Recommend A Week with the Twelve Tribes: 12 Lessons from the 12 Tribes (Part 2 of 2) (Email)
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Garrett and Lauren Smith have been traveling around Australia for the last four months working on organic farms through the WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) program. A recent farm visit in the Sydney area brought them to a community of the Twelve Tribes (www.twelvetribes.com), a Messianic religious movement of people living communally in various countries, including the U.S. and Australia. Although milking goats had been the attraction of the farm stay, Garrett and Lauren were confronted with a very different, sometimes bewildering, view of life and religious doctrine. Last week, they shared an article in which they introduced the Twelve Tribes religious movement and reflected upon their experiences from living a week with a community in the Tribe of Asher. This second article identifies the positive aspects of the community life they observed, which they intend to apply to improve their own life of religion. -Editor
Last week, we gave a little expose of what life was like in the Twelve Tribes. We tried to keep the account as unbiased as possible. Doubtless, the reader noted some large divergences in doctrine. There were, and this week we’d like to emphasize some of the contrasts. However, instead of a lengthy discourse on the legitimacy of their dogma vs. ours, we’d like to focus instead on the good qualities that we observed within the community. Amidst all the dissension, we found some valuable lessons to apply to our own lives in the New Church. Here are the twelve positive points we learned from a week with the Twelve Tribes (an unintended coincidence of number, I assure you) that we invite you to consider as well.
1.Members of the Twelve Tribes actively and officially acknowledge the Lord and their need of His presence in their lives two times a day, every day of the week.
Every morning and evening at 7:00, the community members lay aside whatever they may be doing (or thinking about) and gather together to acknowledge the Lord. They sing and dance, read the Bible and have doctrinal lessons, and close each session with a group prayer.
