Pray-Reading

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Lots of practices passed through the LC's. PSRP was another one. I'm surprised they are still doing that shout-reading thing. Don't they ever get bored with the same old stuff?

Back in the 80's, my LC obtained an interesting reputation for a practice called "rap-reading." It was started partly in response to contemporary "rap," which was in its infancy, and as a way to get the young teenagers reading the word in a fun way. It kind of took on a life of its own as one small group would rap-read during their meetings. Each would take turns leading the others, who repeated what was said exactly, including tones a rhymes.

They had great fun with it. Some were quite good. You needed to be quick witted with a fast tongue. I was not that good at it, and only did it a few times, but sometimes it was a barrel of laughs. A good number of saints had fun with it for a while. It was basically harmless, though some felt it was a little disrespectful and childish.

The sister who started the thing in motion eventually left the faith. My wife felt the elders were childish for letting it go on as it did. The brothers actually had a few successful performances regionally, with all the saints laughing, until TC frowned on the practice.

A few years after that, the region picked up on Polynesian dancing from Malaysia, but that's another story ...

One practice I really enjoyed back in 1981 through 1983 was writing songs. It was a labor that took the whole week. You would fellowship over a message, the verses, your experience. You would try and write a song, maybe you would only contribute a line or two, then you would work on the meter, and if possible polish up the rhyme. Hopefully by the Lord's table you would have a song to sing. Saints were mailing songs between churches. It was a very profitable practice, don't know why it was stopped.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

One practice I really enjoyed back in 1981 through 1983 was writing songs. It was a labor that took the whole week. You would fellowship over a message, the verses, your experience. You would try and write a song, maybe you would only contribute a line or two, then you would work on the meter, and if possible polish up the rhyme. Hopefully by the Lord's table you would have a song to sing. Saints were mailing songs between churches. It was a very profitable practice, don't know why it was stopped.

In the GLA, many have been active song writers. For a while, after LSM "canonized" the supplement, the practice was discouraged, but after WL passed away, TC no longer felt he needed to succumb to every whim of WL. The GLA even has a new hymnal, less every WL song, along with numerous young people song books. If I wasn't so tone-deaf, I might have got involved.

Since the mid-70's, I was constantly condemned by my apologetic cousin and others for the LC practices of pray-reading, calling on the Lord, etc. I found all of these practices far less objectionable than the Catholic confessionals, which, btw, also had minimal Biblical support. The Jonestown tragedy spooked a lot of people into thinking anything slightly different is supposedly dangerous. How dangerous can "shout-reading" be? Did you ever hear the sing-song preaching of Pentecostal ministers? That, to me, is far worse.

Somebody hit them with that 4 letter c-word!