The Church Of Joe, the original Church, started on GEnie in June of 1993. It was Babylon 5's 8th topic area, started by Colin Stobbe. It was not much more than a small group of us posting messages about our supposed meetings each week. We "met" in Colin's bedroom. We told our stories about how we were converted and how we worked to convert others.
Joe, at first, tried to dissuade us from this endeavor. I believe his opinion on the whole thing was "If I were a god I would have given myself more hair." Eventually, though, even the Great Maker himself joined in the fun. He never "attended" one of our meetings, but he would joke with us about the things that happened in them. Jokes were often made about "warming the collection plates." and fighting the dust bunnies under Colin's bed. (This was long before the Shadows had ever been heard of. Thinking back, I think perhaps they were related.)
The original COJ was called "The First Amalgamated Church Of Joe, Prophet And Producer." It's motto was based on something that Joe promised from the beginning and, for the most part, has delivered. It was "No kids or cute robots...ever!" The closest Joe has come to breaking this promise is the occasional cute little kid as an extra. They are never main characters, which is what the promise covers. (Except the boy in "Believers" who wasn't necessarily cute and he died by the end of the episode.)
To the left is the logo for the original COJ. There we some hats made, of which I have one of the
original production run. Some day I may take a picture of it and put it up on this page. I think
there were also some T-shirts made, but I am not sure about that.
Sadly, the First Amalgamated Church Of Joe slowly dissolved. The messages got farther apart and many of us left GEnie. (During the price re-structuring.) Now, almost 3 years later, I am starting the Church Of Joe again. Slightly altered, a little more serious, a lot more work, but the Church is back.
I had an extensive collection of archived messages pertaining to the original Church Of Joe. Unfortunately I lost them all in a hard drive crash about a year ago. If anyone out there has any of the original COJ messages saved somewhere, I would love to get copies of them for this page. As it is, here are a few of the messages I have managed to collect so far. (Thanks, Tom R!)
27/11/97 - The coup happened