Hi guys

I too had a bit of a hoot at that article, Clive, and I certainly identified with quite a few of the points made but most of them were fairly harmless, if a little mis-guided. Rensil is right about the control over young people in SMC. I've experienced such control in my past and, oh the palavver when I tried to hide my pierced ears from my Mum! In those days the SMC fashion in head-gear had migrated from the white crocheted berrets (of which there were always a few spare in case some poor woman turned up without a hat) to those little head-square scarfs that eveyone wore tied at the back. I must admit it did make it easier to hide the demonic deed by pulling the edges of the scarf down over my ears - you couldn't do that with a crocheted berret!

The level of control exerted over young folk in SMC is quite abnormal for a healthy church and, as Rensil pointed out, kids have been advised to have less contact with their own families if the leaders deem those families to be 'un-fit' (in other words, they don't attend SMC). Yes, the level of control in SMC is really quite serious indeed.

I also wonder about the article linked to by Rensil earlier. On the face of it, this article seems to show SMC as quite a charitable bunch but, as usual, I want to pick some holes in it and maybe a few noses along the way.

The first thing that strikes me as odd is how the school can afford new iPads - or have they been gifted? If they haven't been gifted, who's footing the bill because the organisation is low on funds as it is. Are the congregation digging deep again (knowingly or unknowingly)?

Secondly, while I sympathise and empathise with kids in Africa, aren't there some needy kids in our own areas who could benefit from this generosity? I'm not being nasty about this but isn't their charitable status measured against the benefit to the communities in which they opperate? They are apparently quite open about their lack of love for the needy of their areas; is it somehow easier to love African children than, say the kids in Glenburn School? For those who don't know - Glenburn School is a local, Greenock, school for handicapped children.

In my days in SMC, we supported Tear Fund which is an international childrens' charity and we would hold fund raisers on certain nights, for this charity. Many of the members wrote to some of the kids being supported by Tear Fund - I did some writing back then too. However, we also raised funds and helped the local charities in the area - I remember swimming a mile for the local Hospice Appeal and raising a fair amount from the SMC pews.

So I'm really talking about balance here. There's nothing wrong with sending a few iPads to Africa, if you can afford it, and you are also looking after the people closer to you; who are just as needy but perhaps in different ways to the kids in Africa. A disadvantaged kid is a disadvantaged kid no matter where they are in the world so I would have liked to have seen some balance to this article, like ... 'here's what we're doing over there but here's what we're doing at home'. You know what I mean?

I still wonder how the new iPads are being funded but another nagging doubt I have is; if the woman in the article is a missionary who is supported by SMC - perhaps the iPads are in place of the support money she should be receiving from the church? I dunno - just a wicked thought.... get thee behind me, Satan!

I do wonder also about the NEED to upgrade the iPads at all although kids need to have access to technology in order to learn the full school curriculum but whatever happened to the good old-fashioned desktop pc. A sufficiently powerful desktop can be purchased at half the price of an iPad and, since most pc's have slots for extra memory (some even have upgradable processor chips) there would be no need to renew them until they ran out of memory slots. These days, that's highly unlikely given the vast storage now on just one chip.

But then, I don't know why I'm so surprised since nothing the SMC leaders do or say makes any sense to this mere mortal.

As always biiiiiig love and huge hugggggggs
God Bless xxxx

To be fair, regarding the expense of iPads, it could actually be a wise move in the long term, since all the textbooks can if desired be put on them.
I believe some education authorities in California are already doing or considering this. Licensing and distributing the digital form of these can naturally be much cheaper.
It means for example that textbooks can be cheaply and quickly kept up-to date, whereas the printed form has to remain, sometimes for decades.
Not only this but textbooks for the iPad are already being published that have interactive content. This makes for a much better learning experience.
An expensive move in the short term for sure. But my guess is that it will save them considerable money in the years that follow.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2013 10:16PM by Clive.

Hi Clive

Yes, but whatever you can download to an iPad can also be downloaded to a desk top pc at half the price. For a charity organisation who are already losing money, it would be more sensible to go for the cheaper option, don't you think?

The link for the article, referred to by Cbarb above, which was in The Herald newspaper recently, about Cedars School buying new iPads and the old ones being sent out to schools in Africa, is:-

[www.heraldscotland.com]

No. A desktop PC simply doesn't and cant be used for reading books. A PC simply doesnt compare as an educational tool compred to ipads. And now Microsoft - with Windows 8 is merely copying Apple.

Apple has huge resources for Authors to make special textbooks.

As to upgrading. I recall them getting the original ipad some time ago. t would have been either the original, or the iPad 2. Since then Apple have produced a Retina screen ipad. These have much more pixels and render the text close to printed text. Thus they are a much much better screen for reading books.

I doubt as a proportion of the overall expenses and overheads, salaries etc that the iPads represent that big a cost and given the savings on textbooks it makes a lot of sense.

Hi Clive

I beg to disagree about the downloading of e-Books onto a pc. I use a laptop (windows 7) and all my work is done online. I create e-books for the distance learning market and I read e-books on my laptop with no problems what-so-ever. I've been doing this for years now and wouldn't even think about a tablet since they do nothing more than my laptop already does. The e-books I create are completely interactive (all I use is Adobe Creator suite and Bob's your uncle - everything is completely interactive) I also use Dreamweaver to create e-courses online and these too are completely interactive. I use Moogle to correspond with students directly and mark their uploaded work and the majority of my students are also using pc's. So I don't believe you need a tablet to do any school work which can't be done on a pc. I have also written reviews on the iPad and the Micorsoft Surface and the only applications where I would say they win over a pc is in the GAMES market and not the education market, which is really what we're talking about.

That aside, I stand firm by my comments regarding the unnecessary expense of tablets for a school which is seemingly relying on a few members of their congregation digging deep in their pockets because they have been promised that revival is coming via i-Pad! That's just a ridiculous sham to extort money from people who are already struggling to survive.

The whole idea of them actually running the school to begin with is questionable anyway, when the school is so obviously NOT paying for itself, much less breaking even! Never mind the fact that the congregation are being lied to about the need for such advanced technology in a loss-making school.

Sorry, but this is one person who will not be converted to 'Revival by i-Pad' although I dare say those who enjoy playing games and footering with silly apps are the ones who truly enjoy the tablet market but to me, my technology is for work only - I have a PS2 and an Xbox360 for my games and that's just perfect, who needs to spend £400 on an i-Pad? :-)

PS. Just as an after-thought. The iPad costs around £400 for 32GB of memory while I have 600GB of memory on a laptop which cost me £300 with a 2 year guarantee and is WAY MORE powerful than any tablet on the market today.

I agree completely with what Cbarb has written above. Children can be educated and obtain sufficient reading material on a laptop, without the extravagant cost to the school of buying an iPad.

The issue here is NOT about what is the best technology with which to read books or learn school-work. We know that technology is advancing at an amazing rate and that many children and some schools are using iPads. But the reason they didn't have them a few years ago is cost. Most state sector schools would not be able to afford iPads on a 1:1 basis for every pupil in the school. Many kids I know have an iPad and it was usually bought for Christmas or for a birthday. In other words, it was a special purchase and one which the parents or single parent probably had to save up for and it was a one-off purchase. They can then use it to help them with their homework and school projects. But not every child has an iPad.

The reason that Cedars School got them is because the son of one of the main church leaders runs his own computer company which is Apple based. He wanted the iPads. The Church Board agreed to pay for the 1:1 deployment for every pupil in the school from age 5 up to age 17/18, plus one for each teacher and a few spare for their pals to (I hope) buy. Then the leaders had the affrontery to stand up and say publicly that the iPads were paid for from the parents' school fees. Then, when questioned about that, they changed their minds and said, No, the Church are helping to fund the iPad deployment. First, they said the iPads were purchased, then they changed that to , No, they are leased. What is the truth? We don't really know! Do the parents know, especially the non-SMC parents, of which there are many now?
Read the Latigo article re SMC and The Generous Gift, Clive.

Another justification for getting the iPads was, as Cbarb has reminded us, that it would bring revival to the Church because they now were making contacts with people all over the Uk and even abroad. How can an iPad bring revival? And the hypocrisy now evident from the information in The Herald article that they are donating their old iPads to schools in Africa is frankly unimpressive. Why not donate to local schools or community groups?

So the issue isn't about what's best for children's education and reading skills.

Rensil, you are wrong. It has been very clearly established over the years that laptops are NOT an ideal book replacement. Certainly not for any sustained
reading, and certainly not until high resolution screen laptops start becoming commonplace.

App software for iPads is also far far less expensive to purchase than software on PCs or laptops.

Laptops are far far more unreliable and prone to damage than iPads. They can be held in one hand. The user interface is far more human friendly. Children love them. And with the latest Retina screens, the quality of text for readability far surpasses most laptops apart from very expensive Apple products.

You ought to consider why Amazon and others have gone to such great lengths R&D wise to come out with devices such as the KINDLE.

There are schools in California adopting the iPad. These things have plenty of good reasons for adopting in schools. Was it initially just an idea by a geek son of a leader ? Sure ( I read the original article some years ago ) Was it done because he thought it would be "cool" maybe. Was it purchased under opaque conditions which the leadership later had to change their story on, in opaque fashion. If you say so.

But regardless of that - once the investment has been made - this doesnt take it away the point that usig such devices in school seems perfectly reasonable to me.

As to donating to Africa. Well I think we're getting a little mean minded here. Isnt it a good thing to give used iPads to children in the third world who otherwise would never get such stuff ?

What are we doing now in this thread - picking and choosing which charitable targets people choose to support ? .

Heres my guess. They probably have some missionary projects on the go, that they support in Africa, and part of this - no doubt - since so many SMC leaders seem to be teachers.... involves setting up and supporting African schools. No real shocker here !.

Now I as a sceptic would much rather see them supporting schools where science and critical thinking were at the core. Africa needs such talent. Rather than yet another generation of tongues speaking cult-followers. But thats another thing.


It seems to me that all reports indicate that the children love using the iPads, it helps the teachers out. It has WORKED !

What on earth is there to object to ?

Sure - if the funds to buy them were obtained in a less than clear and transparent manner that could be critiqued. But bearing in mind the colossal lemming-like
assent the congregation gave to Hugh Black in the "investment-gate" saga decades ago, this is hardly surprising.

Is it really sensible to lay into every tiny detail of how SMC operates ? I mean - to use biblical parlance - this is really starting to give the impression of straining at gnats.


You think that laying into school adopting ipads is somehow going to scare readers here from becoming SMC cult members ?

Dream on.

Hi guys

Well, you may think so Clive, but I stand by my comments on my much loved laptop. My students have no problems with reading, writing and uploading their work and all the software they use, is completely FREE – No charge at all.

Anyway, I think you are missing the real point here which is less to do with slating the i-Pad and more to do with the justification for the expense in the first place. This is what is questionable and, dare I say it?, somewhat less than holy.

The underlying issue is that the i-Pads are only ONE instance of lies being told in order to in-still a certain mind-set into the congregation, to the advantage of the whims of some of the leaders. The same thing was evident in the shares incident, as you reminded us.

What we're seeing here is that the school is already being subsidised by the members of the congregation, to the tune of something like £1.5K per child (if last years' accounts are anything to go by). Some of the people contributing to this fund are not in a position to have their own children privately educated and yet they are subsidising children from families who are already more privileged than their own.

This alone should be making the congregation have a good think to themselves about whether or not this is how God wants them to donate their money. I don't know but I have a serious nagging doubt that this would be God's will when there are so many references, in the Bible, to giving to the poor, the meek inheriting the earth, the first shall be last and the last shall be first etc.

Far be it from me to say what God intends for anyone and perhaps the members of the congregation are giving their cash willingly to subsidise the school. Perhaps the subsidies are being used towards paying the teachers' salaries; the majority of whom belong to two families with a position of authority in the church.

What-ever way you cut it, it still seems like a very strange way to be using the funds of the ordinary members of the organisation, who are facing their own financial hardships. And I'm beginning to draw some parallels here between the coffee shops, Cedars school and the shares incident anyway. Except that a lot more of the congregation's money was lost in that incident.

They are still losing money and waiting for the revival which was promised almost half a decade ago; which somehow seems tp have been waiting around all this time until the school got thousands of pounds worth of i-Pads; putting them into more debt.

This isn't wholly about new equipment being bought and old equipment being given away. The very serious core issue is the un-wise decisions being made by the members of the SMC board with regards to the Financial situation of the church.

SMC need to concentrate on the REAL reason God put them there. There's way too much commercialism surrounding the church and they don't have the finances to support this. Haven't they wondered why God has not been helping them to make a financial success of these ventures? Or are they still believing what they are being told about having their faith tested? Come on folks, if you got back to the basics of Christ on the Cross, I think you'd find that it's only humans who stand in the way of revival, not God.

So this isn't just about i-Pads it's about mis-management of funds and doubtful recruiting policies, and the ease with which the congregation are manipulated into believing that these people, in charge, have all the correct answers and are God's chosen individuals. I don't know about you but how can anyone believe these are God's chosen when they have behaved so abominably - as testified to on this site. I certainly don't believe for one second that God's chosen leaders would behave in the ways these guys have - down to outright lying to the congregation. That's not even Christian, never mind the mark of someone you should respect as a leader!

In essence, the leaders of SMC have gotten too big for their own boots and, to coin a phrase: "they're writing cheques their butts can't cash". They need to seriously think about whether or not they're in this to pay some privileged folks salaries and buy equipment which has to be subsidised by the congregations' offerings; or whether or not they're in this to save souls.

When I was young, the whole of the collection was used to pay for the upkeep of the churches, the church vans and occasionally help someone get to camp who couldn't otherwise afford it. Money given by the congregation was used wisely (to the best of my knowledge) and given where it was needed and NO ONE in a position of authority – or any other position - was claiming any salary from church funds - absolutely NO ONE, right down to cleaning the churches; which was always done by volunteers from the congregation of that church.

You aked, Clive, some time ago now. If God speaks directly to the leaders of the church, then why wasn't someone being alerted to the fact that HB was doing something which would harm the church, back at the time of shares problem. You see they haven't really come out of that pattern and the opening of coffee shops and a school is still pouring money away - regardless of i-Pads.

As I said, in my previous post, I have no objection to SMC sending their old i-Pads to Africa; but I was pointing out the lack of care for the people of their own areas - which has been publicly spoken about, by at least one of the leaders of SMC - where it was stated that they did not need to be bothering with the people who were in need of help in their own areas.

This was the IMBALANCE I was speaking about, it's all very well to call a press conference and say "Look how wonderful we are, we're taking i-Pads to Africa!" when, in the background, you have no intention of doing anything at all to help out those closer to home, who are also in need of help - but then, that would be less press-worthy I suppose.

In addition, are the people who are subsidising the purchase of NEW i-Pads still being lied to about the need for the equipment? Perhaps the original i-Pads just weren't powerful enough for revival and God has been waiting around for the next, better looking and easier to read model to come along.

It boils down to ONE thing and ONE thing only – SMC was never meant to be operating bookshops, coffee shops much less a school. Because if they were; given that they have so many anointed people in their midst, they would have been doing a roaring trade - by using all that insight they claim to have - to the point they would be enhancing their members' lives and contributing in a real way to their communities rather than the other way round.

The school has been running at a loss, for how many years? And yet they continue to favour a couple of families and subsidise their salaries. I wonder how many of the current contributors to the SMC coffers are unemployed at present, or working shifts to make ends meet? While their hard-earned 'dollahs' are being used to subsidise the salaries of the privileged few who run a completely unnecessary and loss-making school. No amount of technology is going to make the slightest bit of difference to that fact - except to contribute to the amount the congregation has to subsidise the various ventures.

You may ask again, Clive, as I'm asking also – if God is speaking directly to his 'anointed ones' then why haven't they foreseen the continual loss-making state of the school and taken steps to prevent this continual loss. Let's see, by maybe increasing the fees for the school perhaps? You don't need to be annointed to come up with that very basic principle of trading – let's face it, if someone can afford to have their kid privately educated why should they expect to be subsidised by those who cannot afford the same privilege?

I would think by now, given the consistent failures fincancially, that it's time to get REAL and find out what it is God wants rather than what humans want.
Oh no, silly me! I forgot, these are all tests of the congregations' faith and, if they keep praying in tongues fervently enough they'll have their i-Pad revival!

Don't slip on the verbal diahorrea on your way out, dear!


As always huge love and huggggggs to all
God bless xxxxxx