How to Better Look After Newcomers?

To my understanding, this is for the government records in Texas since we are a legal and registered non-profit organization. They need to keep track of how many members of the "church" exist.

vladucard wrote: To my understanding, this is for the government records in Texas since we are a legal and registered non-profit organization. They need to keep track of how many members of the "church" exist.

And for that they need to ask my criminal history? I'm posting on an internet forum, not babysitting children or handling money.

Right, I understand, but this is also a non-profit organization, it's not just a fan forum, it's legally a place of worship as well.

If you are concerned, feel free to reach out to one of the Knights and they will happily help you out since they may be able to explain it better than I can.

Right, so is every other church, and they're not asking general membership about their criminal history.

As I previously said, if you are clergy or an actual employee of the church they may do background checks, but they don't ask that kind of stuff of the people sitting in the pews.

The difference between here and the sort of church you're referencing is the fact that this is an online church, not a local community church. Go to a church in your neighborhood, people know people. They're gonna have an idea of your history. You may not like it, but people will find out and know that you robbed Joe Schmoe or what have you, and they'll talk, and before you know it, people see you and go "there's the Joe Schmoe robber." Regardless of if you've done your time or turned your life around.

Online that doesn't exist. Online, people can be who they want to be. We have children who come here unattended. At one point in time, in order to become a member, you had to publicly post your full name and date of birth. That question is the closest thing to neighborhood gossip that can possibly exist. Is a single question in a membership application going to stop those who want to cause harm? No, probably not; someone could easily lie. But at least the Temple can show there was an active attempt to protect her members.

Either way, you can still come here and participate without ever having answer it at all.

Not to take away at all from what Ava has said (which is right on), there is another way to look at this. Because in a sense, when you apply for membership, you *are* applying for a job.

Most physical churches distinguish between members and congregants, whether they say so or not. The subset of folks who show up for services on Sunday morning is congruent with -- but not equal to -- the subset of members. Membership in a real world church is something different (often involving an application of some kind, frequently including a promise to tithe) from simply showing up for a service. I found that out when I applied for a service position in one church only to discover that I wasn't a member of the church even though I had been attending and making friends there for months. No one talked about it, I guess they just assumed we would know.

It's not different here. You can come here daily, attend the services, read the sermons, take part in the discussions and educational programs as a guest. I think you can do the entire IP as a guest. But you can't go past the IP without becoming a member. It's a mandatory prerequisite for becoming an Initiate.

And that's how it should be. Becoming an Initiate is a step on the path toward becoming recognized as a Knight, or the path toward joining the Clergy. The Temple has a clear interest in knowing whether candidates for its Knights Corps or Clergy have history that could affect the candidate's ability to perform the duties of the position for which they may one day be considered, or history that could reflect badly on the Temple. Because the membership application is the only one we make people fill out, no matter how long they stick around or how far they progress, it makes sense to me to ask that question up front.