From: inducto@aol.com (Inducto)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: What is or was a Scientology 'Group'?
Message-ID: <1998090603361200.XAA25333@ladder03.news.aol.com>
Date: 6 Sep 1998 03:36:12 GMT
It means a variety of things. But to get "thousands" of them, they are apparently -- as someone has testified officials have admitted -- counting member pairs of people co-auditing as "groups".
Here is what I have been able to glean from studying the situation. There are actually, according to my best count, about 130 "churches" and around 200 missions. Many of the "churches" are actually small affairs located in low-rent commercial and office space, just barely hanging on; many of the missions are now only open a few hours a week, and an unknown but significant number are just parttime backroom operations or even less.
Then there are the "dianetics counseling groups" and the like. Some if not all of these are would-be missions, probably someone trying to build an auditing practice, but in these days of the mission network collapsing it appears unlikely many if any will build to missionhood.
And then CoS probably counts all their "social action" groups; ABLE, CCHR, etc, including local chapters that many be just one or a handful of people meeting occasionally. If it's anything like CoS' mailing lists, any two people who have at any time made a commitment to be a "group" of some sort are kept on the rolls and counted.
Back in '78, CoS was growing, and approaching its peak in creation of churches and missions that occurred in the early 80s; a lot of "groups" were soon to become missions, and missions to become "churches". Nowadays the whole network is aged and fading, and CoS seems to prefer to let it be consolidated into a few "churches" they control directly. Remember, "missions" are effectively -- and what used to literally be called -- franchises, and the "counseling groups" are probably private therapeutic practices, where the central apparatus of CoS is only getting a cut of the cash flow and does not have the sort of direct contol they seem to prefer.
I.
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From: roger gonnet <dictionnaire@hol.fr>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: What is or was a Scientology 'Group'?
Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 07:36:03 +0200
Message-ID: <35F370C3.5C617502@hol.fr>
ake.wiman wrote:
David Gerard <fun@thingy.apana.org.au> wrote <3607cafe.17601910@202.12.87.97>...> So. What were these groups? What happened in them? How did one get itself
> listed in WIS78? What do they mean by 'group' now?Two scientologists at the same spot :-).
Many scientologists I've spoken to are influenced by their "church" to start new groups in their home town. Sometimes somebody do this with one or more fellow scientologist. Perhaps they rent premises - start - and then fade away.
Some of them survive for a longer time. Some of them sell auditing and/or books.
A group is any ONE person asking some possibility to disseminate the bad seed o'scamto.
That can be a "gung-ho" group, a "field auditor" (much frowned upon by the new management), a "city office", a mission, an org, any of the front assocs like narconon, criminon, CCHR, ABLE, WISE, or whatever!
roger