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Episode 8 - Dr John Juedes Part 1 Transcript |
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Page 5 of 6
Pawtucket: Right. Obviously, that was you know, something that was
just absolutely absent in The Way and probably most of the offshoots,
too. I’m not absolute on that, but they would focus on this whole
thing of biblical research where you’re spending almost all of your
time just learning. I mean, the bible is very enjoyable to read and
it’s great to read and everything like this, but it became like the
sole thing to do versus having the social aspects of feeding the poor
and things like that.
Dr. Juedes: Yeah, and I’d add something to it, that the study is a
part of that and if you get so involved in research you miss the idea
of living it. And it also in a way had to do with the building of the
organization, you know, the abundant sharing and stuff, where does it
go? It goes back to Ohio, New Knoxville, so what do they do with it?
They’re not using all that for research. They are buying campuses at
their peak, buying airplanes, you know, making space for airplanes,
supporting their coaches for the leaders to travel, things like this,
so they’re building an organization. It’s more than just research.
There are other ways to do research besides putting money into that.
And they’re also building the headquarters, the auditorium, it becomes
auditorium-focused and the teacher-focused, rather than even just
research-focused.
And frankly, a lot of the research done was real shabby and the most
shabbiest researcher of all was certainly Wierwille. I think he found
a few people who worked on the research teams who were far and away
better researchers than he was and so they had a little influence on
that on some of the books that were produced by teams. It’s really
ironic that a biblical research and teaching ministry would be led by
such a rotten scholar as V.P. Wierwille. I mean, he was really bad.
Shabby and shallow on the one hand and very defective on the other, and
a lifelong plagiarist, so it’s really ironic that they would have that
reputation for that. But it’s in the name, so it must be true, huh?
Pawtucket: (Laughs)
Dr. Juedes: But you’re right, the classes were the emphasis, but it’s
not even so much learning as it is, this is the way that you support
the organization. Because the fees for the classes don’t stay here in
the church, or the fellowship, they go back to New Knoxville, whereas
in your normal church structure, when people give offerings it stays at
home, to pay for our lights, or to support our children’s program, or
youth events, or the pastor or whatever, but the class structure is
designed to build the organization and that’s what they wanted. They
wanted to sell classes. They wanted more people and kept records of
that. They didn’t publish the records with how many people took what,
but I’m certain that they kept those records and that was a way of
shoring up the ego of the teacher.
Dr. Juedes: You’ve touched on some components of, for lack of a better
term, a successful church, a really biblically-oriented church. Could
you go into some more aspects of it? I think one thing that people get
blinded to is the wonderful variety that’s in a church; that the
benefits and the blessings aren’t from praising the man of God.
They’re from a lot of other things, just basically, as you said,
reading for life and that.
Dr. Juedes: Well there are what, probably four or five basic elements
of a fellowship or a church. Learning is not really one of them except
as far as it postures faith. The idea is to build faith in a person
and learning is just part of that. There is a training of faith that
is part of that, you know, living it out. It’s not just academic. So
teaching so far as building the faith is part of that.
There is fellowship between believers. Aspects of that fellowship are
friendship, encouraging each other in the faith, even someone who
doesn’t actually do something in a church or fellowship has an
influence just by their presence. Fellowship includes using your
spiritual gifts or manifestations to support the body. Each part of
your physical body does something, but also receives benefit and so,
and the church was designed to be that way, a two-way street.
So, building the faith, fellowship, reaching out beyond. In the great
commission Jesus says, “Make disciples by going, teaching, and
baptizing.” There is that element of going, going out beyond just your
group in order to bring others into the faith, whatever you want to
call that, evangelism, whatever.
So teaching, fellowship, evangelism, training leadership is an
important part of the church whether that’s training people to guide
children whether it be a Sunday school or some other structure, to be
leaders of the church at large, to be bible study leaders, you know,
there is different training, basically to use a person’s spiritual
gifts. Train them to be merciful to look after the sick, all the
different parts of the church ministry. So training leadership is part
of that too.
And just generally addressing people’s needs whether that be physical,
spiritual, emotional, you know, people who are under stress from some
kind of loss; illness, job loss, death, whatever, those who are poor
inside your fellowship and beyond it. So just generally ministering to
people’s individual needs, whatever kind that would be.
And I think it’s a challenge to keep all those things in balance and if
a church is really oriented around just one leader whether that’s the
pastor who has the influence or sometimes pastors come and go and you
have some other person who is the main part of the fellowship or
church, the church tends to take on that person’s ministry or
characteristics or emphases or however you want to put it. So you need
to kind of make it a more balanced approach and having different people
with their different desires and ministries involved in the leadership
of the church helps to have that balance. And there are greater
influences on that, if there’s a church or fellowship attached to a
particular denomination or ministry or association, you know there are
denominations or groups that have strengths and weaknesses of their own
so you tend to inculcate a little bit of it through that, kind of like
all the twigs that were associated with The Way International all had
about the same characteristics.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 05 February 2007 )
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