Hello Everyone,
Haven't posted in years, but thought I would today, since something reminded me of this story.
It's 1970 in our London-suburb congregation and it's the Circuit Overseer visit. As part of his talk on the Saturday night this CO - John Anderson, anyone remember him? - pulls out the little leaflet which was then being used to promote the Truth book, and says "hands up, who knows what this is?"
"Leaflet!" No
"Tract?" No
“Brochure?” No
"Vital, life-saving information!" - I smile to think of it, but this was me, I said that. I figured that the earlier answers weren't nearly zealous or spiritual enough, but still - No.
Every answer was wrong. Eventually, he gets to the point he wants to make:
"Don't underestimate this. Because this, brothers, is a Syllabus. It's a program of Study. This is our message to the public: we offer a complete course in what the Bible truly teaches - everything you need to know in 24 hours!"
The 24 hours thing was big at the time - I think the Truth book was 24 chapters long, and consequently we would sometimes phrase it that we offered a “24-hour bible-study course".
His point was that any outline plan of study could be called a syllabus, and this little leaflet with its Truth-book contents listing constituted a syllabus of our life-saving teachings.
Fair enough. CO's were always looking for new ways to excite and fire up the brothers about getting the message out, and I could see his point about "the syllabus".
Of course, what happened next was that over the following six months in our congregation “syllabus” became the absolute top buzz-word - every brother putting it into his talk, every sister using it in her ministry-school demonstration, it was a word in constant use in every conversation down the hall.
It got a bit wearing after a while, particularly since – syllabus not really being a commonplace word - it was clear that some brothers had not quite understood the sense of it. There were a few who hadn’t twigged that the whole syllabus-thing arose from the sense in which that leaflet was a description of a course of study. Some came to view the word syllabus as simply meaning any piece of literature from the Society:
“Have you read the new “Awake!” magazine? - It’s a marvellous syllabus!” - and all that kind of thing.
And some folks (well, one at least, the star of my story here) thought it just meant “a piece of paper”.
One Friday evening, I was drinking tea in Brother Mick R’s kitchen, when he asked me to pass him that syllabus, pointing to his kitchen table.
On the table was a piece of paper – a handwritten shopping-list (him and Sister R were off to Tesco’s after). That was his “syllabus”. It was clear he was trying to impress me (a pioneer!) with him being all theocratic and on-point and up-to-date.
I was too polite to correct him, and I think I did a reasonable job in not overtly smirking at him - but, truth to tell, I guess I am doing exactly that now, from a distance of 40 years. So then, sorry, Mick.
Anyway, just another example of the way the Society conditioned its followers with buzz-words and cult-like catch-phrases. There’s probably something just like it going on right now.
Regards to all,
Duncan.