Quote:
Originally Posted by rayliotta
I've also observed this type of thing. Full-timers and other local church members will go out of their way to coordinate the timing of when a particular "new one" from the campus will be introduced to the home meetings, the big meetings, the Holy Word for Morning Revival books, "calling on the Lord," etc. Even as I write this, I realize that this could be considered rather innocuous, or, it could certainly seem to some people like they have something to hide. And I think they do lose plenty of potential recruits on account of that.
But I think they're also willing to be content w/an overall retention rate, so to speak, that is much less than 50%.
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I agree that no one is necessarily trying to hide anything. I think at a basic level, the consideration regarding when to introduce a "new one" to different aspects of the LC is primarily to keep them from being too shocked by things such as how loud LC meetings are. There are many obvious things about the LC that they make no effort to hide over the long run once someone joins.
The last line of what you said caught my attention. It is not always clear in regards to what kind of people they are looking to draw in and keep. I know that college students are a huge focus, but definitely not all college students. I'm not sure what exact personality profile they are looking for.
Even when a complete stranger walks into a LC meeting cold turkey, often they will not pay any attention to this type of person if he/she is not the type they are looking for. Having been in the LC my whole life, I have seen this happen a number of times, and I think that I have a general idea of what type of people they don't want.
Actually, from my perspective, the LC is very peculiar in the regards to trying to gain people. I know the 80's WL was saying stuff like if you do method X you will see such and such an increase within so many years. They have some interesting expectations regarding the increase. I hear it all the time even today.
Once LC leadership qualifies what they what, it turns out that they are mainly looking to gain college students and maybe even just a few that are willing to jump in the deep end. There are a few here and there who come in who are not college students, but they are the exception. Since college students typically come from their hometown to attend a school, once they finish their degree, they are gone. For a church to depend its increase on gaining students off a campus is not a viable strategy in the long run.
One area the LC has little focus on the community. It seems the community isn't worth their time. I know that they do have a "community" team in the FTTA. Last I heard, some of the trainees were talking about how the community team went door knocking in the area near the training center and happened to inadvertently visit the home of an ex-LC brother
and talk to him. Of course we all know the LC's position on talking to "negative" ones, but trainees are not going to know the who's who of ex-members. Apparently there was some talk about keeping better track of where the community team is visiting. Sounds like they have more important things to worry about than contacting the community, such as censoring the trainees from ex-members.
In general, I don't see any real effort for to gain the average Joe. Either they already know their efforts will be futile or they are stuck relying on gaining college students. I've been a few LCs that were just a single home gathering in that city. Here's something that really bothered me about that: they say they are the church in X, but they have made no effort to contact any Christians or invite people to their meeting. In many cases it seems that increase is not a concern so much as establishing their LC franchise somewhere.
In summary, when I look at this whole issue of gaining people and increase, I think there is a lot of "fellowship" going on behind the scenes that most don't know about. It's really the only explanation as to why things are so peculiar. I think the average member such as myself is left to wonder what is really going on. We have learned to just accept things as they are and not ask questions.