Gerald Weston's Church Wide Fast Bust

Almost immediately after Living Church of God settled in at home after experiencing a foretaste of the millennial life, Gerald Weston instituted a church-wide fast.  Apparently, fresh off that millennial experience, LCG members had immediately retreated back to their sin-filled lives, so much so that Weston needed them to repent, again.  After all, it is always the memberships fault that LCG has issues and not those in leadership positions.

Weston mentions in his latest HQ update that 4,200 people watched the streaming program.  If one is to believe that total, one has to then question the total membership that LCG has listed on Wikipedia of 11,300 members.  Is Weston subliminally saying below that 7,100 members did not bother to listen to the streamed service?  Did well over half of the LCG membership chose not to fast?  Did they all skip services?

Most of us realize the totals listed for membership counts on any COG Wikipedia listing is a load of crap.  LCG no more has 11,300 active members than Grace Communion International has 50,000 active members in 900 congregations.

Also below, Weston tells the LCG  faithful that the church is dropping many of its television stations as an act of good stewardship.  As LCG programs become more and more irrelevant to people's lives, more and more stations will be dropped.  Its message in its programs carries little that people can relate to in a messy world.  After all, vaping is much more important than helping people understand the meaning of life while living in a messy world. Pretending to preach about a kingdom to come has little significance to people who experience serious illness, death, war, and other tragedies of life.  If comfort cannot be implemented in the present day life, what good is a kingdom message to those people?

Sadly, in the COG movement, words are more important than getting one's hands dirty in the everyday life of those around them.  When was the last time an LCG member fed the homeless, cleaned up a prostitute, gave a drug addict a warm meal or invited an immigrant family or a Muslim to sit at their table during the Thanksgiving meal?

Instead of declaring a fast for the LCG membership next year, how about cancelling church services that Saturday and instruct members to spend the day feeding the homeless?  In Charlotte, LCG's home base, 1,668 people are without shelter on any given night.  Imagine what a warm meal or some blankets might feel like to these people  What a foretaste of the kingdom that "might" represent to some of them if LCG did its gospel message right!

Fasting to torture oneself in order to please the elite LCG leadership or getting one's hands dirty caring for the other, which one would the God of the Living Church of God find more pleasing?

October 25, 2018

By Gerald Weston

Greetings from Charlotte, Reports indicate that the live stream of last week’s service during the fast transmitted very well. Approximately 3,800 successfully viewed the program in English, with another nearly 400 viewing the Spanish translation, for a total of about 4,200. Final edits of the November/December Living Church News are being made. There is an important article regarding the relatively new phenomenon of e-cigarettes and vaping, and I hope all of you will take time to read it, as it contains a lot of good information that is not widely known about this new and popular habit. We are attempting to build up our television presence with strategically placed stations. Sunday, November 11, Tomorrow’s World will begin airing over KRCW Portland, Oregon at 7:00 a.m. Cost per response (CPR) varies from station to station and we drop those stations that do not produce well in favor of newer stations. This can sometimes cut our CPR in half. I mention this because members are understandably disappointed when we drop a station in their area, but we must remember that the primary purpose for the program is to preach the Gospel to the world. We hope all of you watch the program where you can, but we must concentrate on our first priority and be good stewards of the resources available. Remember, the telecasts can be accessed at any time at our website, www.TomorrowsWorld.org. We will continue to drop stations that do not produce well, try new stations, and retain those that are producing. Although television is not as effective as it once was, television is still a powerful tool in doing the Work.—Gerald Weston

We Are Not Qualified to Counsel in Some Areas of Sex and Marriage.

BULLETIN 07/27/76: 

RON DART: We Are Not Qualified to Counsel in Some Areas of Sex and Marriage. 

YOU DON'T SAY!

submitted by SHT

For decades certain minister stuck their noses into the bedrooms of church member without any fear whatsoever.  Just look at what Rod Meredith for decades.  Has there ever been a Church of God minister so obsessed with sex than he was?  If he wasn't railing against gays he was pitching fits over certain sex acts that married couples chose to do in their own bedrooms. When it wasn't him, it was Herbert Armstrong with his pathetic book on sex, written because his wife was resisting his romantic attempts, as frightening as that is to contemplate.  

Most COG ministers were certainly out of their elements when it came to marriage counselling.  Almost none of the ministers had any real training in what counselling entailed.  The only training they had was an Ambassador College classroom.  No hours were ever logged with a supervisor in training situations where counselling techniques were used.  To be an effective counsellor meant having empathy, a quality that many COG ministers were/are totally bankrupt in.

Just Another Typical Sabbath Day Sermon

It is the Sabbath in Church of Godland and people are heading off to services to be edified in the word of God, well...except for one Church of God. You will be heading off to services to listen to a tape of your leader expounding for 1 hour 16 minutes on Masonry.

Forget learning about the awesome significance of how Jesus came, what he did, and what was accomplished or coming in to be edified in your Christian walk by learning godly principles or being inspired to be a type of Christian that emulates the Good Samaritan. Nope, you will never hear any of that in the improperly named "continuing" Church of God, but you will hear all about Masons and Freemasonry.

This is what happens when your church leader has never had a proper biblical education and every truly practiced  exegesis and hermeneutics.

This is what happens when a church member is spoonfed answers to every topic under the sun by a church that claimed to have all the answers about everything and then proceeded to put those "answers" into booklets, form letters, and correspondence courses.

This is what happens when church leaders don't understand who Jesus is and what he accomplished.

This is why some self-appointed church leaders of today were consistently overlooked and bypassed along the way for ordination to leadership positions in the church.  That is why doubly-blessed Bob Thiel can only wildly-jester a sermon by pulling out of the file cabinet a form letter or a booklet off the shelf about a topic his mother church had previously deemed spiritual significant.