/the-u-s-is-running-out-of-truckers.
As Connie alludes, young people in the ACOGS would be much better served by attending Commercial Trucking school than wasting a year at the laughable Living Education.
Richard
In certain ways, you develop better character as a truck driver than you ever would as an ACOG ministerial trainee. Patience, courtesy, perseverence, the value of hard work, delayed gratification, mental toughness, and value of fellow man are just a few examples. Also, in many states if you hold a CDL, you cannot drive even your personal car or bike for 6 hours after consuming any alcohol.
HWA used to say that more ministers came from his cabinet shop than any other department in the church or college. Truck drivers would probably give those guys a run for their money!
BB
... more and more people ... are recognizing that marijuana is on the whole no greater a risk than the also-legal alcohol and tobacco ...
Regular pot-smoking lowers the IQ by 7 points. Idiots should not be allowed to vote, they are a danger to society. People need all the brains they have. In fact, anyone with an IQ below 130 or 140 is probably too stupid to vote in the first place.
You can find all sorts of articles about the trucking "shortage" but so what? That just shows the bias and stupidity of the media and of the trucking industry. There is always a "shortage" of people who are willing to work at one of the most dangerous jobs, low pay for the hours put in, lots of time away from home and family, high resulting divorce rates, high turnover, etc etc. PAY THEM MORE and the "shortage" will correct itself. That is how capitalism is supposed to work.
In the mean time, the shelves in the stores are FULL so everything is being delivered on time. There is no shortage of drivers.
All I know is having met Johnathan McNair on multiple occasions, he's the last person I'd take life advice from. The man is a flaming fool.
I’ve never repeated that 30% figure, nck, just as I’ve never owned slaves or burned witches. 30% is an oversimplification, taking worst case scenario (one’s third tithe year) and extrapolating it into every year. Also, within certain rules, members spend much of their second tithe on themselves. Financially speaking, though, Armstrongism is mos def a high-demand cult, and the impact of that is greatest on poor members.
BB
11.06 AM
Nice assessment. But you left out Gods relationship to Herbs members/former members.
Cat videos out doing XCOG videos, ha ha ha.
BB
Yes. Statistics are important.
It seems the discussion shifted to truck drivers.
"The real Jesus" book (1977) boasted truck drivers as listeners to the WTM radio program on the back side. (which is very important space for book sellers)
The citing of "the truck driver" offered some clues as to the 2 distinct cultures in wcg (the rugged outdoor down to earthish, outspoken, no nonsense texan and the cultured (as in brought into submission) californian golden promised land at the end of the rainbow yellow brick road the epitomization and pinnacle of the empire and media center of the world, i'm still not sure about the bricket wood distinction (perhaps the "worldwide, international, social stratification, administrative culture, pauline evangelising to the gentiles part (st albans? paul in britain?) a base to the middle east and africa commonwealth nations.
nck
As a former Living Education student (and current Living Church of God employee), I am just going to politely remind people to be respectful and not speak of things you know nothing about. You make yourselves look, sound, and act like fools. If you don't like the Worldwide Church of God, that's your business, but if you claim to love God, you should know better than to post foolish things on hate (Christ says NOT to hate) websites.
11:05am Mr. Hall it's time to wake up. LCG is not God's church. You can obey God by keeping His Sabbath and Feasts on your own and by being willing to fellowship with others, not just those in your organization.
You really need to find a job in the real world. With your new wife it's your responsibility to provide for your family and working for a church organization is never profitable unless you are able to get high in the ranks.
Get a real job!
"(Christ says NOT to hate).
April 11, 2020 at 11:05 AM"
Really?
Pro 8:13 - The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.
Evil, pride and arrogance are a perfect definition of HWA's unbiblical clergy class.
Yes, we should hate corporate organizations that place themselves above God.
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