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Hi There, I recently left TWI almost two years ago after being involved for 27 years. I'm still trying to unwind it all, but I do want to say that over the years I would look at the information in this group and it helped me to eventually come out of TWI. I got involved when I was 13. Met my husband at The ROA, went Way Disciple Group 5, I don't know how often I will be able to come here, but I would love to talk with others who have done it too. Thanks.

The Momentus thread has resurfaced from the past (2004).......a reminder of another perverted version of scamming people. And......some twi-leaders, after exiting mother-cult twi, went forth with scams and schemes like Momentus. Men like Bo Reahard (1st corps), John Lynn (CES founder), John Schoenheit (6th corps) and Mark Graeser (7th corps) were strong proponents of this "thought-reform" process. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some Excerpts from Steve Lortz: This is different from cultic groups and others that use thought-reform techniques. In these latter groups, there is deliberate deception about what the group is and what some of the rituals might be, and primarily, there is deception about what the ultimate goal will be for a member, what will ultimately be demanded and expected, and what the damages resulting from some of the practices might be. The hidden agenda of the Momentus trainers was to turn Momentus grads into recruiting machines, something they did with a vengence. They really liked John Lynn. The latest I read, John was bragging he had gotten 1,200 of his "closest friends" to take Momentus. At $150 a head, John Lynn was responsible for bringing $180,000 into the Momentus coffers. Here's how the life-boat exercise went. It was the last exercise of the day, after we were all worn out. The lights were dimmed. We were told to sit with our eyes closed while Larry Pinci led us through the guided imagery of being on a cruise ship, how wonderful everything was. Then the ship started to sink. (This just seemed hokey to me. Maybe it was because Larry's delivery wasn't up to snuff. Maybe it was the four years experience I had living on a submarine.) Next, each one of us had to get up in front of the group (about 60 in our case) and tell what he/she would do, and why. Any attempt to escape by a means other than the life-boat was disallowed by the trainers. Early persons who gave up their seat out of what Danny called the "well-known, traditional Christian virtue of 'self-sacrifice'" were hooted and jeered and mocked by the trainers, so that option suffered an early demise. What the trainers wanted was for everyone to make a pitch as to why he or she personally should be on the boat. But Momentus was designed, from the ground up, to be deceptive. Deception was in EVERYTHING the trainers did. They didn't care if people were hurt by what they were doing. They didn't care if people got anything beneficial out of what they were doing, either. They only cared about our money, and about breaking and remolding us into recruiting machines so they could get even MORE people's money. The Momentus training fostered an elitism among its grads that made the Way Corps look like the Mickey Mouse Club. I never attended any of the local grad meetings. After my experiences in The Way, I couldn't stomach the thought of being another "grad" of ANYTHING. If I HAD attended the secret grad meetings, I would have become aware sooner of the truth about certain things happening in The Living Word Fellowship. The Momentus grads hijacked the leadership team by driving non-grads out (using techniques learned in the Momentus training), and then began using parts of the meetings to promote Momentus. It looked very casual and spontaneous on the surface, but at heart, it was all carefully orchestrated, in order to maximize recruiting. The most insidious evil of the Momentus training is the hold-harmless agreement. Trusting people who mean what they say and say what they mean, in signing the hold-harmless agreement, unthinkingly commit themselves to NOT RECOGNIZING the true damage Momentus does. That includes the deceptive physical, emotional and spiritual manipulation involved in the exercises. Those people are primed to accept the trainer's deceptive, nonsensical explanations without asking any critical questions. The hold-harmless agreement also fosters a callous, cold-hearted indifference to the suffering of the people who succumb to Momentus' "psychologically dangerous" exercises. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Insidious groups often change the names of their courses, classes and conferences............when critics and dissenters raise awareness of their tactics. New names ............... https://www.therevenantprocess.com/ and https://www.bloodandethos.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Twi's in-residence corps program used physical, emotional and spiritual manipulation exercises to overpower and indoctrinate. And now, there are ex-corps leaders who, not only run offshoot mini-cults..........but parlay their manipulative skills into "self-help" quackery.

Yeah, DWBH. Truly.

Rob Bell approached exactly this question in his controversial "Love Wins" book, which effectively excommunicated him from the American "Evangelical" community. I must say I find the scholarship sound. When I read the Bible, it is hard to square the love, grace, and universal message of Christ's words (the "red letters") with the eternal punishment of a theology of Hell. ESPECIALLY when that theology has most often been used as "fire-and-brimstone" preaching to scare people into authoritarian subservience by many a false prophet. It certainly isn't a message of salvation. If Jesus' love is truly radical and transformative, there can be no place for Hell. I like how some Catholic theologians define Hell as "the absence of God," in other words, every human being has a choice to live with knowledge of God and God's love, or without it. And choosing to live without God or in denial of God leads one's eternal being to continue in that stance. This of course opens the door to purgatory (an even more spurious theological prospect, when looking at the Bible). But what is faith without mystery? Dead, to me at least. I am instantly skeptical of any preacher or "representative" of God that claims to know anything for certain. That itself is putting oneself in God's place, and if there's one thing I learned from my experiences of spiritual abuse and my own attempts at control of others, that is fruitless and against scripture. "The first shall be the last," after all.

I just saw this thread and the one with the Corpse confrontation letter to the BOD. Gee whiz. How sad. First, to see names of folks I knew back then and liked. Then, that they are still in. My, oh my. Just awful. I don't usually post, but I had to on this one. PFAL in '74, 10th corpse, left in Oct., '86. Still can't quite shake all the crap we saw and got put through. Those folks have to be dead to everything.

On January 20, 2019........They had a conference weekend in Wichita, Kansas. Three Teachings noted......... Cheerful Giver (by Rico Magnelli) Love is Giving: We Give Because God Gave (by John Ryan) Partners in Giving and Receiving (by Tom Knupp) So now it begins............the need for money, the need to recruit others. And.......why Wichita, Kansas? Is there still a group of loyal wierwille-followers there? .....

To me, it appears that Oikeos....Rico Magnelli........got off to a running start BEFORE this R&R group (Moynihans, Horneys. Fort, etc). Rico met with Rosalie after the August 2016 letter........confronting her head-on. This confrontation led to his immediate dismissal or resignation. Rico moved quickly on planning to jump-start his own splinter group.......website included. The R&R Group waited on Rosalie and BOD to relent and meet with their demands. Didn't happen. Then, the R&R Group sent out a March 2017 letter with 56 signatures (**and dozens more). In May 2017 was the R&R Group's Facebook Q&A............followed by more mark/avoid from hq. Again, to reiterate................Rico got the jump on all of this. And now.......when you click on "speakers" button on the Oikeos.org/teachings........Fort, Giles, Horney, Knupp, Moynihan, Ryan and Weller are listed as contributing speakers/teachers to Rico's Oikeos organization. Game. Set. Match. AND...............now, the teachings on giving money are coming out. AND................so it begins. ANOTHER BABY CULT IS BORN.

Thanks Everyone. I appreciate the warm welcomes. I honestly have no idea how many people are left there. They keep that stuff pretty close to the vest. I can say though, that when I went WayD in '99 there were probably 50 to 60 people going out on the field from Gunnison, the West of the Mississippi group. The last WayMag I saw had pics of the folks going out and the groups were significantly smaller, as in the 5 to 10 range. Also, a development that would affect the numbers involved is the split that was the final straw for us. Yes, there has been another split up. A number of WayCorps had apparently started a group to discuss some grievances that they wanted to address to address to Rivenbark about how she was running things and how people were not seeing signs, miracles, and wonders. And the teaching from HQ had become uber stale. Ok, so I'm trying to remember and I may have some of details wrong, but this is what happened to the best of my recollection. This group began calling themselves Revival and Restoration, because their original intent was to reform TWI not leave it. I believe they first sent a letter outlining their "challenges" and solutions, and their intent to be respectful and work together with the BOD to figure it all out. I think they did call for the resignation of Rivenbark though. Anyways, Rico Magnelli, I think, had a meeting with her after the letter was sent where she summarily dismissed everything and, If my recollection is correct basically fired him. The letter was signed by some names you might know like Fort, Roberts, Moynihan, Horney, and Carter, to name a few. Anyways, this group had a list of grievances, including financial transparency, BOD accountability, and punishment of way corp for questioning Rivenbark etc. There were quite a few accusations. Anyways, our branch coordinators, whom we loved very much, were dropped in a backhanded way of just not being given an assignment. Also, the folks who had been our area coordinators for only a year, The Stiles were dropped for questioning Rivenbark. So this group has broken off from TWI and has reformed. Last I knew they were still calling themselves Revival and Restoration. My husband and I had been eyeing the door for some time, so we took it as our opportunity to leave. I still love many people involved in both groups, but I am not interested in being a part of any of them. I've had my fill of authoritarianism. I have the letters and other emails describing what went down. Maybe I'll go back through them and refresh myself, idk. I know some of you said you left around the time I joined, which was only a couple of years after "the fog" in 1990. When I first joined my fellowship was a very relaxed sort of hippyish deal. I smoked my first joint there, and had sex with someone in that fellowship for the first time. As time went on it became more and more controlling, and much more conservative. At one point we were instructed that it wasn't wise to go anywhere alone. Also, we were supposed to let the state leadership of any group know if we were even just traveling through their state so that we would be "spiritually covered." My husband and I, who were in our early 20's, were thoroughly reamed out at a meeting in front of everyone of course, that we attended on a trip we were taking because we hadn't let anyone know we would be in that state on our way to our destination. There was a "homo hunt" at the rock of ages in 95. Martindale became obsessed with homosexuality and in included in his version of the foundational class The Way of Abundance and Power that the thing that Eve partook of was a lesbian relationship with Satan who appeared as a woman, and Adam accepted it. (They subsequently just left that whole thing out of the foundational class they recorded after he was kicked) I often wondered if it was because of the alleged relationship between Donna and Rivenbark. When everything went down with LCM we were instructed not to look up anything to do with anything about the ministry or any of the people involved on the internet. Of course, this was to "protect us from the fiery darts of the wicked." After LCM left, everything became super boring and repetitive. Say what you will about him, but LCM was at least charismatic and entertaining. Rivenbark has a quieter gentler form of control and abuse. Over the years people tried to get us to move to HQ, but I was always struck at how robotic and fake anyone who went there came back. We actually did end up deciding to go into the way corps in 2003, and had all of our paperwork in when I ended up accidentally getting pregnant with our first child. Thank God for that. By the time we were eligible again, my husband had decided it wasn't for him. Shortly after I found out we were pregnant we moved back to my home state because I wanted my kids to have their grandparents close, and my father was dying. I was a new mom and I was traveling the hour and a half to visit my dad as much as possible and my fellowship coordinator had the audacity to "encourage me to spend more time with the household that I was." At that point I had started to see how much the ministry had come between my family and myself and I was trying to heal those relationships. I basically told him that my father was dying and I was going to get every minute I could with him and that I would never again put the ministry before my family and he would just have to get used to it. That was the first time I ever remember standing up for myself. from there it took 14 more years to officially leave. That's the short version of everything. It wasn't all bad, but I'm still working through things. I feel like an idiot at times for letting some of the stuff go on, or being involved with some of the things I was. For the last couple of years since leaving I have thrown myself into other things. I think I just needed some distance. After appearing on a podcast to talk about my experiences a few months ago, I have started to realize I need to work through some of this stuff now. I appreciate your listening. I'm sorry if this jumps around and is choppy. I find myself a little lost for words when it comes to some of this stuff, which is very unusual for me.