potato

did vpw really say that? when? where? if that's true, that sure explains the treatment I got from a lot of people.

thanks for posting the link. I REALLY enjoyed the smug tone regarding finances. let's see.... I loved the thing about the rich and their foundations, but that we should start giving now because why wait? it seems they completely ignore the value of volunteer work, or donations of used clothing instead of tossing stuff in the trash, or the value of helping someone get back on their feet after a crisis. it's only the money tithe that counts, I guess. this just made me laugh: seriously, Angela! how is it such a good deal to pay rent so your landlord can make repairs? it's not helping you build equity, whereas the costs of maintenance do. and you ARE paying taxes when you rent, you just pay them to your landlord so he/she can pay the bill. no one says I have to own a home, but NO ONE SHOULD TELL ME I CAN'T. Gary's point about getting free stuff is dumb. I got furniture for free, too, that stuff gets passed around as people upgrade, but when my ex ditched our kids, no one in twi would even babysit for me so I could go to classes or work on no-school days because they'd only babysit for my ex when he had the kids, because he went on such a campaign of hateful backbiting against me. sometimes you don't need stuff, you need a helping hand to stay on your feet so you can get back on top of things after a disaster. oh, but even though I had to move and we were homeless for months, I managed to hang onto my car, which is now totally paid for. first time in my life I ever had a car that's run consistently, and when I add it up, financing the car cost me less each year than it ever had when I was buying cars for cash, because what I could buy for the equivalent of a down payment typically lasted a year to 18 months and needed lots of work to keep it going. one of twi's great lies: "We can't always control how much is coming in," Gary said, "but we can always control what is going out." no Gary, you can't always control what's going out.

exactly my experience. George, mchud, Bramble... those are exactly the things I'm talking about. when we went to RoA to get our pin, those things had already been buried, hidden, spun and forgotten. thousands of potential WOW candidates heard the success stories, which in my experience were at best half-truths. a WOW family who'd run lots of classes was paraded across the stage like victorious heroes. it was a marketing success, but it wasn't real.

I posted pretty much open to any kind of discussion on it, since what each person felt they were going to accomplish may be different than what twi intended. the program seems to have been a sales scam, more than anything, but a lot was promised individually, and I think that the real successes of individual perseverance, suffering, realization, departure from twi, what have you, were all largely ignored and twi's focus was on false successes, as in my opening example. when it was all said and done, where's the impact? how many were saved? twi grew, but it was not solid, real growth because twi's roots weren't designed to sustain the growth in numbers... not where each number represented a real human being, a child of god.

it's possible with so many college people taking the classes, that actual incomes of a few thousand dollars were typical. I remember how much I made in college from my part-time jobs. but that doesn't take into account the doctors, managers, and receptionists making $900/mo and up. if there were 100k followers, the average income was poverty level. or, people just weren't tithing, which made them NOT followers according to twi doctrine. it seems to me that twi's definition of "follower" was anyone who paid for the class. oh yeah, I guess we'd have to deduct class fees from that 32m to find out what people were tithing.

some simple math might help, too. faithful followers tithe 10%, minimum. 32m divided by 100k followers means each tithe comes from an annual income of $3,200 (if I did my math right).

is there any verification that there were 100,000 "believers" (which I take to mean people actively tithing, since that's the bottom-line criteria for "believing") or did we just crank 100,000 people through the foundational class?

I started a thread on it, because I find it interesting how the official spin on the WOW program was so different than what actually went on. http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=19220

this following snip: and Mark's reply: got me thinking... how successful was the WOW program after all is said and done? at my pinning ceremony, C@rmen got on stage and listed all our successes, but she outright lied about the victories by making coercion to take the class sound like people stuck around afterward, which they didn't. she made it sound like a marriage had been saved by the class, which it wasn't. I learned how to cook for picky eaters and how to share cleaning responsibilities instead of having to do it all by myself, which was nice. I learned how to "love bomb" and hang around with people I had nothing in common with. I myself was witnessed to by a WOW, and I chafed under her intense undershepherding. I just wanted to learn how to study the bible for myself, so I got myself to twig. she went with cgeer's group in the split. one of my twig brothers went to jail for rape. the other WOW's, no idea. at one time the WOW program really inflated the PFAL grad numbers. but not one of those people stuck around after our year was up, and I suspect we weren't the only ones. but our main objective was getting classes put together, not running a fellowship and talking about the bible. we were salesmen.

how successful was the WOW program, really? I think I feel another spin-off coming on...

I heart that bumper sticker.

possibly non-existent, unless someone wants to take them to court to make a case that the non-profit should be dissolved.

har har, yes Jeff! out LOUD. some days are just plain dyslexic. in fact I'm going to edit that because it's just too weird to leave it.

but this is why I love you, sir. the cliffs are there. we should at least consider them. if I'm too busy pounding heads with my rock, how will I ever notice the possibilities? please continue with your useful pondering out loud. and, that would make an awesome sig line! in my case it would not be "woah, stop!" it would be "woah, I should think about that".

no, there is no recovery for twi unless it comes from the BOD. the roots are rotten, so the tree will be weak and will die, eventually. as long as a few people can sit on millions of non-profit dollars, it will be what it is. if everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, except the BOD and their close lackeys cut ties with twi, then it's possible it's legal existence would be difficult to justify, and it will certainly be a lot more difficult to maintain the appearance of a "ministry", but I think the BOD will fight to keep it going however they can, just to ensure their retirement fund stays intact, even if it means selling off most of the property and turning it into a local church.

that's correct. the board of directors is locked up tight, too, since it's a non-profit. they can change the mission and direction of the corporation as much as they want to, within the laws governing a non-profit. they don't own it, but they might as well, they way they're running it.

yes, postmodernity, indeed (can you say that word 3 times fast?) I love dialogue, but I do have a caveman tendency to want to defend my cave from aggressive invaders. your view may be more "wholesome" in that you're looking at a larger picture than I am able to at this time, having been immersed in my personal struggle for survival. vpw's supposed revelation goes to the root of the things I've struggled with the past 20 years.

rascal, I went back and read seaspray's posts from 5 years ago and the most offensive thing I found about him was his troll behavior and his insults to you and Raf. he's a vpw-worshipper and he's made that abundantly (in fact, MORE THAN abundantly) clear.

yeah Mike, where'd you go? you're the proponent of having One Rule for Faith and Practice, so I expected more discussion from you on this topic. also, since sirguessalot's post, I wonder, isn't the bible (or any other holy book) simply a rule set? and a small one at that, where perhaps we SHOULD seek the ruler overlap that he mentions? rather than narrow our choice so much that we don't have to, and shouldn't, THINK. do the writings of vpw overlap the bible? how much do they, and why? do they overlap because he took material from other teachers, or did he get revelation? did his revelation supplant revelation in the bible? did the rule set of the bible change because vpw came along?

it's reruns of seaspray, circa 2003.

legitimate questions, sirguessalot. I must look in the mirror to answer this, I know. I have a gut level reaction that is very negative and angry when I hear people state PFAL=truth. I know intellectually that talking to them is a waste of my time. I guess I don't want them cluttering up what I think is a decent discussion otherwise, and I don't like the implications of their reasoning that vpw's version of things is the only truth that should be considered to reach god, therefore I must be given over to devil spirits, according to what vpw taught. it's not the things they say, it's all the things they don't say that are the logical conclusion of their insistence that PFAL=truth. it sticks in my craw and makes me angry in a way that goes deeper than any feeling I should have after attending a "bible study". it's not a logical reaction. it's a survival reaction.

I don't see christ either, I see twi propaganda.

sure sounds like a kool-aid drinking innie, dialed in to the "present truth"... or do you guys still teach that, seaspray? has twi gone back to the revelation of vpw as its foundation? I'm just wondering. things were pretty watered-down when I left.

yeah, I also know they keep dossiers on people because something I confessed to a leader that happened when I was a child was brought back to my door later, and it had been discussed amongst leaders at HQ. so much for lockbox, huh?

"make it your own"... how I hate that phrase. I don't remember him saying to remember where you learned the word. I do remember lcm telling the people we were all beholden to twi for teaching us the truth, since we weren't going to find it anywhere else in "this egg-sucking world". "making it your own" degenerated over time from hiding the word in your heart to memorizing mog teachings. memorizing and never deviating from the "present truth". I can't even make something my own these days. rather, I incorporate things into my psyche :)