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Originally Posted by Terry
I don't know, but speaking from experience you had speaking from the Bible versus speaking from a LSM publication (post 1990).
In my time in the 1980's as a teenage brother, the local church environment was conducive for inviting friends. By the 1990's,you would have second thoughts of inviting friends to a Lord's Day meeting. I had even heard instances where the brothers didn't want "new ones" coming to the Lord's Day meeting as their first meeting.
If a local church meeting isn't conducive for a visiting brother and sister, doesn't that tell you the local churches have become narrower than they used to be?
Because if you don't share the same vision as LSM publications espouses, you're going to sense a lack in care, and you're not going to last long.
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I think there is truth to both points of view. My problem is that I was just a kid in the 80’s, so my whole LC experience is based on an environment that was after the LCM had taken its most significant change of direction. I don’t know how things really were “back in the day”. Based on what happened in 2005 with the “One Publication”, I realized that the blendeds just put into writing an unspoken policy that most everyone followed with the exception of the GL area.
I’m inclined to think the same about what happened in the 80’s. Even though WL’s ministry may have taken a back seat in some churches, most would have already been “ministry churches” in some respects for such a change of direction to fly. In other words, if there was no particular underlying loyalty to Lee and LSM, how could something like that letter that everyone signed in 1986 every have happened?
I agree that the LC atmosphere when I was growing up was not conducive to inviting friends. I’ve seen things change in that respect in recent years, however. The way they operate now is to hide who they really are, until newcomers are ready. They don’t want newcomers to realize that they are churches associated with a man and a ministry. I’ve said before, when people ask who or what churches LC members are associated with, a response that I have heard is “we are Christians of various backgrounds”.