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Date Posted: 21/05/10 2:27:37pm
Author: Peter Eveleigh
Subject: The JA used to have to discredit its critics.

In the old days, when this site was first established, the JA had to discredit critics like me for fear that people with influence would take us seriously.

These days they know that their critics will generally disctredit themselves.

In the old days the JA recruited the sorts of people they would need to build their community - people with education, intelligence, skills, etc. They were usually idealists with dreams and vision who were actually looking to establish communes, which is what I was doing before I found the JA; they didn't find me - I found them.

Perhaps because the fellowship now has its infrastructure fully established, they feel they can reach to the sorts of people that Jesus would have wanted to help....the downtrodden, the lost....drug addicts, sexual deviants, criminals etc, and if we suspend criticism for a minute, maybe they are absolutely right to target these people.

The downside of this strategy is that the sorts of people who are easily recruited are also likely to be troublesome members, will contribute little in terms of skill and be a drain on resources....and ultimately will be more inclined to leave.

But a cynic might argue that they are also targeting the sorts of people who, if they leave the fellowship, will find it hard to be taken seriously because they will come across as misfits, unstable etc.

There was a time when this forum was a place where you could have an intelligent discussion with people who had really immersed themselves in the values of community and who, if they had been listened to when they had concerns about an issue, might have continued to be productive members of the church.

We used to have intelligent, less polarised talks about what went on in fellowship, where now the forum just attracts people who make stuff up about the fellowship. I don't recognise the place that people here describe. It is not evil, It does not promote pedophilia, etc...

There are too many very serious issues that are not being addressed because people with no sense of proportion and with eccentricities which are rooted in their pre-JA pasts feel a need fabricate or exaggerate the truth about the fellowship.

This site has lost its direction and purpose. Nobody from the JA wants to silence anyone here because there is nothing here which represents any threat to them at all. People waste their freedoms to speak talking about nothing.

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