ex10

Backforty You still in Houston? I was a Dallas wow as well, in 78-79. I never dreamed I'd ever live in Texas again. :)-->

Catcup Ain't that what life's about? Being comfortable? :D--> Seriously though, seems to me that's what The Way, Inc. has always been about. Maybe this sounds harsh, but I find it hard to believe that someone who is a corps person, who is still in, has any other concerns than themselves. I would love to be proved wrong. :D-->

"Color My World" by Chicago Paul Young's "Oh, Girl." Dave Mason's "Every Woman." And the best of all...."You Send Me" by anybody with a great sax player in their band.

It has occured to me, on thinking about this topic, that the "goodness" of way leaders had very little to do with "way corps training." Very little of the way corps stuff we went through was "character building." But there were things about the program that were "character assaulting." It was extremely difficult to stay "true to one's self" through it all. And then those that did manage to keep the vision, of reaching out to people to help, got rewarded by getting forced out during the purge when loyalty to LCM was demanded. Those that stayed for whatever reasons, ended up getting forced out eventually as well. Any "goodness" that existed, was in spite of the organization, certainly not because of it.

Galen PFAL didn't have all the answers. If it did, all us corps bots could've solved the world's problems. As diazbro has illustrated, the answer to everything in life, was NOT getting more deeply involved in PFAL, and what it bred. "The Teacher" didn't know it all. Geeze, the corps was PFAL on steroids. It didn't work, and never will.

and oh, yeah, socks You got double snockered. :D--> Being Way Corps was demanding enuff, but add a Rev. onto the nametag, and you had to be perfection personified. :D--> Still do, I suspect. :D--> White Dove, I still grieve. :(-->

Dot It wasn't just the "doing," that was so draining, it was the "being."

oh mygosh, White dove Thank you so much for saying that. Your words mean more than you know. You were there! We couldn't have lasted as long as we did without your support and undying loyalty to the "cause." You and yours saved us so many times...

Diazbro I believe you. And I have a feeling that you were probably "smarter than your average bear." :D--> (Ihope I haven't offended anyone by saying that.) But I gotta tell ya, there was a flip side to the coin. But I don't know if we really wanna go there. There were times, in my corps grad experience, (although mine was fairly brief) where "Way believers" expected anybody who was a "Corps grad" to have the answers to all life's questions. And if you had the guts to admit that you really didn't know anything about anything too much, and you really didn't "have the answer" for their particular situation, well then look out! What kind of a "leader" ARE you anyway? There were people in the way, who had GREAT NEED, who were desperate for "answers." And if you actually admitted that you didn't have them, then you got treated like ........I won't say. I guess I just never had the ego to presume that I could figure life out for anybody else besides myself. I could be a friend, and lend a shoulder, and even offer some encouraging words, but sometimes that just wasn't enough. Problems ensued. So I guess what I'm saying is, it was a two-way street. I never presumed to be able to "fix' anybody. All I could do was point to Jesus Christ. Sometimes, that just didn't seem to be enough.

Galen, By your own admission, the most of the corps you dealt with were at the limb or country or whatever level and you needed class materials. Do I have that right? Just consider that these people involved in such things were not representative of the masses. Most limbs, and countries as well (I assume) had limited resources. They tended to get pretty protective of their "stuff" and who was using it, for what purpose, etc. I'm not making excuses, just trying to point out that there were many factors involved in running PFAL classes, that maybe you aren't/weren't aware of. There's no doubt that some corps "leaders" were jerks. But it's pretty upsetting for those of us who feel like we did our damndest for people, to be stereotyped. Surely you understand that?

Exactly, socks. Because "success" was measured in dollar amounts and numbers of people. My husband and I learned that the hard way. The "business" of "a lifetime of Christian service" always came first. Never mind that there were people in our branch who had incredible need, financial, emotional, physical, etc. It always boiled down to numbers of people in classes, and money. Once we realized this, we decided that we were NOT cut out to be "leaders," in the sense that the corporation demanded. So we opted out, and refused to take any more "corps assignments," that involved doing anything more than running a twig. It was the only HONEST thing we felt like we could do. Others chose different paths, but I'm here to tell ya, that they HAD TO SELL OUT to the business side of "the ministry," if they wanted to be an "important somebody." Hence, the not so pleasant experience of Galen and others. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :P-->

gotcha, Dot. ;)-->

Good observations, Dot. However, in my situation, yeah, I WAS raised in the Cleaver family, the Catholic version. Around the time I was getting involved in TWI, we had a family tragedy, the details of which I don't want to go into. But, my entire Catholic family (parents and grandparents included, as well as aunts, uncles, cousins) got inovolved with TWI. And I know of other families like us. The main attraction for us, was the idea that we could find answers in the bible. That we could read, understand, find comfort, etc. This was a novel idea for us Catholics. We liked the home/family fellowship, praying together, studying together and things like that. We came together as a family, instead of being split apart like so many were. It took a while, but once we saw the hypocrisy of the organization, and that many of the ideas promoted by TWI, as in the "law of believing," among others, just plain didn't work, we left. All of us. It's as simple as that, really, for me. And most of my family members were not corps people, or leaders of any kind in TWI. They simply enjoyed the fellowship. (Of course, they had great people like Al Poole, and Sudo among others in their fellowship.) So the experience was a really positive one for the most part, for us. If I (and a couple of other family members) hadn't gone in the corps and seen some stuff up close and personal, we would've remained blissfully ignorant of the sordid underbelly of the organization. At least til the Poop anyway. :D--> Then, it became obvious there were megaproblems, and everybody left and went to church. I think there were lots of other families like us. I know of a few. But then again, there were people who became alienated from their families, and got all whacked out. Go figure. The experience was so varied, for so many. I think it's foolish to make to many generalizations, and assume that there's one answer for everybody. Not that anyone is doing that....

I agree with My3Cents. Different answers, for different people, coming from different circumstances. Maybe for some of us, we simply wanted to understand the bible, and make sense out of God. And maybe for others, there were much more complex things going on, as 3cents said. There's no shame in attempting to figure it out. We all are, after all, mere humans trying to find our way. And for many of us, we thought we found in in "The Way, Inc." Our youth, naievite, and idealism was exploited. "How?" we know, I think, (if we've hung around GS a while :D--> ) but "Why?" I guess we each have to answer for ourselves.

It never ceases to amaze me how a group can claim to be so "enlightened" by the "truth," yet be so incredibly ignorant.

Oak I think your recollection of the way tree stuff is right. The thing was, it varied from state to state, depending on population and geography. As I recall, the areas and sections were for more densely populated cities, that had large numbers of grads in fairly close proximity. The territory was more of a geographic designation. The Way Tree set-up was never consistent at all. It just plain didn't work. For one thing, giving a large geographic "territory" to branch coords. put a whole heck of a lot of added pressure, on already overworked, not paid "volunteers." Often, we would be asked to make phones calls (to communicate stuff) to other corps or twig coords in our "territory," sometimes even every corps person in the state. Not only was it time consuming, but our long-distance phone bill was horrendous. Not to mention the cost of shipping class materials around, driving all over creation when needed, heck lots of things. And we never got reimbursed for anything til I finally started saving all our receipts, phone bills, etc. and showed them to our limb/coord. and he realized that almost half our combined salaries were being spent on "ministry business." and that didn't even include the things our twig coords covered out of their own pockets. It was ridiculous. Especially considering that our branch alone sent in about 50,000 a year in ABS to HQ. (I didn't figure this out til years after leaving TWI. I was cleaning out an old file cabinet and found a couple of years worth of branch and territory "blue forms." Just for the heck of it, I decided to add them all up. Aye chihuahua!!) I would've been better off not knowing how much we sent in a year. It just got us hacked off at being "used" all over again. Sorry for the derail, but I just figure it would be helpful for folks who didn't know, to see how things worked. Or didn't. :D-->

Galen A territory coordinator usually had a few branches or other twig areas in his territory. For example, our territory included a couple of other towns in our part of the state that weren't quite big enough to be branches in and of themselves. They were considered "twig areas." The territory coord. position was mainly for communication purposes. The twig area leaders of those cities still worked pretty directly with our limb coordinator, as did all the branch coords. It's just that when there were mundane communications to pass along, or details to work out about class materials or those kinds of things, the territory coords handled it instead of the limb. It was more of an administrative position than anything else, meant to take the load of the limb. Only states that had enough of a grad population had territories. We happened to be in Kansas which had tons of twigs all over the state. Our Limb Coordinator/Region Coordinator was "Mr. Way Tree." So he was pretty strick as to how things should work. Problem is, they didn't work very well. Dang, don't get me started. White Dove might remember more than I do about the whole "leadership set up" thing. And by the way, White Dove, I think "The Way of Kansas" stills owes us money. :D-->

wordwolf I think your observations are pretty astute. From my experience as a branch coordinator, and then territory coordinator, it seems that these "leadership positions" were a real dividing point. Let me explain. I think the most difficult "position" in TWI was that of a branch coordinator. I'm talking back in the day, when a branch was 7 to 12 twigs. Usually, branch coords were not salaried staff employees, but "volunteers." So they had to do everything else the twig coord's were doing, ie, hold down a full time job, support your family, haul kids around to ball games, run classes, attend "ministry" functions, etc. The demands were many, and ya had to be able to function in "real life." Step up to territory coord. Then maybe, you got some kind of financial reimbursement, as in "ministry" related expenses, but usually you weren't yet a fully vested Way employee. If you were lucky, you got a few bucks to cover gas and your long distance phone bills, and if your "believing wasn't big enough" for a FREE room to hold meetings for 120 or so people, you might get reimbursed for a room rental fee. Once a postion above territory coord got offered, the decision had to be made whether to "full time with the ministry" or not. Those who chose to go "full time" had to be pretty sold out to the organization, because now they were employees, usually and dependent on towing the company line for their bread and butter. The branch and territory coords were still "volunteers" and seemed to be more willing to speak up and be assertive about policies and proceedures, cause we were busting our buts doing everything the regular twiggies were doing and more. Once the waypay started coming in, things changed drastically. Catch my drift?

Two of the wonderful New Yorkers I ever had the privilege of hanging out with. Does anyone know where/how they are?

Hope Thanks for taking the time to lay all these things out. It's pretty interesting to see how things unfolded in the 90's. Gee, you'd think with "the Father" doing all that "revealing" to Craiggers, that He would have "revealed" to him that he would lose his "ministry" and his "position," if he didn't quit sleeping with other men's wives.

Well, for what it's worth, I heard that ole Craiggers was pretty heavily medicated for a while during the fog. I don't know for how long, but...he was so unable to function that he was under the care of a psychiatrist (who was in the corps.)

Hope You reminded me of something. Do you remember Mark G.'s of the 7th corps' resignation letter? Wasn't he in FL then? Seems like it was circulated around the time of the Schoenheit firings... But I remember reading that letter, where he compared TWI to the Catholic Church, VP to the Pope, and said that one of the main problems with the "ministry" was the absence of Jesus Christ as Lord, among other things. To me, that letter explained more about what was happening than the POOP ever did. That letter was the final straw for me and hubby. I wonder if there is a copy floating around somewhere? It would be a great addition to the documents section here at GS. I don't know if I have a copy of it somewhere or not.

Shaz Good point about Craig's ego. Obviously, it spiralled way out of control in the 90's. His narcissism had to have been lurking around somewhere, even if it wasn't as blatently visible until he totally went over the edge, in the 90's, and became a raving lunatic. PJ ;)--> God bless her wonderful soul! I have my kids today because of her... It really was different being in the way corps, than being a twig coordinator or WOW. I think those of us who were in the corpse have a totally different perspective for the reasons that Rascal, Radar, and Johnny mentioned.

yeah, well, after thinking about this thread a little, I'll post my opinion. But I'm sure it will cause some crud. :D--> I don't think anybody who was in "leadership" at the time of VP's death, could have taken over as the "leader" of the way. The "loyalty letter" proved it. VP was such a controlling type, and such a strong personality, that he had run off anybody who could "compete" with him years earlier. I truly believe that there wasn't anybody left who could have "filled his shoes." He didn't like competition with his MOG status. That's why he chose Craig. He would never "compete" with his "Father in the Word." Sadly, the empire VP build came crashing down as soon as he died. It was all built on one man's "ministry" and that man was too egocentric to trust anyone to keep his thing going, after he died. I think he knew it, thus his whinings in the POP. But it was too late.