Ok, I'll make a seperat post for this since people seemed to want to comment.
I'm playing a pretty low intelegent person in Lusternia. Not one likely to become the voice of a god to mortals. However, my charachter is the type that would be happy to follow the orders of "priests"
On another level, when I played other charachters that were in orders, and say I was in the order of Pacifism, certain shrine abilities like Healing would be much help, since I woudln't be fighting, but shrine abilities like teleport might be, cause I travel a lot.
Those are the two things I really like about congregations, one it gives you a strcutrued place to belong to an order and maybe just be a follower, (and prevents people from joining "multiple order clans") as well as gives each order unique miracles that make sense for that order.

I think such a structure could be very beneficial to Lusternia on many levels.
Congregations arn't just novice hood for orders, they also allow an order to have different levels of intrest. to take a Real world example.. You have your church which tells you about how best to treat your neighbor, but then you've got the guys in rome deciding the fate of the world and helping indana jones stop the nazis from having imortality....

ROFL What the.. ??? Anywho! Congregations would be nice. I know from being an orderhead previously the other benefits of having a congregation to chose ordermembers out of - something I didnt exactly get the priviledge of doing *sniffle* I had to choose out of a clan -.-

other than that its just nice to have congregations for those who dont want to be full fledged order members. Those people who just want to offer to a deity, worship with others, etc. but dont want to be priests and preistesses then have the option to have religion their way.

I'm with Daganev on this one. One of my characters has a very low intelligence and would be very content to follow directions from another. I really think I'd love to roleplay a follower.

When I get tired of following, I'll play my other characters or just go back to Achaea every now and then.

some reason, this most excelent thread got put on the inactive list.. I object!

I'd love to see congregations, or something similar, implemented. I'd imagine that every Celestian should follow a God/Goddess, being the manic zealots we are (meant to be), and congregations would be lovely for that. Also, different order/shrine powers for different orders would be wonderful...

Being of follower of my God, my character follows His teachings quite strongly, but Typhus's personality is hardly suitable for leading some great Order. Perhaps he might get there by some strange twist of the Fates, but considering he spends so much of his time with his obsession of books, any books, he would hardly be the best choice to lead a great Order. So, it is good that we have the option of multiple levels of Orderhood from which to place and pool our talents.

Yeah, I think congregations, even if there are no powers available, would be an awesome role play tool.

Who said we were meant to be? No reason to assume that. I would like to have congregations though...it'd be nice to be formally associated with an order, so to speak. Tarah kinda has one in Achaea, but that's sort of a pre-order induction clan (only no one ever gets inducted anymore). And that works fairly well. It's used to see if people're good for being in the order, which is another thing to look into.

They have a clan for Prospero's order, too, but it's a pretty dead clan. The order is small, but active enough. Would be nice to have an easier way for people to join the list of prospective order members. As it is now, you need to hunt around a lot to discover anyone who's even in an order and then wait for a rather long time for a response from the order head before you're even inducted into the clan.

The process could be much more automated and streamlined. If I want to know more about a Divine, I should have a place to go and read about Him or Her. If I decide to join the worshippers, I should be able to stroll into a temple and pledge myself to the order.

Celest's history and current goal.

Clans are all very well, but no matter what they are dedicated to they remain a clan. Most of the Order-related clans I can think of in Achaea (and I can think of LOTS) are simply to patron people. A lot of them tend to be very inactive with regard to conversation and discussion, let alone activity and learning. The clans are there just so people are organised. Joining a congregation would be a statement of worship, a pledge if you will, without raising your hand to say "Pick me to join the Order next!".

Celest's history and current goal certainly doesn't state anywhere that we all have to be religious zealots.
On topic, the Tarah clan didn't seem to patron ANYONE. When Tarah came back about 50 people joined, but some of them were Lupines or Neraeans (or whatever the word is) etc. who just joined to chat. There was more talking than inducting there, that's for sure.