formative communal values This is an interesting read to plow through following the life-cycle of their group around their formative core communal values in mission work, separate from the sex and that abuse of power,.. The core mission work it seems has kept a group throughout even in its present fragmentation.
Condensed: "His message was relatively simple, if not terribly original: God would soon be returning to Earth to hand down judgment. To avoid His wrath, Berg advised his followers, they should live an austere life and abandon all their possessions. And they did. ..an estimated 120 Children of God communes in 1974,. More than three decades later, in 2006, there were over 1,400 communes in more than 100 countries, The Children of God were to eschew the world. Members lived in large communes, typically with four or five families under one roof, as they waited for the impending apocalypse. ..he was happy. “I was spiritual in a way that was kind of very obsessive and very determined,” he says. ..He’d spend much of his time teaching Bible courses and “the New Testament, where there would be the signs of the times and Jesus was coming back at the end of them”. Berg renamed his movement the Family of Love shortly after the mass suicide at Jonestown in 1978, which brought negative media attention to other fringe Christian sects. In 2004, the Family changed its name again to the Family International. In 1993, allegations of sexual abuse finally caught up with Berg. He fled to Portugal, where he died in 1994. Karen Zerby, Berg’s widow, assumed leadership of the group, along with her new husband, Steve Kelly. ..in 2009, the organization started to crumble. The church disintegrated and Young was suddenly forced to forge himself a new life, along with thousands of other isolated missionaries who had to assimilate into a society that they had long rejected. Faced with growing disillusionment among members, trying to stem the flow of members out of the movement, “They went in the direction of stricter enforcement of the rules first, and then when that didn’t work, within a few years, they went in the opposite direction.” ..the two leaders admitted, they needed to “set goals up to 30 years or even farther into the future”. they told their followers, ..they needed to worry about financing the care of aged Family members and the future of their children. known as “the Reboot”. Zerby and Kelly framed it in terms of giving the group a fresh start. But to many members, it was devastating. The Reboot didn’t seem to affect (some) who were far removed in the mission field. They stayed .. and continued on with their work. But most communes collapsed. “It was a bit disconcerting seeing that other branches were closing down or other people, even friends, were deciding that perhaps the missionary work was no longer for them,” Today, the Family counts only about 2,500 members in some 80 countries. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/11/children-of-god-church-sex-cult-texas-mexico-fbi https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/11/children-of-god-church-sex-cult-texas-mexico-fbi
