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Our Family's Origins
ISSUED BY WORLD SERVICES ON THE COLLECTIVE BEHALF OF THE FELLOWSHIP OF INDEPENDENT MISSIONARY COMMUNITIES COMMONLY REFERRED TO AS THE FAMILY
April 1992
       This article is written to address any misgivings that might exist due to the fact that our present-day ministry and fellowship of independent, self-sufficient and self-governing missionary communities have traceable origins to the Children of God organisation (which was officially disbanded in February, 1978); or any conc erns casual observers may have that we adhere to the exaggerated accounts and alleged illegal sexual practices of the Family of Love phase of our movement that followed.
       The Family today collectively holds Father David and his writings in high regard. However, our present membership, modus operandi and ministry practices are very much different, both from that of the Children of God movement and the image commonly promoted of the Family of Love. We therefore ask the public to view us on our own merits in the present, and not as we are often portrayed by the media, the virulent anti-cult organisations, disgruntled ex-members, or hostile special interest groups.
       Our present fellowship has no fixed or common collective name, therefore when referring to our membership collectively, we simply use the name, "The Family." Each member community in our fellowship is independent and has its own local name, just as other churches, pastorates and parishes have individual names, though they identify with a general denomination and follow common doctrines and practices.
I. "THE CHILDREN OF GOD" (1968 to February 1978)
       In 1968, Father David and his family started a small witnessing outreach that went by the name "Teens for Christ." They began ministering the Gospel to the hippies and other counter-culture youth in the American town of Huntington Beach, California, which sparked the famed worldwide "Jesus Revolution." As this group expanded and began a witnessing pilgrimage to y oung people throughout the United States, a New Jersey newspaper called them "the Children of God." The term was popularised by all the press and was soon adopted by the group.
       The Children of God continued as an active missionary movement for a decade, during which time many of its members moved out of the United States to establish Christian outreach communities throughout the world. By late 1972, there were 130 Children of God communities or "colonies" in 15 countries.
       The Children of God as an organisational entity abruptly ended in February, 1978. Reports of serious misconduct and abuse of their positions by many of the established leaders caused Father David to dismiss all of the leadership, and to declare the general dissolution of the movement. This radical action was then known as the "RNR," which stood for the "Reorganisation, Nationalisation Revolution." Some of these former Children of God leaders have since bitterly campaigned against Father David, a notable case in point being his own daughter, Deborah (Linda) Davis and her partner, Bill Davis, who were prime examples of leaders whose flagrant abuses of authority and gross misconduct led to their dismissal.
       All leadership, including those at the community level, were dismissed. Those members and communities who wished to remain in communication with Father David, through his pastoral Letters, were allowed to do so, if they restructured, elected new leadership (with at least one of each community's ne w overseers being a national of the country), and all agreed to work together to build a new ministry. Members were also encouraged to become completely independent missionaries, or return to secular life if they so desired, many of whom did so.
       In all, over 300 leaders were dismissed in February, 1978. Two-thousand six-hundred members (a third of the total world membership at that time) chose to return to secular lives or remain independent missionaries with no further ties to Father David. The remaining members chose to form a new fellowship of autonomous communities that remained in communication with Father David.
       Although some members in our current fellowship were formerly members of the Children of God movement, our present fellowship does not go by the Children of God name because that organisation was literally dissolved. A number of its former leaders, who were resentful because of their dismissal, still actively campaign against our present-day fellowship. However, on occasion, for the sake of simplicity, and to avoid having to go into lengthy historical explanations and discussions, the more known name "Children of God" is occasionally used by some fellowships when communicating with non-members who only think of us or relate to us by that name. In actual practice, however, the Children of God movement represented a substantially different organisation with a very different leadership. Only 25% of our present total membership were ever members of the Ch ildren of God.
II. "THE FAMILY OF LOVE" ERA
       "The Family of Love," as the new movement came to be known, was characterised by a much looser supervision of its members and communities, and far fewer common standards of conduct. Each community was self-governed, and any new leadership was freely elected by all members of their community, and confirmed by a re-vote every six months. New leadership were called "servants" to emphasise to all the fact that their role in the community was to be one o f humble service to those who elected them. They were not to become authoritarian rulers or "lords over God's heritage," as many of the previous overseers had unfortunately become, but they were to be loving, concerned and sacrificial servants and "examples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:3).
       In the ensuing vacuum left by the loss of all of the previous overseers, the total dissolution or restructuring of all communities, and the departure of one third of the membership, there initially existed a pe riod of much independence, lack of direct supervision, and a general reluctance to cooperate and communicate. Many people still felt hurt, some justifiably, by offences that had occurred under the abolished "Chain-of-Cooperation" leadership structure of the former Children of God organisation. However, they did retain a missionary zeal and remained fervent in their desire to keep evangelizing the world.
"Flirty Fishing"
       In the latter part of the '70s and early '80s, Father David, responding in part to the sexual liberality of that time period, presented the possibility of trying out a more personal and intimate form of witnessing which became known as "Flirty Fishing" or "FFing." In his Letters at that time, he offered the challenging proposal that since "God is Love" (1 John 4:8), and His Son, Jesus, is the physical manifestation and embodiment of God's Love for humanity, then we as Christian recipients of that Love are in turn responsible to be living samples to others of God's great all-encompassing Love. Taking the Apostle Paul's writings literally, that saved Christians are "dead to the Law [of Moses]" (Romans 7:4), through faith in Jesus, Father David arrived at the rather shocking conclusion that Christians were therefore free through God's grace to go to great lengths to show the Love of God to others, even as far as meeting their sexual needs.
       Although sex and love are not necessarily directly linked, sex was nevertheless seen as an undeniable human need, a nd one which much of humanity equates with love. Therefore, Father David proposed that the boundaries of expressing God's Love to others could at times go beyond just showing kindness and doing good deeds. He suggested that for those who were in dire need of physical love and affection, even sex could be used as an evidence to them that we loved them with the Lord's Love, and were willing to sacrificially meet their sexual needs in order to show them that love.
       The motivation, guiding princi ple and reasoning behind this FFing ministry was that sacrificially going to such great lengths to try to show someone that they were loved could help the recipient to better accept and even understand God's great Love for them. Through this physical parallel of receiving love from a caring and believing Christian, they could better grasp the concept of receiving love from God Himself. People who had never experienced God's Love could more easily believe that God loved them when their own per sonal need for love was met, when they received an expression of God's Love through the physical love of another human being who was sacrificially meeting their need for Jesus' sake. The goal was that they could come to believe in and receive God's Own loving gift of Salvation for them through His Own Son, Jesus, Who gave His life for them.
FFing: A Misunderstood Ministry
       Needless to say, linking the spiritual Love of God with the physical manifestation of that love in the form of sex, in th is very intimate form of personal witnessing, was, to put it mildly, not very well received by mainstream Christianity, where sex and God are seldom, if ever, associated. In fact, one might even get the erroneous impression from quite a few religious people that sex is totally of the Devil and not God's idea or design at all.
       Although this sexual liberality expressed in the Letters of Father David sent shock waves through the media and many religious institutions around the world, many people , most of whom would never even go near a church, were reached and won to Christ through this very humble, honest, open and intimately human approach to witnessing.
       As an outreach ministry, FFing was an extremely sacrificial method to employ in order to try to show a lonely and needy soul that God loved them. In no way was it ever intended to be perceived or practiced as a "fun and games" means of obtaining selfish pleasure or personal gratification. In fact, Father David stressed many times that it was the ultimate sacrifice in reaching out to others, next to actual martyrdom, to be willing to go to such extremes in order to show someone a tangible sample (not just a sermon) of God's Love and concern for them. Two Scriptures which express the motivation behind FFing were frequently quoted by Father David, John 15:13 and 1 John 3:16, which say, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends," and "Hereby perceive we the Love of God, because He lai d down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."
       It was, in fact, only a relatively small percentage of our membership who chose to make FFing their major ministry. However, the concept of a Christian religious group employing such means to win souls to Christ was so controversial that sensationalised media accounts of the "hookers for Jesus" were soon blown out of all proportion, and our enemies had a field day in scandalously portraying the Family of Love as a s inister, sex-crazed, money-motivated cult of "kooks and weirdos." Unfortunately, such fanciful imaginations and accusations still seem to linger on today, despite the fact that all FFing was officially and unequivocally banned throughout our membership in 1987.
       Prior to this, we had already begun to curtail many of the sexual freedoms which had been practiced in some communities. For example, in March 1983, sexual relationships between members residing in different communities within our fello wship were stopped. In December 1984, sexual relationships were banned with new members (those in the Family under six months). This later was made an excommunicable offense.
       With the spectre of the AIDS threat rising (which we were determined to keep out of our communities), and with a renewed emphasis on the importance of instilling in new converts a broader knowledge of and deeper appreciation for the Bible, it came as no surprise to most of our members when FFing was officially banned as an outreach method in September 1987. All FFing abruptly stopped.
Other Ministries
       It is also important to call to the reader's attention the fact that, although FFing was certainly our most controversial form of witnessing and ministering the Gospel, and the one that drew the most attention from the media and our critics, it was only one of many methods of outreach that our membership employed during that time. As previously mentioned, in actual practice, relatively few members adopted FFi ng as their major ministry. The majority of Homes and members had young families they needed to raise, and therefore continued to concentrate on conventional witnessing approaches, primarily the distribution of Gospel literature, one-to-one witnessing, or one of several other witnessing and outreach methods.
       Those with growing families began witnessing door-to-door in order to minister the Gospel to families like themselves. Some communities began to concentrate on mail ministries to spiritu ally "feed" the many people they had met over the years in public witnessing. At this time, a new ministry also began, a devotional course of Bible studies designed to help new converts become more familiar with the Word of God.
       Some members explored mass media approaches to witnessing, both on radio and television. One radio ministry, called the "Music with Meaning" show ("MWM" for short), was distributed free of charge to radio stations all over the world and enjoyed enormous success, elic iting a very favourable response from the public, especially in some hitherto closed countries, such as China. In the Philippines, a children's television series of puppet characters called "The Luvetts" won the National Catholic Children's Award. Communities of musicians began to develop cassette tapes and recordings of inspirational music for public distribution. Artists and writers created colourful posters with easy-to-understand Gospel messages. Video production and distribution opened up whole new method of reaching and ministering to people. Literature creation and distribution became a full-time ministry in itself, involving a great deal of work to translate, print and distribute materials in many different languages and countries. As well, many members and communities were leaving the Western developed nations and opening new outreaches in India and the surrounding countries, Southeast Asia and the Orient. Some members, particularly those in richer countries, chose to wor k at secular jobs that allowed them to continue to be a witness and at the same time help support those who were missionaries in poorer developing countries. These were called "support" ministries.
       Although FFing was practiced for a time, relative to the total membership of the group, it involved very few full-time "FFers." The majority of members and communities continued with their many other outreach ministries as they always had done, and in fact, continue to do.
III. "THE FAMILY"
       As our overall membership matured and became more child and family centered, much of the focus of our movement shifted to childcare and education. This is very evident today, even in the content of our current public distribution tapes and videos. We also went to greater lengths to ensure that each community was truly a "Home," in every sense of the word. Much was done to educate our membership in the proper care, training and education of their children. We published many new educational mate rials for adults, teens and children alike: books, magazines, booklets, newsletters, book summaries, book reprints. We also produced a whole series of educational videos for use in the Homes, introduced new education programmes for all ages of children, researched and recommended new textbooks and workbooks, encouraged parents to spend quality time daily with their children and set aside one full day each week for parents and children to have fellowship and recreation together. Overall, higher standards were established across the board in all Family Homes.
       Our present-day fellowship has become a commonwealth of independent, indigenous, self-supporting, self-governing missionary communities, pledged to uphold a specific code of conduct. We feel confident that our present structure, rules of behaviour, supervision, and missionary or evangelistic purpose are well in line with those of mainstream Christianity. We have many built-in safeguards to assure that members' rights are respe cted and protected, and that each member community is managed properly. Great efforts have been made to ensure that all member communities provide a very wholesome environment for all, particularly the children. We feel assured that the Scriptural promise of Romans 8:28, that "all things work together for good to them that love the Lord," very much applies, seeing how each lesson and experience of the past has helped to improve the quality and depth of our Christian service.
       Any lingering ne gative impressions of our fellowship that may remain in the public mind because of our youthful immaturity in the past, controversial witnessing methods, media hype, or anti-cult campaigns and propaganda will be quickly brushed away if we can have a fair hearing by open-minded rational observers. Anyone who will simply take the time to closely and objectively look at our present life, our orderly communities, our Christian goals, and examine the message and materials we offer the public will be convinced of our sincerity, and will clearly see that we are a serious Christian movement.
       Within each community, parental bonds with children are traditional and strong, and each parent greatly loves and cares for each child that God has given them. Any objective observer who looks at our children's health, care, training, education, manners, and maturity, will find qualities of character that can only be built and cultivated through years of excellent care and attention such as we have giv en them.
       Looking beyond the various methods of witnessing that we have used over the years, our basic message remains unchanged, that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Also unchanged is our personal zeal for witnessing the Gospel of Salvation through Jesus to all the world, even in some cases at the price of persecution and great personal sacrifice (Mark 16:15).
       Our member s are sincere and dedicated in their faith, firmly founded upon the Bible; and our doctrines, practices and beliefs, if examined closely, are very much in keeping with those held sacred by Christians worldwide. (Please refer to our "Statement of Faith.")

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family