Anyone who has ever been to SEP under the auspices of the Worldwide Church of God, regardless of where it was held, usually found it to be a fun time, Sure, for some, it was tough being away from home for the first time, but the experience tended to be fun.
Ever since the implosion of the church summer camp has continued on in various splinter groups. Most have them today except for the little personality cults like the improperly named "continuing" Church of "god" and Ron Wienland's geriatric group.
Anyway, the boys in Edmond posted a story on their site about the upcoming summer camps. These are the three things that campers are expected to do:
1. Prepare now for your prayer life at camp.
At S.E.P., you will hear a lot about sharpening your prayer life. More than likely, you will hear about prayer notebooks, and be given lists outlining basic subjects to pray about in your life and in the Work of God. Prepare now to refine the quality and length of your prayers before, during and after camp! Pray now that the pyc experience takes your prayer life to even greater heights!
Do you struggle with stirring up the motivation to pray? We can all struggle with that at times. I am reminded of a statement I heard from Evangelist Alex Harrison in a sermon several years ago. “Don’t feel like praying?” he said. “Tell that to God! Ask Him for the desire to pray.” Pray that God would give you that desire to pray to him now as well as during S.E.P.! Let God know if you are struggling in this area. He is not intending to beat you down. Show Him you want His assistance, and He will help you!
Set specific goals now for your prayer life at S.E.P.—goals for length in prayer, goals for focused quality of prayer. There are so many different facets of S.E.P. that you can be praying about now so camp this year can go that much more smoothly.
Prayer was always encouraged at SEP and the Orr camp had prayer closets in each dorm. Campers on Friday nights usually had a Bible study in the dorm going over some weird WCG booklet, but, this was not the main focus of the camper's time at camp. It was building friendships and discovering new things you might never get to do when at home. Imagine being a 12-year-old and having to focus on the length of prayer and the supposed "quality". The past church teaching of one-hour prayers was a load of crap. No member ever did that successfully, especially the ministry. One of the best prayers ascending to God's ears is a single word like "Help!"
2. Prepare to spend time with the ministry.
God’s ministers are a key part of His Family; they help edify and unite that Family (Ephesians 4:11-16). Don’t let a day go by without making some contact with a minister. This will be a unique opportunity for you at S.E.P.: to be surrounded by so many ministers. Most Church members never get to have that. So take advantage of it!
What should you talk about? Tell them about your life back at home, your congregation, what you are looking forward to the most at S.E.P., and what your goals are in life. They would love to talk to you—if you overcome any barriers and give them the time.
This is even more odious for campers to deal with. Too many stories are floating around out there about PCG ministers being abusive pieces of crap toward the youth of the church. The ones about PCG ministers in Edmond forcing campers to run in 100% humidity to some passed out and then forcing them to get up and run some more. No child heading off to summer camp expects to sit in front of some dickwad and have to squeal about life back home. This is what the Chinese Communists do to their children. Turn your parents in for not following the program.
Also, what 12, 14, and 16-year-old really has their life planned out as to what their goals are in life. Just surviving 2-3 weeks with COG Gestopa agents on their ass is their #1 goal.
3. Prepare to forge strong friendships.
Camp can be nerve-wracking for some—coming from far distances to a strange land, meeting unfamiliar people. But we are all tied together by a common mind and goal! Camp director Wayne Turgeon said the pycmindset is about leaving “problems, fears, worries, concerns behind and really embracing God’s way of selflessness, outgoing, flowing, giving, concern and sacrifice for three weeks.” So forget yourself, and be outgoing to your fellow brothers and sisters at S.E.P. A lot of campers may not have many, if any, friends their age in their congregation. Plan to build friendships that will last longer than camp itself, and then keep in contact with those who do not have close friends their age in their area. Plan to use this S.E.P. to sharpen the iron of your friendships (Proverbs 27:17).
Come to S.E.P. to have fun. Come to try your best at every single activity. Come to pull yourself out of your comfort zone and try new things. But come chiefly with a mindset of building the Family of God. Come with a mindset to get to know the ministry, and to get to know your fellow brothers and sisters that much better.
Seriously, dude? Seriously? Come with a mindset of building the family of God? When their own ministers and local church members are some of the nastiest people on earth why would anyone want to come to camp to expand that kind of family? God certainly is NOT part of the program.
Many who have attended previous camps say that S.E.P changed their lives. It can change yours too! Many Armstrong College students will tell you that the main thing that motivated them to apply for college was S.E.P. That’s true for me as well. Seeing God’s way of life put to practice here for those few fantastic weeks as a camper was more than enough to persuade me to apply for God’s college. Seeing the Family of God being built at camp is an awe-inspiring sight. But that building begins now—before camp even begins. So prepare now to do your part in building the Family of God at camp, and I guarantee you, you will have the best S.E.P. ever!
May God have mercy on these poor children's souls!
I have a lot of fond memories from summer camp.The friendships that are made there are amazing and with some of my friends those will be lifelong.
ReplyDeleteIt’s too bad the cult is involved in those memories. A common experience brought us all together and it can help us with whatever the future holds.
May all these kids get the fuck out of these cults and help each other. This is my benediction.
Be prepared as a child of color to stand along the walls and sit on the benches because there is no one that is your ethnicity to dance with, while all the Anglo kids dance and have fun. If you’re lucky, make sure to smile when that photo op happens. It goes on their site, and makes their camp and cult look just perfect. If you’re mixed race, be prepared to be blacklisted… no pun intended, of any future dating or dancing with in that cult. PYC will seal your fate. You’ll always be a bridesmaid, but never a bride… They still have a Black Singles Weekend in some areas… how Jim Crow of them. So many members taking DNA tests to prove their “whiteworthiness” percentages so that their children are allowed to dance with Anglos, without question, and without being called out on the spot by a prick minster, who’s shaming your young child “in love”. Be prepared to be bullied and mean-girled by the ministers children who think they are smarter, talented, good-looking and more athletic overall than the peon’s lay-member’s parents that give these arrogant brats such privilege of living in a bubble. “God’s campus”. They used to lament in sermons about PCG teens going to camp, then losing about 75-80% of those teens when they reach 18. It’s no wonder.
ReplyDeleteThe fear of having to go to PCG Summer Camp should ramp up the length, quality and fervency of one's prayer life just fine.
ReplyDeleteHelp build God's Family? Uh, no. God doesn't need any help with that, especially the way they mean it.
ReplyDeleteDo people seriously pay for this? It reminds me of the men and women who would tip the executioner to take their head off in one felled swoop.
Goals for length of prayers???
ReplyDeleteA short, simple, heartfelt prayer is worth far more than a forced hour long prayer.
I think some ministers apply that thinking to their sermons. They must be 90 minutes in length, whether or not any worthwhile information is presented in the last 30 minutes.
As for me, I'm talking with my Father all day every day as I go about my tasks, like I'm right next to Him, which, in actuality, I am.
Making daily contact with a minister is a sure-fire way of having one's life stolen by a minister. Life isn't just being physically alive, but rather exercising certain responsibilities such as personality choosing ones beliefs. Which is why the bibles instruction to not lord it over members faith in 1Peter 5:3, and Christ's instruction to not lord it over others as is the gentiles practice in Matthew 20:25.
ReplyDelete"..embracing God's way of selflessness, out flowing, giving concern and sacrifice for three weeks."
A man putting other women and children before his own wife and children is moral adultery. So is selflessness, sacrifice etc. Practicing selflessness, sacrifice will result in one becoming schizoid, ie, experiencing an inner coldness in one's soul. This involuntary reaction is nature sending a corrective message to that person.
As I've pointed out before, the bible uses the expression "one another" over 50 times, such as love one another, have compassion in one another etc. One another means that relationships are two way rather than one way.
And the people at the receiving end of this giving? In my ten year stay in the church, I observed it was always the same group of people, and these people were godless in their behavior.
What's also hidden with this giving, helping etc, is the accompanying vilification of self love, which is nowhere commanded in the bible.
The Nazis taught the above sacrificial love to their soldiers. This resulted in a unique fanaticism that made their elite SS troops highly effective, but at the cost of a extremely high mortality rate. Losing most of their men in one battle was common. Which is why many denominations teach sacrifice, as do today's communists. Teaching people to throw themselves under the bus has short term benefits for any organization.
But, but it is NOT the narrow gate. The bibles instruction to not be partial also means that one does not throw oneself under the bus for some "glorious cause."
Gerald Flurry's Bait & Switch Scam
ReplyDeleteThe Philadelphia Church of Fraud suckered in thousands of Worldwide Church of God people after the 1995 apostasy by using, or misusing, Herbert W. Armstrong's name and photograph to attract them. More than half of these suckers quickly smartened up and left the PCG or got expelled from the PCG early on by the godless bums that Gerald Flurry had set up as fake PCG “ministers” who got their thrills pretending to be able to consign people to the lake of fire. The PCG has continued to decline ever since then. Continual satanic abuse from perverts can eventually tire out people.
The PCG is a satanic fraud that is all about worshipping That (False) Prophet Gerald Flurry, the “little book” plagiarizing, gospel suppressing, Jesus' identity stealing, family wrecking, self worshipping runt who edits and changes HWA's writings while pretending to be faithfully holding fast to all of them.
The response of extremely conservative people to situations in which past history tells them that those under authority will get as close as possible to any boundaries which are set, or actually furtively exceed those boundaries and commit offenses, is to meet those situations with authoritarianism. And from their own words here, it seems as if that is precisely the way in which the PCG version of an SEP camp is being organized.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was told as a young teenager that I was going to camp in Texas, my response to my parents was that I did not want to go. But, I did not get to make that choice. What I discovered upon arrival was that there was less harsh authority at camp than in my home. I believe that my parents expected the opposite. At camp, Ambassador College students were the counsellors in charge of the "units", and Imperial High School students were the monitors in the dorms. But, there was a secret under structure, one in which the Eddie Haskell types actually ruled.
This remained reality during the first two years of SEP in Texas, and one year I attended in Orr, MN. There was less authoritarianism at SEP than I had at home. We counted our "swats" (spankings with a paddle) throughout the summer. I averaged probably ten swats per summer at camp, versus about 120 strokes of a belt each day in my home life. When I discovered that, I actually looked forward to camp each summer rather than dreading it. As I said, the Eddie Haskell types really ruled when the counsellors and monitors were not around, and there were opportunities for secretly smoking cigarettes, shaving cream fights, listening to plenty of rock music on our transistor radios, and horseplay which bordered on actual fights. There was cussing, pranks, and many other activities which would have been frowned upon by the ministers. Camp was actually fun because of this. It wasn't what the church had put together for us that made it fun, it was the illicit fun we stole or created that made it so memorable, and the friendships last a lifetime.
It sounds as if the Flurrys have really tightened the whole authority trip up at their camp to match the horrible authoritarianism of their church. I'm sure we all have our ideas of what Hitler Youth groups must have been like back in the 1930s and '40s in Germany. PCG's summer camp sounds like what I understand about Hitler Youth. As an aside, Flurry's younger brother was one of my booth mates first year in Texas. He was one of the coolest and most effective Eddie Haskells I had ever met. Wonder what ever happened to him.
Anonymous at 10:19 AM said...“This remained reality during the first two years of SEP in Texas, and one year I attended in Orr, MN. There was less authoritarianism at SEP than I had at home. We counted our 'swats' (spankings with a paddle) throughout the summer. I averaged probably ten swats per summer at camp, versus about 120 strokes of a belt each day in my home life. When I discovered that, I actually looked forward to camp each summer rather than dreading it.”
ReplyDeleteWow! About 120 strokes of a belt each day? You must have been really bad to deserve that.
Either that or else maybe your parents were some sort of godless, biblically illiterate, sadistic freaks.
“When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes. If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes ” (Deuteronomy 25:1-3, NIV).
Dude, 120 belt lashes was 3 spankings. The bastard and bitch obeyed Deut. 25:1-3, but they took it as permission, and always spanked the max. There were also forced fasts for up to 2 days as punishment, crew cuts, giving away most prized possessions to siblings and cousins, etc. The consequences were that they never got the privilege of knowing me as an adult. Behavioral scientists tell us that most of the people in prison came from homes where the punishment was unjust and excessive, not homes where everything was permissive. I feel fortunate not to be one of them. I fought my explosive temper disorder that this gave me and have had that under control for decades now. Also, children get their concept of God through their parents' example and behavior, so that certainly got warped as well! It took some work, therapy, and creativity, but I put together a pretty good life in spite of all that.
ReplyDeleteYou know, all of us hate cults for a reason. That's one of mine. Another is current culties lying and saying this stuff never happened. It was real commonplace. We at SEP compared notes, and child abuse was going on all over the country. Armstrongism really seared the normal innate consciences with which parents are born.
Amazing that their camp runs three weeks. I think every other COG settles for one week now... and "pre-teen" camps only last four days.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 3:26 PM said...“Dude, 120 belt lashes was 3 spankings. The bastard and bitch obeyed Deut. 25:1-3, but they took it as permission, and always spanked the max.”
ReplyDeleteJust my humble opinion, but it seems to me that anything more than 40 belt lashes a day is breaking the letter of the law as well as the spirit of the law, no matter how anyone tries to reason around it. If you reason around too much, then unlimited, around-the-clock beatings could take place. Furthermore, if parents are doing this every day to their children, then there is something seriously wrong with the “parents.”
Not only the parents, 4:52, the whole goddamned church! My parents were not like that at all until they joined Herbie's church! I remember being spanked maybe once or twice in my life prior to the fateful day of their baptisms! That was Jeckyll-Hyde day in so many messed up ways!
ReplyDelete