[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Thankful Jane

Sorry for my lack of clarity in what I wrote, ZNP. The following sentence from my previous post seems to have introduced the confusion:

Eventually, all the meetings were "ministry" meetings, and the last church meeting to be mingled (pardon the word choice) with the ministry, was the Lord's Table.

I used the word “eventually” to refer to a long period of time. We were in Oklahoma City when they began to commandeer the Lord’s Table time for ministry teaching. That was the final straw for John. I explain this on page 235 of The Thread of Gold. The date for that was late 1980s, probably late 1986 or early 1987. Here are some quotes from that page:

Then in a church meeting, an elder announced that the time currently being used for such testimonies after the Lord’s Table meeting was going to be cut short in all future Lord’s Table meetings in order to add an additional Life-Study teaching meeting. We were told this was necessary because there was too much revelation being released by Brother Lee, “God’s oracle,” to be covered adequately in the other church meetings.

He further emphasized that the time left for testimonies would have to be really short. After the next Lord’s Table meeting, as the teaching began, John got up and walked out...

Hope this helps.

As for the timing of the appearance of the “ministry station” phenomenon, I had never thought of that being at the time of consolidations as Ohio said. We were never involved in a consolidation and only heard about them, so I'm foggy on their timing. I think that those who migrated to New Orleans later moved to Dallas. Dallas began around 1971, I think, but I'm not sure that the move away from New Orleans was considered as a consolidation. Maybe someone can put some dates on the consolidations.

John told me this morning that he wasn't positive, but he thought the “ministry station” idea (at least its introduction in Houston) was before the semi-annual trainings had started. I have always assumed that it came after those trainings started, but I’m not positive about that now. I am wondering if John might not be right about the "ministry station" timing being pre-trainings, because they called it a “ministry station” not a “Life-Study” meeting, which is how we typically referred to meetings that were used to repeat training messages. I think that Life Studies came into being at the time the semi-annual trainings were started, so this lends some credence to the fact that a meeting called a "minstry station" or "ministry meeting" was pre-training. Sorry for my thinking out loud here. I hope this doesn't introduce more confusion.

Thankful Jane

Thanks that clears up a lot. It would have been the last straw for me too, if that had happened where I was. I remember when I came back from Taiwan to NY I was very disappointed in the Lord's Table meeting. They would have the Lord's table during the morning meeting. There would be a short opportunity for some testimonies and then they would switch gears and share a message. So they basically combined the morning meeting with the Lord's table meeting. I figured it was due to the fact that commuting in NYC is very difficult and they didn't want saints to go home and then have to return again to the meeting hall.