As a "deep PIMO" I can say that there is a confirmed re-branding. The coordinators committee formed a focus group from Service and Teaching committees. The results of that group roughly three+ years ago, with GB approval, trickled down to the other committees and eventually into what we have been seeing before our eyes in the org and local congs.
Pick an organizational level and see the shift. Sure there are the little blips of GB spouting off with some charts and doctrine mumbo jumbo or CO's yacking about Porn at the Elders/MS meetings. But from the top Warwick brass down to the CO's, Elders schools, and even the Pioneer School I assisted the CO in conducting 2 weeks ago, the shift is clear.
For instance, think a couple years back...no more Type and Anti-Type:
"Humans cannot know which Bible accounts are
shadows of things to come and which are not. The clearest course is this: Where
the Scriptures teach that an individual, an event, or an object is typical of
something else, we accept it as such. Otherwise, we ought to be reluctant to
assign an antitypical application to a certain person or account if there is no
specific Scriptural basis for doing so."
Fast forward. At the end of an entire week of pioneer school If I were to tell you the main theme and take away it was: "Be a friend and just have a conversation about what is important to them. No literature required just bible or tablet in hand. Feel what they feel. Be a friend" I know i know, be a friend and suck them into our cult, but nevertheless nowhere in a week of class was that caveat mentioned.
During the visit of the CO a few weeks back in our cong he specifically stated when considering the Elder/MS appointments: "At the branch's direction we're not going to even look at the PRC's of these men. I want to hear about what your relationship with them as spiritual men is like in your own words as if they were sitting right beside you now. Forget the numbers."
Happy family branding is everywhere and the days of focus on prophecy, gaggles of numbers, stacks of books, comparison of PRC cock sizes, ect...is fading away in so many ways.
At the end of the day, its still a dangerous cult. Period.
But how does this shift affect the way we get our families out? The way we ourselves don't question the mental (and physical for many) liberation we have gone through?
