We have friends who still attend this church in spite of all the hype and upmarket presentation. Seems God works in spite of it all.

There is a CBE chapter in Melbourne and I will email a contact person for you.

Not sure whether the Amway founders’ background was Mormon or not, Liz. Some of the books I read and tapes I listened to seemed to endorse Christianity and Mormonism as though they were one in the same, so you could be right. There was certainly a lot of Christians in the business and I actually came to the Lord, myself, during the time I was involved.

You are right about their meetings being similar to many church services. After I got saved, my ‘upline’ as they are known, took us along to Hills Christian Life Centre (now Hillsong) in Sydney and I remember thinking, at the time, just how much like an Amway seminar the church was!

I ended up worshipping and serving in this church for many years and eventually extricated myself from Amway altogether, but unfortunately, this particular church promoted many of the same gender stereotypes and sold similar gender biased self help books just like you said. One good thing about this church though was that they were all for women pastors and women in leadership – unfortunately, you just had to look like a Revlon advertisement doing it!

Interesting comment about Amway which from our understanding was from Mormon roots (correct me if I’m wrong) We find most of these groups still promote the gender stereotypes. In Australia, Amway is now known as ‘the business’ by adherants and their huge meetings are similar to church services and have Christian pastors addressing them…what a mixture! The’ business’ promotes certain books among their clientele and these include gender biased ones among the self-help ones.