Quote:
Originally Posted by rayliotta
And this is what raises warning flags for so many of us. The glaring difference between "pray reading" as practiced in the LRC, and "pray reading" as defended so eloquently, apparently, in Ray Graver's book.
You say, What's the issue, Graver never talked about the LRC practice in his booklet? To which we reply, Exactly!
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Exactly!
Just so we are all clear. RG was not commissioned by the LSM to write this book. The very idea is preposterous (at this time in his life RG was a construction worker). RG became interested in this, probably because of the Mind Benders, and with KR in Houston he had access to the Rice Library. Do not misunderstand, I don't think the legal team would have ever asked RG to do research for them, rather I think as an elder of a church with a lot of college age converts he was trying to inoculate us from the accusations in that book. I saw him in the library on several occasions doing his research. This research shaped his understanding, it influenced the direction the church in Houston took, and it probably kept the elders in Houston from aggressively promoting the forms of pray reading floating around at the time. And this is not my opinion, at this time a professor from Rice who was writing for the Texas Monthly came and observed a meeting. His take on the meeting was that we had "more octane than a typical Christian gathering" but nothing that would appear cultic. So although it might be useful in a law court to defend "pray reading" it is hard to imagine that anyone reading this book would understand it to defend a superficial practice as so eloquently described by OBW complete with metaphors and figurative language.
I have another experience concerning pray reading that I have been reminded of during this thread. Perhaps it is time to share it. I took a road trip to visit 7 churches in the NE during the Summer of 80. I visited Cambridge, Boston and Amherst. When we visited Amherst the elder kind of took us aside and explained that their meetings were "unusual" because they basically just pray read for the entire meeting. He explained that with the Max expulsion the church was ripped with recriminations and accusations. Eventually the only way they could conduct a meeting was if everyone left all of that at the door and just focused their attention on the word. No one would trust anyone else to "share a message". So they had developed a 7 step approach to reading the word. So, the brother and I that came from Houston sat in on the meeting and enjoyed it. I don't remember what the seven steps were, only that after 45 minutes we had had a very thorough reading of a Bible passage. This approach was unlike anything that I had seen anywhere else. According to the elder "it had saved their church". Yet I didn't have the slightest inclination to go back to Houston and talk about "this great practice" nor did the other brother with me. We understood this was something they did because of their situation. The one thing they could all agree on was the Bible, so that was the sole focus.