Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
You were there. Please do tell us the truth about the FTT. Was the end result to spread God, or to spread the Living Stream Ministry brand?
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Sure, I can share my experience, I don't think that it reflects poorly on the LSM though.
I came to the FTTT in the third semester and they closed the training to saints from the US shortly after that. However, I stayed and did not return. I did door knocking and baptizing people in their bathtub, and all the statistics. However, the church in Taipei was already complaining that despite the great numbers of those baptized they hadn't seen any fruit in the meetings, this became the most pressing issue during the 3rd semester and our focus during the 4th. They teamed me up with the brother from Austin who had had huge success with door knocking and was one of those leading the training when it came to the gospel. They also added a chinese sister who also had very good numbers statistically. She wasn't in the training, she was a sister in the local church in Taipei which gave us a very important contact with the church. They also added another sister from the US to our group who was in the training. I believe that this pairing was an attempt to find a breakthrough.
We were assigned a campus, it was a graduate school for engineering. Probably the most prized gospel field in Taipei. I spent the break between the 3rd and 4th semesters on campus establishing an English class / Bible study from my gospel contacts. Because of our schedules the four of us rarely worked together, but we did coordinate. I spent the afternoons on campus with my English class / Bible study and then at night I went to my job (I was supporting myself at the training from the time they asked the foreigners to leave). At night the Austin brother, the American sister and the Chinese sister door knocked and directed contacts to my Bible study. They also coordinated with some of the brothers on campus that were coming to that Bible study. Shortly after that the American sister worked out a small group meetings with the Taipei hall that was closest to this campus and so she would arrive at the end of my English class and take those who wanted to go to this home meeting.
Over the course of about 2-3 months we had 18 brothers added to the meetings of this hall. This was heralded as the breakthrough they were looking for and we were questioned as to our methods, etc. Based on this rather brief meeting new books came out designed to be used during home meetings with new ones.
To me, the books they came out with were completely useless and I didn't use them. So you could wonder, were they truly looking for a solution, or were they looking for a solution that involved selling books? I don't know, I think the process they followed was very useful and productive right up to the point of the books. I think because I was quite frank that they had missed the point and the books would not help my input was no longer sought. But that is pure conjecture.
I do know from experience being very close to the LSM leaders and serving in the LSM for years that they never, to my observation, showed any interest in anything that anyone brought to them. On the other hand they did occasionally have a need that they would ask others to help with (that happened to me several times). I could speculate that it was like the old western "this town ain't big enough for the two of us" kind of thing, but that would be speculation.