.jpg)
Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 33, Number 10. 8 July, 1970
Other Sect meetings
Other Sect meetings
In addition to the larger conventions, or 'Three-Day Meetings', at which most of the sect's new edicts are presented and preached and any person is liable for direct interrogation if suspected of being impure or having unconfessed sins, there are smaller conventions known as 'Fellowship Meetings' held over a weekend. Sometimes Friday night is included. Invitations to these, though not on such a large scale as the others, used to be open, but are now also personal. They are attended by fellow-Exclusives as far as two hundred miles away from the locality.
What is for us in this too, is that God allows you at times to have an unmanageable and rebellious son. He allows that to be amongst us, and I think it is to get us on God's side, to know what He thinks. An experience like that, to have an unmanageable and rebellious son, has been known in many families amongst us. Everything has been done for him; he has been chastened oft-times; so finally they have to come to it that he is deserving of the penalty. It is not now that such persons are put to death. With such persons it is that we have to say that we cannot walk with them, we cannot have fellowship with them. The relationship is not brought to an end by discipline, although it is broken in the sense in which you have to shrink from them and withdraw from them. It has become a great test amongst us to do that, to withdraw from persons who are so close, and it has been affecting assemblies universally that secretly some have not been in accord with the judgement. —James Taylor Junior in Things that are more Excellent, Volume 97 in a series; this volume being notes of meetings at Minneapolis in October, 1967.
Sunday meetings used to commence at 11 am. but have been brought forward through a series of steps to the commencement time of 6 am. mentioned earlier. This last change took place at the end of 1967. The time of commencement of Evening Services has remained constant at about 7 pm. but Three Day Conventions start at 6 am. each day. Fellowship meetings start at 9 am.
The Three Day Convention is a very tiring experience. Each day there are nine meetings, in groups of three (each group comprising two discussion groups, and one hour of three addresses). Meetings do not usually finish before 6 at night. There is a short break during the morning for a meal. These are big changes because before the 60's the maximum number of meetings in one day was three. For a long time, catering services were employed to provide meals on such occasions, in halls specially hired for the purpose (usually college halls, occasionally theatres). But the sanctity of cooking and eating in the home came to the fore, and catering was discontinued, especially as it proved to be very expensive. In the same way, a Sister makes the loaf of bread that is used for communion, instead of buying a loaf handled by worldly hands.