Theos-Talk Archives (June 1996 Message tl00779)

Bee,

If you'd like an opinion, if you have enough people willing to facilitate or
what have you, I'd have some of both. That was the original idea anyway, to
have some public meetings & some just for the serious members. How many of
each during a month can be decided on by the group.

I had all tourists in my study center in Syracuse. Everything went fine as
long as I did it, and they could just come & take in whatever I had to
offer. That was ok to get started, but then I had a tresurer who didn't
collect donations, & a book agent who didn't want to order books, & when 1
of them agreed to conduct a program, he didn't prepare anything. So I just
stopped the whole thing. It's ok to give a side show to attract people I
think, but then a study center is supposed to promote serious study as well.

Liesel
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>Yesterday I watched a video by Joy Mills, in fact it is a set of 6, that was
>done at the annual Queens Birthday Weekend 3 day seminars that are held in
>Auckland. This one was 3 years ago and I couldn't go that time. The whole 3
>days were called Guidelines for the Spiritual Life and the tape was The
>Pilgrim Path, Preparing for the Journey, tape 1.
>In it she brought up the concept that the world can be divided into two
>sorts, the Tourists and the Pilgrims. She then invited definitions of each
>from the audience and some interesting ideas were presented. Tourists come
>and look around and want to be entertained and expect to get their money's
>worth whereas a Pilgrim comes to seek a way and is focussed on that. There
>were many other examples but at the end she said that we should be careful
>not to turn our Lodges into Tourist Attractions in our zeal to share our
>wisdom. We need to preserve a place for the Pilgrim who's road is hard enough
>as it is. She hit a cord within me as I have been thinking along the Tourist
>Attraction notion to try to increase our membership but now maybe some real
>quality stuff for the Pilgrims already within our Lodge may be wiser and more
>profitable for us all.
>Interesting stuff.
>Bee Brown
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