Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Gerald Weston Looks Back With Fondness To The Time They Were Able To Give Swats To Kids At Summer Camp


The glory days when church members 
could use paddles with holes 
to cut down wind resistance.

Nothing still enchants many COGers more than the mythical "good old days" of the early years of the Church of God movement when it was the time period when church members were encouraged to beat their children with paddles, The Summer Educational Camps of the church were well known for giving children swats when they were perceived to be misbehaving. The strict disciplinarians of the church are particularly fond of this time period.

Gerald Weston recently looked back fondly to those days. The youth in Canada where he ruled with his iron fist probably think otherwise though. 

Weston is trying to encourage the youth of the Living Church of God to be filled with Purity, Honor, and Respect just like the youth of the old mother church were.


As the Radio Church of God grew during the twentieth century, it was recognized that there was a need to do something to help guide Church youth through an increasingly corrupt culture. So, a summer camp for teens was started in 1962. Several of those pioneer campers are still around, including my wife. To a degree, camp in those early years was more like boot camp. Campers “fell out” at 6:00 a.m. for morning exercises, inspections were exacting, and swats were given out as discipline for infractions. Camp is very different today! 
 
It is easy to look back and wonder how camp could have been so demanding, but we are unwise to take any situation out of the historical and cultural context of its day. Most of those early camp leaders had either served in the military during World War II or had been influenced by those who had. Swats, inspections, and marching were also common then in the Boy Scouts, in which I participated before learning God’s truth. It was a different world back then, and it was not as bad as it may sound to people today. Camp that first year lasted eight weeks and many campers returned for a shorter six-week camp in the following year, even with 100-degree weather and housing in booths with no air conditioning! Sports, dances, and other activities contributed to innumerable lasting friendships.

Weston continues on about YOU and about what a magnificent specimen of athleticism he was in the early years. 

The camp was moved from Texas to Orr, Minnesota, in 1965, and over the next several years it became recognized that a summer camp was not sufficient by itself to “keep the youth in the Church.” With the best of intentions from dedicated and sincere individuals, a program called Youth Opportunities United (YOU) was begun. Many ministers were young and athletic, so a basketball program was started for boys and a volleyball program for girls. Young adults also formed teams, with different congregations challenging one another. Tournaments began to be organized, with regional participation. These were great fun—but expensive, as facilities for practices and games had to be rented. Tournaments meant that families were burdened with the expenses of travel, meals, and motels, along with more demands on time. 
 
Some areas had well-organized programs with good sportsmanship, but good sportsmanship began to deteriorate in other areas, and instead of drawing youth from different Church congregations closer together, the program was often divisive. This was not true everywhere, but was true in too many locations. Angry disputes and hurt feelings became increasingly common, whether at basketball and volleyball tournaments in the United States or hockey tournaments in Canada.
I grew up playing organized baseball, football, and basketball, and ran the quarter-mile on my high school track team. I also took swimming lessons, which became my ticket to involvement with the Church summer camps. It was natural for me to be a big supporter of these sports events. But, as time went by, I became disillusioned by the fruits I was seeing in the later years of the YOU program. It was not all bad, but bad fruit was showing. 
 
I was also a big supporter of the Summer Educational Program, serving nine years at the camp in Orr, Minnesota, and one year in Big Sandy, Texas. The value of this experience is difficult to overestimate, especially the years serving under Dr. Kermit Nelson from 1987 to 1994.

For anyone who ever went to Orr for SEP or to many of the YOU events, the biggest offenders and troublemakers were the children of the ministry and church leaders. 

In Pasadena, evangelists and high-up minister's kids were the drug dealers, troublemakers, and the ones openly sleeping with whichever sex they wanted, most of the time without consequences. If a lowly church member's child did such things they were kicked out immediately, no questions asked.

By then the church was in its great apostasy stage and rebellion was everywhere. Never fear though, the Living Church of God stepped up to the plate after rebelling against two church organizations, to set the youth of the church on the right track as the epitome of purity, filled with honor and respect.

When I joined the Global Church of God in early 1995, I was asked to help start a summer camp program under our Presiding Evangelist, Dr. Roderick C. Meredith. Our first camp was at Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and many campers thought it was a great success—but from an administrative perspective, it was not. Staff were untested and untrained. To begin to remedy the problem, we started training and testing high-school-aged staff for the purpose of selecting future leaders. 
 
After God purged the Church of some disloyal ministers and members in GCG, Mr. Lambert Greer and I were asked to oversee the Living Church of God camp in 1999. The two of us, along with Messrs. Jonathan McNair, Paul Shumway, and others, took the lessons we had learned from the past and began to develop a new approach that would avoid some pitfalls from previous programs and activities. We recognized that we could not put “new wine into old wineskins” (Luke 5:36–39).

Well, we have seen how well the Living Church of God has done with putting its valuable "new wine" in its old wineskins since the apostatized from the mother church. It's now just as corrupt or more so than WCG had ever dreamed of being.

Weston continues to make excuses for the summer camp issues the church has had. They never wanted it to be too "churchy" or to be known as a 'church camp". Well, of course not! God forbid if Jesus was to be taught! Strict adherence to the law classes were ideal though.

At an August 2000 Council of Elders meeting, I presented a vision for a new approach. The gist of it acknowledged that some past approaches had not produced the hoped-for results. Without realizing it, and with the best of intentions, we had tried to “keep teens in the Church” by providing exciting activities for a few weeks. During the 21-day sessions at Orr, Minnesota, the emphasis was very much on the physical, and we had great physical facilities and programs—we had water skiing, rock climbing, canoeing into the wilderness, basketball, volleyball, softball, swimming, water polo, parasailing, and so much more. I have little doubt that many teens equated “God’s way works” with activity and fun. But what happens when the fun ceases? 
 
The Summer Educational Program was a bit light on working with the mind and spirit. These points were not totally neglected, but to the minds of our teens they clearly must have seemed second in priority. As an example, throughout the three-week schedule we only had four Christian Living classes: “Your Relationship to Rules,” “Your Relationship with Money,” “Your Relationship with Others,” and “Your Relationship with God.” There were Sabbath services and Bible Studies, but there was a conscious and explicitly stated desire to not have a “Church camp.” There definitely was an intent to promote godly values, but there was also a desire to avoid being “too religious.”

No matter how hard Weston or the church tried, the youth never internalized the messages and never remained loyal to the church. It's always the youth of the church that is at fault and never the message or the leaders. Some things in the church have never changed!

Despite that, much good came out of those Summer Educational Programs. Although I had grown up participating in organized sports from an early age, my first year working in Orr was an eye-opener. I had never seen such well-run activities as I saw there. I learned a lot about how to run a successful activity. Between 1983 and 1999, I worked under four different camp directors and learned a lot about what works—and what does not work. I was privileged to work with some remarkably talented and intelligent men and women over the years. 
 
Regarding the history of Church youth programs, what also became clear is that people learn to appreciate those pursuits into which they invest time and energy—it is best when they have “skin in the game,” so to speak. Our youth are best served when they learn to give back to the Church. Those young adults and high school staff who teach others the values of the program are far more likely to “buy into it” themselves. How many times I remember hearing at a morning counselors’ meeting how “different” the teens were from when the counselors themselves were teens. Yes, there may have been a few differences, but in most cases, the counselors did not realize how much they had changed. The values that had not been important to them a few years earlier had now become a part of them. As Mr. Lambert Greer rightly said, the values we teach today will not be internalized for several years. 
 
We realize that not all young people will accept what is offered to them. We know the Parable of the Prodigal Son—two boys were raised in the same family, but while one chose the right way, the other chose a self-destructive path. The second son eventually repented and learned the right way, but by then he had been scarred and damaged, squandered his inheritance, and suffered a lot of heartache. Sadly, so it will be with some of our children.

Faced with the reality they have been failures at keeping the youth in the church, Weston has designed a new approach to return purity, honor, and respect to the youth of the church.

Now that I’ve discussed some of the history of youth programs in the modern era of the Church of God, I want to share with you some of the principles we are restoring during Staff Orientation at the Texas Living Youth Program. One of the first points covered is our Mission Statement, formulated in the first years of our Living Youth Programs: “To bring teens together in a learning environment for the purpose of recapturing true values; and to further the creation of a culture of purity, honor, and respect among the youth within the Living Church of God.” 
 
We apply the same principles in conducting our onsite Living Education program, as well as our Living 4 Tomorrow programs for those aged 18–30. And what do we hope to accomplish? Here is how we express our purpose in one sentence: “We expect that out of this culture of purity, honor, and respect will come godly relationships that will lead to loving marriages and strong families that will provide stability and future leadership in the Living Church of God and society as a whole.”

Weston then leads off with PURITY:

This mission—this goal—must be explained in detail. What is meant by a culture of purity? All our activities must be conducted with this in mind. As I wrote in the November-December 2000 Living Church News on this subject:

It is accurate to say that if you do not know where you are going, it is likely that you will not end up where you want to be. The first law of success is to have a goal. We need to have a vision of what we hope our end product will be. Our product in this case is our children. If we hope to have young adults who reflect God’s way of life, we must begin creating the atmosphere in which that end result will blossom (“Coming Soon: A National Youth Program”). 
 
A culture is shared by members of a group, and purity is God’s way of life. Each generation is born into a world directed by Satan (Ephesians 2:1–2). We must reinforce godly values—the same values Church parents want to see in their children. A godly culture is fostered when a growing number of young people begin to internalize those values. Then, when they are around other Church youth, such as at the Feast, they can find others who strive to live by the same culturally pure values.

Then HONOR and RESPECT: 

But what do we mean when we speak of honor? This refers to a deeply ingrained code of conduct, such as it was for Joseph when he was tempted by Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39). 
 
We hope our young people will create a culture in which they live by an honor code of pure godly values and a life framed by respect for others—for parents and elders, for themselves, and for one another—for their good. I often say rather forcefully, “Girls, demand respect from the boys! Don’t let them talk you into something you will later regret. And respect them in the way you dress. Boys, true love is outgoing concern. Respect these young ladies. Don’t defile your best friend’s future wife!” This is blunt, but they must hear it in an era that shows no respect and has little concern for others.

Weston ends his article with this:

We recognize that not everyone lives up to our hopes and expectations. We also make mistakes—and camp is never perfect—but I wanted to share with you a bit of the history of summer camps in the Church of God and some of the important principles and mechanisms we are using to create an atmosphere of purity, honor, and respect—the way of outgoing concern. 
 
The value of a few courageous and understanding individuals must not be underestimated. Jesus gave the parables of the mustard seed and of leaven. Small beginnings can grow into something great (Matthew 13:31–33). We should not despise the day of small things (Zechariah 4:10). A pebble thrown into a pond sends out concentric waves. Through Living Youth Programs, Living 4 Tomorrow, and the on-site Living Education–Charlotte program, we hope to develop an ever-expanding godly culture among the youth of God’s Church.

You can read the entire article here:  Purity, Honor, and Respect 

 

21 comments:

  1. ".....of God's Church."
    $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
    eeeeeeeeeeeeeeyiyiyi.....groan

    ReplyDelete
  2. The gross immortality on display at Gerald’s summer camp was what caused a young family member to have nothing to do with LCG after attending the camp. But sure, he will go on blathering like it’s making a difference. On second thought, maybe it is making a difference.

    ReplyDelete
  3. GW notes: "I also took swimming lessons, which became my ticket to involvement with the Church summer camps."
    =========================
    LOL At the same time in ministry, asked HQ if I might have a chance to work a summer at SEP and teach swimming.

    In High School I taught every level of swimming for three summers for the American Red Cross utilizing the backyard pools of residents in many a neighborhood to teach the neighborhood kids to swim. I had my Water Safety Instructor's Credentials teaching Jr and Sr Life Saving. I worked three summers at a Salvation Army Camp along Lake Ontario before I went to AC. I was four years on the Varsity Swim Team and on the All City Swim Team in Rochester, NY. In the Scouts I had every conceivable merit badge in canoeing, rowing, camping, survival and swimming. At AC I swam the 1000 yard freestyle for some reason but now I forget why because there were never any swim meets.

    Alas... evidently it was not what you knew but who you knew. Sorry, no openings... They had already filled the position with Gerald Weston. This post brought back memories! LOL.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would say good luck to them. If only Worldwide and Ambassador College would have stayed in tact they could have done a lot more for todays youth. See, Notre Dame and BYU don’t have to worry about programs for their youth. Even though they are false they understand how important youth really is.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gerald lost the respect of LCG parents when they saw how he would let the children of LCG ministers get away with things that would result in serious punishment for the children of ordinary members. Maybe he was "just following orders" laid down by RCM, but he was truly a loyal storm trooper who instead of being a proper Christian shepherd let many LCG young people be ruined. Even RCM eventually removed Weston as head of LCG camps because the fruit of his leadership was so bad.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The gross immortality on display at Gerald’s summer camp

    That might have actually made LCG youth excited about attending.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ah, yes! I was one of the young Caucasians privileged to attend the first two years in Tejas, and the first in Orr. First year, I'd told the parental units I'd rather not go. I was told it was either that or reform school. When I got there, it was so much more lenient than the draconian discipline at home, that I really didn't want to go home. Many of the kids I met there were more (and I hate to invoke a COG cliche here, but, uh, "rebellious" is the proper church term) than I, so the summer ended up being more or less a seminar on how to deal with the many parental problems a young Armstrongite teenager might face on a daily basis at home. Know how behavioral scientists speak of people going to jail for minor crimes and returning from jail worse? Well, that was also true of SEP.

    But, camp was fun, and I learned a lot. Just not the kind of stuff that the church and parents expected. Glad I was born when I was. These days, with all the home schooling in the ACOGs, and brainwashing and such, I know I'd end up on the streets, or in a gang, or in juvie. What kid with any brains who found himself being raised in a cult wouldn't?

    ReplyDelete
  8. My experience in my 10 year stay in the old WCG was that the ministers were partial to evil and evil members. I think they convinced themselves that this would encourage members to stay, but it simple drove many from the church. Who's going to be loyal to an abusive group?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Partial to evil because evil excites them.

      Delete
  9. I am glad to hear everything LCG keeps doing with their youth is failing. Those vampires at HQ know the Work is over. The internet has exposed the COGs for what they are...remnants of a dead cult. Even the children are doing their due diligence on line and realizing they are in ponzi schemes being set up as these ghouls' only source of future income. I guarantee there is not a "purity" issue among our youth. What the youth are doing are winning arguments with these wizened racists, sexists and homophobes who lack any sense of compassion for human beings not giving them money. The times, they are a changin, Gerald Weston and not even the god of Armstrong can save your children. You see, the death of that god happened to coincide with another death in 1986.

    ReplyDelete
  10. One other thing I meant to thank Weston and the other COGs for is their positive influence in driving their children out of religion completely and into a growing atheist generation. Hopefully, we can catch up with Europe sooner than later.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The good old days when I was beat with a belt on my bare bottom bent over the couch surrounded by the family. My pastor father and chief beater gave sermons on child rearing bc he thought he was an expert. Bc he read GTAs book. Weston is just another Herb henchman that enabled and promoted child abuse and evil. Arrogant sobs like them are the root of all evil.

    ReplyDelete
  12. That was my parents' physical fitness routine, 12:25! I recall my Dad getting very out of breath as he swung the belt. I got so I could laugh as I got spanked, until my Mom decided that I had callouses on my right cheek, and started swinging lefty. It wasn't only belts in my house. We had a lot of trees in our back yard, so there were switches. Also Bit-Bat paddles, and metal spatulas. We had forced fastings, in which we lost most of our meals for an entire weekend. Oh, and somehow most of our offenses were converted by twisted logic they learned from the WCG into "lying" which was the big maximum penalty offense of 40 lashes. Gym class was very embarrassing at school!

    It is absolutely amazing how the personality disorders from that type of upbringing last so long into life, and the constant work you have to do to counter and overcome them. I often wonder how the church kids who weren't blessed with a beautiful mind have fared.

    When I read such nostalgia pieces such as this one, It's difficult not to visualize how these leaders' "place of safety" is going to be!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I got spanked with a wooden paddle that was about 3/4 inch thick with holes drilled in it so it would pick up speed. My favorite reasons were for bad posture, parting my hair down the middle at school, and raking the leaves with improper technique.

      Gym class was never a problem for me as I was instructed many a time simply not to shower after the physical inspections had been completed.

      Its hard to say how many times I got spanked from 0-15 but it had to be in the thousands if you count the strikes to the hands in between abuse with the weapon. When I was young it seemed important that I would be told to stop crying after about 10 seconds and give a hug and tell mommy or daddy I loved them. As I got older the hug afterwards became the worst part. Damn that hug pissed me off.

      Delete
  13. I continue to be annoyed by COGers preoccupation of the largely normal behavior of the children that they forced into this that they deemed " rebellious and troublemaking". Things that with my girls might result in an eye roll, or heart felt serious conversation..... maybe worst case a short grounding.

    That comment about evangelists children and high ranking PKs kids..... quick questions.... are you still in the church? And if not then why the hell does it matter? And third..... dont you think we'd rather have just been kicked out "like the laymembers kids" who got to play ball on Fridays, explore their sexuality, drink beer, smoke a joint, maybe even curse a little?

    A comment like that doesnt sound like somebody whose left anything.



    ReplyDelete
  14. Yea, the youth who happened to go to school will many diverse types of people can see right through these old kooks. I just came across this Mario guy's video and he outlines many of the things we have been talking about for years.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzXbWcWp3Gg

    ReplyDelete
  15. I was lucky enough to go to SEP with bruises already in place, doled out by my mother because she found dust balls under my bed. One whack for every bit of dust, so in the shower room, my 19/20 year old AC student camp counselor took me into her room to ask me what happened. A week later, DavePack, then the swim instructor, caught me running on the swim deck and ordered me to get 2 swats from the selfsame counselor. Imperial kids did not suffer the same plights as us from the local churches. One fellow camper even received a birthday card from her parents, a high ranking minister and wife from Pasadena. A few years later, I became a kitchen worker, and the Imperial girls lived on one side of the dorm and we, lower then thou's, got the other side. We accepted that, it was always that way. Initially, I was disappointed that I was rejected from AC twice after high school, on the third attempt I was accepted, but left after 5 days. I wasn't minister wife material, thank goodness!

    ReplyDelete
  16. The Sundown Kid at 7:30 AM said...“I got spanked with a wooden paddle that was about 3/4 inch thick with holes drilled in it so it would pick up speed. My favorite reasons were for bad posture, parting my hair down the middle at school, and raking the leaves with improper technique. ... Its hard to say how many times I got spanked from 0-15 but it had to be in the thousands if you count the strikes to the hands in between abuse with the weapon. When I was young it seemed important that I would be told to stop crying after about 10 seconds and give a hug and tell mommy or daddy I loved them.”


    That sounds truly shocking! What sort of satanic freaks did you have for so-called “parents”?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous at 4:53 PM said...“Initially, I was disappointed that I was rejected from AC twice after high school, on the third attempt I was accepted, but left after 5 days. I wasn't minister wife material, thank goodness!”


    At one Feast of Tabernacles site in the Worldwide Church of God under Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. there was a special meeting for young people who were interested in going to Ambassador College. The old fool from AC who was speaking to the young people said that mothers tend to want their precious daughters to be in the protective bosom of AC and so lots of girls apply to attend AC. The old fool said that they reject about 2/3 of the girls who apply. The old fool said that guys tend to think of AC as just a Bible College and so not as many guys apply to attend AC. The old fool said that they reject only about 1/2 of the guys who apply. The old fool then went on to say that they would like to get more guys to apply to attend AC so that they could reject 2/3 of them as well.

    Hearing the old fool from AC really surprised me. I had naturally assumed that the AC adults were good, caring, Christian leaders who wanted to accept and help as many of the young church people as they possibly could. Instead, the old fool representing AC seemed to despise the young church people and not care about them at all. Even back then, I immediately sensed that there was something seriously wrong with the worthless old fool from AC.

    In spite of AC being so selective about who gets accepted as students, I have been disappointed to see the poor moral quality of the AC students I have come across, not to mention the really satanic freaks like Gerald Flurry and David Pack who went through AC.

    One girl who graduated from AC with distinction said that it was hard because she had to learn quickly all the new teachings of the WCG under the Tkaches in time to repeat them back on the exams. This reminded me of Herbert W. Armstrong saying that modern education is a system of memory training with students being expected to repeat back on exams whatever they had been taught.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. After attending SEP several times, my widowed mother, remarrying, and becoming a ministers wife, in a months time, and us kids being thrust into being PKs, I was expected to attend AC. I had dozens of friends, who had grown up in the WCG, and went on to become ministers and ministers wives. I knew it wasn't for me, but I had to obey and apply anyway. The rub was I was a terrible student in high school, so my grades did not ensure acceptance to AC. I'm pretty sure they accepted me the third time around out of exasperation and because it was January 1975 and there was some crazy shit going on in Pasadena. I arrived there on a Sunday, went through registration and knew I was never going to fit in. I had someone drive me to the airport after Bible study on Friday night and I took a red eye flight back home. My mother treated me like a loser for many years until talking to other families my age who came up the ranks and told some hair raising stories about Pasadena. I finally felt vindicated.

      Delete