—The New Do-It-Yourself Revolution!—Part VI

—MOMarch 8, 1975NO.334C—LTO

Copyright March, 1975 by The Children of God

P.O. Box London WC2E 7LX‚ England or GPO Box 3141, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936

(Edited from a personal talk to the Prime Ministers at their first Summit Meeting!)

1. ALL WORLD SERVICES SHOULD HAVE TO BE DOING IS SHOOTING OFF NEGATIVES TO EACH OF THE THREE PRIME MINISTRIES and they in turn should send them to their Sprint Centres and let each one print it for themselves. Each of them wouldn't even have to produce but a few copies in English, enough for their local area of a Region, Bishopric or whatever.

2. THEY COULD REPRODUCE THEM FOR ALL THEIR ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLE and even that wouldn't be too many. Some of them could even xerox them if they only have a few copies that are needed. That would save them time and money in the long run.

3. I THINK WE COULD TRUST THE LOCAL SPRINT CENTRES TO BE ABLE TO DO THE JOB. I guess the disciples will be screaming in the Colonies to make sure they produce. If they know that they have got to depend on that local Centre and that we're sending them the copy, I think they'll make sure that they produce.

4. THEN IN THE OTHER LANGUAGE CENTRES, OF WHICH WE NOW HAVE ABOUT 30, the local translators would go to work on it while they shoot out their first English copies to the English-speaking disciples, and then when they have it translated they could produce that with nothing on it but the local address. I really think that would be better. Let's look at it and analyse it:

5. ROUGHLY WE'VE GOT 25 SPRINT CENTRES AND THOUSANDS OF DISCIPLES and friends to whom we're sending copies in English all over the world, which is what London has been doing.

6. LONDON HAS BEEN PRINTING ALL THE ORIGINAL ENGLISH COPIES TO DISTRIBUTE to all the people throughout the world that speak English, with the exception of the U.S. which has been handled from there on a second printing basis.

7. LONDON PRINTS THOUSANDS OF COPIES AND THEN HAS TO PAY ALL THE POSTAGE to mail them out all over the world to hundreds of colonies. Just think what its costing us right now to do it all through World Services—the reproduction, the printing and the postage of the original English publications.

8. WHAT WOULD BE THE EFFECT IF INSTEAD OF THIS OUR ORIGINAL SPRINT CENTRE ONLY DUPLICATED FILM which they could send out in a 25-cent airmail envelope to each of the 25 Sprint Shops? It costs them a fortune right now to try to mail out one for every disciple in each Colony!

9. DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE DISCOVERED ABOUT DISTRIBUTING THE SEX BOOKS? It would cost us more to mail one copy of the Sex Book airmail to somebody ordering it in Australia than the price of the book! So I said, let's forget it! Let's distribute it the way we did the LT books, ship them by ship and let the local Sprint Centers distribute their own.

10. WE ARE TOO DEPENDENT RIGHT NOW ON ONE CENTRE and I am not kidding, beloved‚ something is going to happen‚ something's gotta blow! It's gonna blow sooner or later.

11. YOU KNOW THE RUSSIANS ARE A LOT MORE SENSIBLE AND LOT MORE CONCERNED ABOUT NOT HAVING A WAR, but the States have lived on war and she thinks she can get anything she wants, and if it came to a problem over getting that oil it's bound to escalate to world-war level‚ and Russia's going to have to annihilate the States in order to keep from getting annihilated! So that's going to come sooner or later.

12. WE CAN'T BE SO UTTERLY DEPENDENT ON ANY ONE PLACE for the production and distribution of our literature and our communications. It's like what we said about leadership, if you have a lot of'em and only lose one or two you're not going to have so many big holes.

13. IF WE HAD 25 PRODUCTION CENTRES AND ONLY LOST ONE IT'S NOT SUCH A GREAT LOSS. It only hurts one Region or something, and we're not going to be crushed by just one blow.

14. WE CERTAINLY NEED SOME PLACE OR PLACES TO REPRODUCE AT LEAST THE NEGS ON 35 MM FILM for the 25 Centres. Since we are reproducing these Letters from 35 mm film, why do we have to have one big centre reproducing those big negatives? It was Hosea's original inspiration for them to be reproduced and distributed on only small 35 mm film.

15. WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO TO ENLARGE IT FOR DUPLICATION when it's being enlarged from the little 35mm film anyway? Why can't we, if we're producing these originals on 35mm film reproduce it all on 35mm film?

16. IT'S NOT GOING TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY TO PUT IT ON THOSE BIG NEGATIVES once you've got a good original on 35mm. You're not going to improve the quality all that much—how can you? You can't improve the original negatives very much no matter how big you shoot it. It's still going to be the same thing‚ the very same thing.

17. NOW IF SOME OF THOSE SPRINT CENTRES ARE NOT EQUIPPED TO ENLARGE THE 35'S to plate size, which they need to do for printing, they might still have to go ahead and make the big negs for them for the time being.

18. HOWEVER, WE OUGHT TO START ENCOURAGING THE SPRINT CENTRES to get the minimum of equipment needed to make the larger negs. Why can't they make them now anyway?—And why do they have to have huge expensive equipment?

19. THE SYSTEM IS THERE—USE IT! Why do they have to buy this huge equipment that they don't even know how to run?

20. IF THEY HAD TO THEY COULD TAKE A LITTLE HOME-ENLARGER TO ENLARGE THOSE NEGATIVES. If that local Sprint Centre is such a little penny-ante outfit that they've got no bigger business than that and they can't even trust God for the funds to get the System to do it for them, then let them get their own home-enlarger and enlarge it and make their own plates and do it that way. Why should that be World Services' responsibility?

21. WE OUGHT TO RUN THIS LIKE AN EFFICIENT BUSINESS FOR GOD! He says to "be diligent in business." Why should we be less diligent and less efficient than the world is? "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the Children of Light!" How long have I been preaching this?

22. I WROTE A LETTER YEARS AGO FROM ISRAEL, BELOVED, CALLED "USE IT!"—and who paid any attention to it? I tell you, you have to beat some of these people over the head with a club for years before it finally begins to sink in!—Until somebody finally wakes up and says, "Oh, you means use it! Oh, is that what you meant?"

23. SO WHAT DO WE NEED A CENTRAL DISTRIBUTION POINT FOR? We just need several places to duplicate the negatives.

24. WE WROTE SOME LETTERS AND THEY WERE GONE FOR WEEKS and we didn't know what happened to them. We still don't know what happened to them or what became of them, and some of the Letters got out months late! We thought they had them and instead they were lost!

25. NOW IN THE MEANTIME, IF WE HAD BEEN SENDING THOSE SAME LETTERS TO SEVERAL DIFFERENT PLACES‚ at least then if some of the world didn't get the Letter the rest would have! So, if each of the three Prime Ministries received original 35mm film from our Creations Staff to reproduce these 35mm negs for the various Sprint Centres of each Prime Ministry, you'd have a nearly failsafe system.

26. I'M CONSIDERING THIS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SHIFTING MUCH OF THE PRESENT INTERNATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PRIME MINISTRY OFFICES to where they ought to be and that is to local shoulders and local leaders, including reproduction and distribution of literature.

27. IT'S JUST LIKE LEADERSHIP: A good leader should never do anything that he can get somebody else to do. He should only do what he alone can do.

28. SO LET'S APPLY THIS TO OUR LEADERSHIP CENTRES‚ our international centres. What's the absolute minimum that they have to do along that line and still service their part of the world?

29. I'VE GOT TO SEND MY LETTERS SOMEWHERE, SO WHY NOT TO TWO OR THREE INTERNATIONAL CENTRES to play it safe? The little Creations Staff just has to shoot two or three sets of 35mm negs instead of one. We can apply the same principle that we have in restructuring leadership to restructuring this distribution of literature if we'd send our Letters to two or three different centres on 35mm film.

30. SO HOW MANY PEOPLE AND HOW MUCH EQUIPMENT DO YOU NEED to reproduce it so you can send duplicate negs to each Sprint Centre? Well, you need just one secretary and just one photographer who knows how to reproduce just those negs only and distribute them—35mm negs now don't forget—to the Sprint Centres and let them worry about their own enlargements.

31. LET'S SPREAD OUT THE RESPONSIBILITY, why should we make it so easy for them? I mean there was a time when we needed to help them—they were just babes and were just getting started. But we've got the set up now.

32. WE'VE GOT THE SPRINT CENTRES, SO WHY NOT PUT THE RESPONSIBILITY IN THEIR LAP and bring it down to a local level? This is something they can do, so why should we do it for them? If we're going to apply the new Revolution principles of leadership and indigenuity, we're not going to do anything for them that they can do for themselves.

33. THEY CAN ENLARGE THOSE NEGATIVES FOR THEMSELVES. What they cannot do is get the original and duplicate it, because we can only send them to a few places. Therefore, they can't all receive them. We've got to have these few international focal points to receive and distribute originals.

34. THE PRIME MINISTRIES ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO NEED TO GET THE ORIGINAL 35'S, so you have to do it for them, but you don't have to put it on huge negs or plates or anything else. All you have to send is 35mm negs in a small airmail regular letter-size envelope! So let's put them to work and see what they can do on their own.

35. IT MAY TEMPORARILY CREATE A BOTTLENECK just like some of these other alterations we've been making have temporarily slowed down other things, but once we've got them set up then it all explodes again! It may temporarily slow them down, but let me tell you, if that's the only way they can get their Letters they're going to do something about it!

36. THEY HAVE THEIR LITTLE SHOP SET UP and they've got their basic start. They're not absolutely flat‚ so there's no reason why we can't start sending them just the 35mm negs and tell them‚ "Okay boys, here it is!—Now its your job! You can do this."—And when they find out how much less it's going to cost them too, they should be very thankful!

37. ALL THEY'LL HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IS THEIR OWN LITTLE COLONY AND PRODUCING THE LETTERS FROM 35MM FILM. That's spreading out the responsibilities on local leadership. Why not? Why shouldn't we be efficient and economical? I tell you, when it comes to standing in God's way and the way of His work and the way of progress, heads have sometimes got to roll!

38. WE CAN'T LET UNECONOMICAL PROCESSES OR ANY INEFFICIENT PROCEDURES STAND IN OUR WAY! It's a Revolution and we have got to keep revoluting! We have got to keep changing and finding better methods and better ways of doing things all the time.

39. OKAY, SO ALL YOU'LL NEED IS A SECRETARY TO DO THE MAIL‚ A SHEPHERD TO RUN THE COLONY AND ONE PHOTOGRAPHER TO REPRODUCE THE NEGS. It shouldn't take more than one photographer. You don't need somebody else standing in the darkroom just to keep him company!

40. THEY ACTUALLY ONCE TOLD ME THAT THEY NEEDED TWO GUYS because the first guy got lonesome in the darkroom! So they're obviously going to have one heck of a time trying to figure out how to organise these six-man Colonies!

41. WE'VE GOT TO SET THE EXAMPLES AT THE TOP. They've always used this Big Blob excuse at the top, "Well‚ we're an exception. We have to have all this personnel for all these essential operations that nobody else can do."

42. BUT NOW YOU WON'T NEED ALL THOSE PEOPLE because you won't have all those essential operations at the top if we stick to this structure and don't start bypassing it‚ if we stick to the links in proper succession without jumping over and tangling up the Chain-of-Cooperation.

43. YOU KNOW A CHAIN CAN BE AN AWFUL MESS OF TANGLES, and they're the horriblest things to get untangled. You just have to take a hammer to untangle a chain if it really gets tangled up! My Letters are the hammer and I'm determined to get this chain straightened out!

44. EITHER WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT WORK OR LET'S JUST FORGET IT! I mean it! It's the only way we're ever going to teach these guys down the line more responsibility, better leadership and how to really be Shepherds and really train them right. We've been taking on too much responsibility at the top.

45. SO NOW ALL YOU'RE GOING TO NEED IS A TINY SIX-MAN COLONY AT THE PM HEADQUARTERS to handle this duplication along with your other responsibilities and this is what I've been trying to sell some of you leaders on for years. Instead some of you always wound up with a Blob of a couple hundred people!

46. YOU DON'T HAVE THAT SAME FEELING OF POWER IF YOU'VE ONLY GOT SIX PEOPLE in the Colony! You can't hold court in such grand style! It doesn't inflate your ego very much to sit down and talk or have devotions with only half–a-dozen, and you can't give any great oratorical speeches.

47. ONE OTHER THING, AS LONG AS YOU'VE GOT ROOM FOR A BLOB YOU'LL ALWAYS HAVE A BLOB! So that ought to be one of the first requirements. Get yourself a house with no more than three bedrooms. That's about as bog a blob as you should ever want to have, six people, and that's it!

48. SIX PEOPLE IS REALLY ABOUT ALL ANYONE CAN HANDLE WELL—even a dozen gets to be too many! Of course you might have some visiting dignitary occasionally, so you just say, "Did you bring your sleeping bag?—There's a nice rug before the fire!" I'm serious about it! Why the hell do we need such big Blobs for PM HQs?

49. YOU PMs SHOULD BE A SHINING EXAMPLE AND PROVE THAT WE CAN DO IT this way! What need we more than this?

50. TRANSLATORS: I THINK THAT THOSE TRANSLATORS DESERVE MORE CREDIT! We are giving credit for everything else, and I've drummed and drummed on that and yet here's this gorgeous book without any credit to the translators!

51. THEY'VE TRANSLATED POETRY AND THESE OTHER DIFFICULT THINGS, and I mean that takes real inspiration!

52. A TRANSLATOR HAS TO ALMOST BE AS INSPIRED AS THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR‚ and yet there's not one word on that whole book about who did the translating!

53. THOSE ARE THE GUYS WHO DESERVE THE MOST CREDIT OF ALL, more credit than me as far as I'm concerned and yet there's not a word about who's doing the translation! That is horrible!

54. I WANT TO SEE YOU PUT ON THOSE PUBLICATIONS "TRANSLATED BY" SO-AND-SO. Maybe we'd get a few more translators if they'd get more inspiration if they got a little more credit and were shown a little more appreciation! Everybody thrives on a little credit and a little recognition!

55. CAN'T WE PUT THEIR NAMES ON THESE PUBLICATIONS SOMEHOW? I really think we should put something on there so at least our own folks will know who gets the credit. The poor guy that did all the hard work will know that somebody appreciates him!

56. WHY NOT PUT ON THERE "EDITORIAL STAFF" with all their names and/or Production Staff and include the printer, layout man‚ photographer, artist and all?

57. WHEN I SAW THAT "DON QUIXOTE" IN FRENCH, THAT IS A MIRACLE! Whoever did that is absolutely inspired! To translate poetry is absolutely almost impossible! It takes a miracle!

58. SO WE NEED TO PUT THE TRANSLATOR'S NAMES ON THERE SOMEHOW, either as Editorial Staff or Production Staff or something like that including the printers, artists and layout people. I tell you those people really deserve the credit!

59. EVERY LOCAL AND REGIONAL SHEPHERD OR BISHOP WHO HAS TRANSLATORS IN HIS AREA HAD BETTER GET ON THE JOB AND ENCOURAGE THEM. He ought to be giving them the royal treatment! A good translator is precious and priceless, and we better be talking care of them!

60. LOCAL PROBLEMS: LOCAL PROBLEMS OUGHT TO BE SOLVED ON A LOCAL BASIS, and the basic principles of what to do in most cases have already been laid down in the Letters. If they know the Letters they can look them up or use their Index. If they'd look under legal problems they'd find most of the advice right there, even on things like that.

61. THEY DON'T HAVE TO CALL WORLD SERVICES FROM HALF WAY AROUND THE WORLD, "What are we going to do about this?" What have I already said about your local situations?—"Follow God!" We don't know what you're doing, you'll just have to do whatever you think is best for your area with the counsel of the level above and the level below.

62. MUSIC COPYRIGHTS: JUST BE SURE THAT WHATEVER YOU DO THAT IT'S NOT COPYRIGHTED IN SUCH A WAY THAT WE OURSELVES CAN'T USE IT, or so that they strangle us to where we can't use it. We don't want some company copyrighting one of our songs in such a way that they can say, "You can't sing these songs on television or radio or you can't even sing them on a public platform without our permission or cut!" That's what you've got to watch out for. Now if they can copyright them on a local basis so the kids are not bound, I don't care who gets the copyright, or the money for that matter!

63. WE'RE NOT GOING TO MUZZLE THESE KIDS just for the sake of a few copyright orders or just because somebody else wants to get their cut! I'm not in this for moneymaking‚ not by one long hell of a shot! I don't give a damn if we never make a dime as long as the message gets out! As long as we've got enough to eat and someplace to live we should be thankful for that!

64. MUSIC: SOME OF OUR BANDS ARE PLAYING ALMOST TOTALLY WITH THE ARM OF FLESH with reliance on worldly methods and worldly measures and worldly means instead of looking to God!

65. THE BAND IN PARIS DIDN'T GO AROUND HUNTING FOR A PRODUCER OR FOR SOMEBODY TO DISCOVER THEM! They just played for God and His glory and for the kids, and God saw to it that they were discovered!

66. WHAT ABOUT BRAZIL? Those guys didn't go around hiring a publicity agent saying‚ "Come see how good we are!—Please put us on TV!"

67. THEY JUST WENT AROUND TRYING TO HELP THE KIDS AND PLAYING FOR THE GLORY OF THE LORD AND GOT DISCOVERED!—GOD SAW TO IT that they were discovered! The whole problem then is the motive of going at it.

68. THE BAND IN SOUTH AMERICA AND THE BAND IN FRANCE DID NOT GO AT IT WITH THE IDEA "WE WANT TO BECOME POPULAR, we want to become famous, so now let's play the kind of music that all the kids want and all the kids like so we can be popular and we can be make a hit and sell records." I don't think that was the purpose of either one—the popularity just followed. I mean the popularity just came!

69. THEY WEREN'T LOOKING FOR IT, they weren't hunting for it They weren't going around begging, "Please discover us, notice us, publicise us! We want to be popular, we want to make a hit," and hiring ungodly producers and agents!

70. THEY WEREN'T DELIBERATELY DOING IT JUST TO TRY TO PUBLICISE THEMSELVES‚ that's not the right way to go about it. I said, "Listen‚ you guys play for the glory of God and the benefit of the kids and if God wants you to be discovered, He'll see to it that you're discovered and He'll make you popular!"

71. BUT AS LONG AS YOUR MOTIVE IS JUST TO BE POPULAR AND TO MAKE A HIT, IT'S THE WRONG MOTIVE. I'm afraid that's the way some have been going about it though. I think they thought that that was good, because they figured if they got popular then they could give out the message, kind of putting the cart before the horse!

72. YOU'VE GOT TO GIVE THE MESSAGE FIRST, AND IF GOD WANTS IT TO BE POPULAR HE'LL TAKE CARE OF IT! I don't write my Letters to be popular. For God's sake if I did I sure wouldn't have written some of them!

73. I DON'T WRITE MY LETTERS TO MAKE A HIT WITH THE PUBLIC. I don't even expect this Sex book to ever make any big hit with the public! It's just too crazy and something the average person couldn't possibly understand. But it will make a hit with the people who can appreciate it—"many are called, but few are chosen!"

74. "BROAD IS THE WAY AND WIDE IS THE GATE THAT LEADS TO DESTRUCTION, AND MANY GO IN THEREAT‚ but straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life eternal‚ and few there be that find it!" When all men think well of you, watch out! He says, "Beware when all men think well of you!"

75. THIS IS NOT THE POPULAR WAY AND WE'RE NOT OFTEN GOING TO MAKE THE MOST POPULAR LIST! If our music is popular at all it's a miracle! If we make any public hits at all it's miracle!—And it's only a miracle of God because God did it in order to get the message out!

76. IF SOME OF THESE OTHER BANDS WOULD START TRYING TO PLEASE GOD AND GET THE RIGHT MOTIVE and put God first and try to produce songs that are really inspired of the Spirit and from the heart and for the glory of God and to help the kids, then God would take care of the popularity! God damn popularity! I hope they never get popular with the wrong kind of music! That stuff is incredible! It just rubs me the wrong way!

77. THE BANDS SHOULD GO AROUND TRYING TO HELP KIDS, NOT JUST ENTERTAINING, but really trying to get through to them with the message inspired of the Lord and really trying to glorify God. God has made some of those bands popular. God has seen to it they were heard. God is the judge.

78. GOD IS THE ONE THAT DOES IT! IT'S GOD'S BREAKS THAT MAKE THE OPENING! That's what happened with Brazil. It's just as miraculous as anything that's ever happened! It's as miraculous as what happened in Paris if not more so, especially with as little help or cooperation or encouragement as they ever got from anyone! These other bands are trying to go to too much musical perfection and technical perfection.

79. AUDREY MYERS, A FAMOUS CHOIR LEADER in California and quite popular with her choir, a real musical expert, heard my three little kids sing one time.

80. SHE INVITED THEM TO HER MEETING TO SING some numbers and play at a place where she was having her choir because they made such a hit with her and she felt such Spirit and such power in their witness. I asked her afterwards, "Now really, what do you think about them?"

81. SHE SAID‚ "I DON'T WANT TO PUT MY HAND ON THE ARK! They may not be musical technical experts, but they've got the Spirit! I'd be afraid to touch them! Leave them alone!"

82. SO PERHAPS SOME OF THESE GUYS JUST KNOW TOO MUCH ABOUT MUSIC and sometimes it just gets in the way of what the Spirit of the Lord is trying to say. Why not let go and let God have His way?

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family