TMS sez,
The KM insert allowed for 5 key positions, each filled by an elder, but rotated from year to year. That arrangement was in effect for several years, resulting in a different Presiding Overseer each year. An almost stunning change was that initially at least the circuit overseer was viewed as simply another elder, a traveling one, with more or less experience than local elders. Recommendations for congregation responsibility were made with the input of all of the elders including the circuit overseer. Gradually the pendelum swung back, but initially that was heady concept.
Healthy, but not necessarily Biblical, was not really put into practice that we know of, and certainly was not widely practiced. I think it was part of Ray Franz' hopeless dreams. They simply wouldn't put his ideas into practice without begrudging him, and Knorr and Freddy were EXTREMELY outspoken against a "rotating" arrangement, which had no real early NT precedent on any scale. The early church (pre-Nicene and mainly later) bishops ruled their roost - ONE PER CHURCH in most cases.
Once the persecution lifted with Constantine's "new light from heaven," it started the power struggles. Knorr HATED that he was dying... blubbering all over the halls at Bethel, and Franz (Fred) was really pissed that he might not become the all powerful seeing eye of God as president. He wasn't into rotating. :-))
They let Freddy have the presidency after about 70 years, but the yellow book (God's Kingdom of 1000 Years? I don't remember) on the parables of Jesus (especially his Gilead talk on the book, given about 1974ish or early 1975), revealed he was really a complete lunatic, reversing practically every explanation of Jesus' parables from a common sense standpoint.
Not long after that, he was "whisked away" from Bethel. :-))
Someone has the whole lecture Franz gave at the Gilead Grad. somewhere online. It was the craziest thing I ever saw him do, but then again, I never visited the saunas, which was one of his pulpits. LOL
With the organizational changes, the emphasis on serving Jehovah from the heart, not to create a service record, the newfound authority for many, many interesting situations developed. If a fellow elder let his hair grow a bit, including facial hair, he was within his rights. It was difficult to argue scripturally for short hair and clean-shaven faces. At the circuit or district level, assembly overseers seemed to enforce more stringent standards, but frequently the congregations on an individual basis could be more lax. Public speakers frequently developed their own talks, featuring their own agendas or pet peeves. Some were very dramatic, entertaining, but did not resemble the confining rhetoric of the Watchtower.
One of the first relaxations came with respect to the treatment of disfellowshipped persons. We could now actually greet them. The Watchtower printed the example of passing a disfellowshipped person with a flat tire, stating that the Christian approach would be to stop and offer assistance as we would do for any non-Witness. We were given the option of providing transportation to the meetings for those disfellowshipped. (I remember sitting in on a judicial committee resulting in a disfellowshipping. We encouraged the person to attend all the meetings. I ended up transporting her to the Kingdom Hall for several months.)
During the summer convention of 1975 one of the talks dealt with proper attire at meetings, stating that proper female attire was not limited to skirts and dresses, but included pantsuits, as long as they were designed for female wear. We were in a huge innercity congregation at the time. The first meeting following that assembly, ALL of the sisters wore pantsuits to the Kingdom Hall.
A number of Watchtower articles of that era emphasized the individual conscience, making decisions based on principles, taking care of the widow and orphan as part of the "ministry", etc. Many of us eagerly accepted all of this sort of Christian, highminded, individual approach to serving our God. While we could give a number of other initiatives, examples, you get the drift of the organization for a very brief time in its history.
That was mostly Ray's influence... it certainly was NOT the approach the GB as a whole ever vtook or ever wanted to. It's nice tyo put personalities behind these stupid changes in policy they made... I could tell you stories of problems at Bethel that later "appeared" in the KMs to counteract them.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. That was Bethel in the 50s through the early 80s.
Randy
