Gossip... or is it the chain of leadership command....

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[GodisFaithful]

ugh!

After all that preaching about slander.

It's nuts!!

[margaret]

Yep, it's only slander if it's about the leadership. Everything else is so the leaders can "lead the flock better."

[Boggs]

I was thinking about this more this morning and remembered two details.

1) Rob told me flat out that slander can be slander even if it's true. That defies the accepted definition of slander/libel. So you may be slandering your GC pastor if you talk to your small group friends about your pastor, even if you say only true things. And if you don't repent from that slander, they may excommunicate you with the blessing of the Northlands region. But it's not slander to tell the pastor true things about your small group members, and in most cases, not even considered gossip!

2) The small group leaders used a document named "Know Your Flock" that I found recently. I wish I could remember the exact details of how it was used - I just have the document saved in my archive of GC materials and it is definitely familiar. It contains:

Know Your Flock
Small Group Leaders: _________________________________________________

List the names of your small group members and describe their spiritual state.
What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Who would benefit the most from one-on-one meetings with a small group leader and why?

Who are you meeting with?

When I was participating in this it felt fine and normal. Now, if I found out a small group leader was doing these things in my church I'd freak out.

[margaret]

CONTROL. POWER. MANIPULATION.

[Huldah]

But it's not slander to tell the pastor true things about your small group members, and in most cases, not even considered gossip!

It's kind of depressing that your experience, which I assume came well after the Weaknesses paper, is so similar to my experience in the late 70's.

Here's an example from back in my day. On one occasion, during a meeting with the sisters I lived with, I was trying to seek their advice to deal with a puzzling encounter I'd just had with a neighbor. Before I could fully articulate the problem, one sister cut me off with the remark, "Is this gossip? Because I don't want to hear it." Yet, as it turned out, the same sister was functioning as an informant to let the deacons know what was happening in private among the sisters.

So when some of us old-timers say that there are problems in the very DNA of GC, we're not just making it up. These problems have been handed down and institutionalized since the founding of the movement.