Thin Lizzy

It's boring. What can I say? I've been going on and off to different fellowships around the country for over a year now. I've visited friends and their fellowships. I am startled by how hungry the people who GO to TWI fellowships are....hungry and dead....like zombies sitting at a table and starving. In fact, I think a Zombie with vocal ability could add more movement and interest to teaching a Sunday teaching service. Seriously...it just feels like the religious devil spirits that gutted The Way Ministry left it used and throttled, like someone after a stroke. If the Word is Quick and Powerful...where is that in the STS? There is no "juice". If TWI were a car battery, it would need a serious jumpstart. The rhetoric is the same, the vocal intonations of a STS are enough to put you to sleep and the "word" is bland and unsatisfactory. I went back to TWI because I didn't like the boring structure of a regular church and I thought I could change TWI from the inside. (Silly old bear) Change it by being a part of it. A rebirth through love. But at every turn, in quiet conversations, people confess how they've "stood" through betrayal after betrayal, all without justice or a request for their forgiveness. Perhaps some people are tied to TWI because they were taught (as I was) that if I left TWI, I would "circle the drain" spiritually. Weren't so many of us conditioned to believe that we would be stripped of God's mercy, favor, glory and abundance if we abandoned TWI? But it's not true!!! That is a LIE. God is BIGGER than one organization. He is bigger than the little box TWI wants to put Him into. And if you are hungering and thirsting, YOU...SHALL....BE FILLED. It's not like God is saying...oh well, Theresa or Sara or Jim....if you are not apart of TWI then you won't be blessed because that is the only organization holy enough for me to dwell in...Right?!?! God KNOWS your need, and how to meet it. He doesn't need just one organization and neither do you. Plus if you take a good look at what is coming out of HQ, you will see that what is taught engenders so little deliverance that TWI is just like almost any other church anyway.......except without the entertainment. Primarily because there is no love. No Love. Pharisees....they had the "truth" too. But no love.

Hey is anybody out there from the 22nd or 23rd Way Corps? I'm looking for Mark Smith. He was in one of those corps years. Not sure if he graduated though.

I'm looking for Mark Smith. He was in the 22nd or 23rd Corps I think. Anybody got any ideas where he might be or if he's on Facebook? I looked but there are a whole lot of SMITHS on FB - LOL.

I have heard W.D. cannot be fresh out of high school. TWI prefers candidates with more life experience, Adv. class grads, out of debt and bringing around $1200+ on the field to get set up. (Cost of living) Recent college grads are good b/c they have some discipline already from studying and passing exams and sometimes are more socially adept due to college life....maybe more than most 40 year olds who have already settled into their careers. WD certainly teaches people to get pass the NO's in life and not take people personal. There are still people out there who are praying to have a personal relationship with God. It's good that somebody is out there making it happen. Prayerfully these WD will be much better for it. Although it is a much much more strict program than WOW - good thing it's only 6 months!

Just bringing it back to the top. I was looking at a picture the other day of a whole gang of us 22 corps outside the dorms in gunnison. The sun was in half our faces and the shade was in the other half. I think it must have been the entire 22 corps. It was a seriously crappy picture and I can't remember who took it but I bought my copy for like 50 cents or something and back then, I thought the pic was so bad - what a waste of part of my $30 allowance and I'd better go write it down so I don't forget - ha,ha but I found that picture recently and I held it for probably 10 minutes just remember names and experiences and all the great times I had with some of these people. Some of it was so fun - snowmobililing, snowball fights, snowskiing (seeing a theme?) and some of it wasn't so much fun, does anyone remember the 5 mile hike in the snow up one of the mountain with Mike Anderson and Sue....can't remember her name or the early morning runs up to the water tower and up to the top of the commons - those stairs....yikes! It made me strong though. Anyway, so I'm holding this picture and I'm thinking how some of the time I was in the corps was probably the best time in my life and then I put the picture away remembering that some of the time.....was also (still to this day) the worst times in my life. Does anyone remember that picture? Who's the big guy - on the heavy side but really tall too - just a real big guy, anyone know? He was really cool.

Hey Kristin - Hey Chris! You both rocked! I had mucho fun with y'all in the big TWI days. Kristin remember Mark - he was a total crack up - still smoking In-Rez - who sez you can't tame the wild man - well, I guess they did! Or not....anyway, Jenne Brown can be tracked down on MySpace but she doesn't respond - maybe too steamed up about the old days still. I can understand - live and let die - as my Beatles friends would say. Two years and I'm still waiting for her to post here. Alas.................

Sorry to interrupt. Please forgive me. I had heard that Jenne Brown (former W.C./WOW) lived or lives in Ohio. Can anyone possibly confirm this or know of her at all? Thank you very much.

Scooby-dooby-doo, where are you? Does anyone know where Jenne Brown is now?

Are we Escapees or flunkies? Hmm.....I think I was a flunkie but would qualify by all as an escapee. Glad I went. Learned a lot. Woke up one day and started breathing the fresh air of reality and the insanity of robotism didn't fit anymore. Then someone noticed that I looked at them with raised eyebrows. And Bamm, I'm a homo and an outcast. Gee, I was an outcast BEFORE I got here but a homo....not on your butt.....ha,ha. However, I must admit that sometimes the hardest times of your life are when you learn the most. I will never forget the people I knew and the friends I made. It is too bad that I also cannot forget the pain that so many went through because someone was looking for someone new to crucify. Didn't JC already handle that for us? By grace we are saved - oh yeah and by works, righty-o, sir takesalot. Sometimes it just really felt like that line Clark Griswald (Chevy Chase) gets from his boss in the Christmas Vacation movie. Clark Griswald: My family got you a gift - just a little something to show we were thinking of you. CG's Boss: "Put it over there with the others, Greaseball." Just another person in a long line of nobody's good enough to be here. Nevertheless, All of you stood out to me. Many of you are closer in my heart than most everyone I met since then. Life moves, flows and Rocks! XOXOXOXOXOXOXO The Band: Thin Lizzy The Song: Dear Lord The Album: Bad Reputation -----All the sevens don't add up when you need------

Jenne, Are you out there? Wondering where you are..................... You and Heather - what a funny bunch!! Okay, so I still miss you and hope you are okay!! Anybody got any new news?

Belle, Healing is a tough road but sometimes if I stop picking a scab long enough, it will heal over. Me thinketh the lady doth protest too much. Socks, All the people you helped and healed - their lives are better because of you. That's Park Place, Baby.

Themex, You HIT it! We all have something to teach and something to learn. When I was in the corps, they taught that you could learn something from vaccumming and therefore, I had that expectation - to learn - from a simple task such as that. Did I learn? Sure, because I expected to learn. Sometimes people get so high up and so full of themselves that they forget that they can learn from the people they are teaching. Like raising a child. I learn from my boy, he teaches me all kinds of things even though he doesn't speak a whole lot yet. He teaches me tenderness, patience, kindness and the big understanding that people don't learn and grow overnight. They learn very slowly. Sometimes people in leadership are more forgetful, than forgiving. The expectation that a 9 month old can drive a car, stay out of trouble and leap tall buildings in a single bound is unrealistic. Just like pushing people from the Foundational Class to the Advanced Class or even pushing them INTO the foundational class - sure there is a lot of good learning in it but just because carrots have a bunch of vitamins, that doesn't mean I'm going to stuff them down a 3 month old's mouth. Everyone is on a different track with God and I just loved your post because if we could always be more understanding, then we would be less violating on other people's lives. Very few people have power that I haven't given them. I once had a boss who told me that if I didn't do this certain thing (which was highly unethical but not illegal) that I would get in trouble and probably even fired, I told that person that although I understood their reasoning for asking me to do it, I believed it to be wrong and not in the best interest of the company. I told that person that my life and reputation would outlive the time I spent working for that company and for that reason, I told them that I would rather quit the job than do what they were asking - if they truly decided to ask me to do it. He thought about it and said he was just suggesting it and not asking me to do it SO he didn't ask and I didn't quit. I've been told to handle my people a certain way and refused because I wouldn't take the blame for a decision that was not right and was not mine. I left the WC because of a bad decision that everyone was jumping on board with because the MOG sat excathedra and vocalized it from God. It was wrong. I knew it was wrong. Even VeePee would've told old LCM to take a long walk off a short pier but the decision was made and everybody who didn't want to quit or get fired kept their mouths shut. Not me, I had the same thinking then that I do now. I'm not going to stand accountable for someone else's half brained idea that binds the lovers of God and belittles them. No f#!ng way. So yes, The Way seems to forever be struggling because sometimes leadership people deem sane human logic to be old man nature and put it on a back burner. I am IN TWI to make it stronger and better. I cannot change the group but I can effect the people I am around in a positive and beneficial way. There are many, many good and wonderful people still in. I think many of us are all working toward changing the legacy of the way toward something more positive. Thin Lizzy

Many (most) of the Way Corps were good, well-meaning people. Fanatics, yes. Thank God, it took that to move the ministry. People who are either totally committed or should be. But as they say, one bad apple spoils the bunch and that's what started the stain - one bad apple rotting what it touched, slowly, slowly, slowly. Like Elderly people - Old people (who have little wrong with them) don't die overnight; they lose their will to live first. That's how the Good Way Corps became the Baaaaadddd Way Corps, they lost their will to love because the legalism was stealing it from them. Many of my Way Corps were so great, they'd need a building on every street corner to commemorate their love and sacrifice. Sad to say, most of them walked away with hurt and disappointment and their name wiped off everything that spoke of their achievement. Its a good thing God REMEMBERS, huh? Anyway, this thread is HYSTERICAL and it's this heart in ministry that I remember, which is why it was so vibrant for so long - the love of God calling. Alas, the ministry is on the slow road to recovery now and so many people, pressed down, beaten together and bruising over will never return but we still have Paris (or was that Rome - ha,ha). Perhaps, in time, TWI will be able to acquire more people with the heart and depth that so many of you had and when those people come and bring their abilities and talents so willingly to the ministry to lay them down at the altar of God's will, they will be cherished rather than vanquished. The ministry cannot die because you gave your life's blood for it and that has great worth. But hey, it's good that you got out before the old regime drained your last pint.