WordWolf

False Dilemma. The only possible alternative to a program where people were send places on a coin-toss with insufficient training and stupid instructions and no financial backup and no infrastructure on the field was NO PROGRAM AT ALL. Did I say that? Who's misrepresenting WHO? (Don't answer-we can read for ourselves.) I would suggest a BETTER PROGRAM. ( DUH. ) Depends on the specifics, but I start with the assailant, rapist or murderer. (And the devil. But I can't have him arrested. Let's presume I ALWAYS blame him even if I don't mention him SPECIFICALLY. I'll do the same for you.) Then I see if the victim had no choice but to be in a situation where he/she was. If so, then whoever put them in that situation is responsible, and possibly CRIMINALLY LIABLE.

WRONG. Let's say someone is "at the end of their rope". He drives to the edge of the Willis Avenue Bridge. He walks halfway across the bridge, and steps over the railing, prepared to jump and kill himself. A Christian goes on a drive across the Willis Avenue Bridge. He sees someone ready to jump. He gets out and speaks to the jumper. Eventually, he convinces the jumper to NOT jump, and step back. They go to a diner and speak for several hours. The jumper hears much of God's Word and decides to attend church with the Christian, and eventually becomes a committed Christian. Does the "jumper" say "I am thankful for the Bridge and Tunnel Authority. If not for them, there would have been no bridge and I would not have gotten saved. God bless his holy Bridge and Tunnel Authority!" No, he does NOT. The BTA was NOT of God, nor was it of the devil. It was INCIDENTAL to the story. The CHRISTIAN and his relationship to GOD mattered. Now, let's say there WAS no Christian there and the man jumped. You can blame the man for jumping. You can blame the devil for driving him to do it. You can't blame the Christians who DIDN'T go, and you can't blame the Bridge and Tunnel Authority for his death. ("Well, if there was no bridge, he couldn't have jumped!") ====== If an organization just happens to put Christians in places, that's incidental. (He might be in town for a convention, or his job may have relocated.) ======== So, when the wow program used completely secular methods to place wows, and dressed it in a holy veneer, sometimes Christians ended up in the place to bless others. That's no different than a job relocation putting them there. They get no credit for using a holy veneer. A SECULAR group moved some people around. So, who gets credit? GOD does, and the CHRISTIAN does. ============ Ok, the other side. A Christian is sent by his job to work in a virtual slum, and he's robbed and sent to the hospital. Is the company to blame? YES. (Them and the robbers, DUH, don't cloud the issue.) The company failed to assess the situation properly, and sent the employee into a dangerous place. A Christian goes wow and is sent to a dangerous neighborhood, with strict instructions to open conversations with EVERYONE they come across, ALWAYS. If you tried that in MY neighborhood, you'd EVENTUALLY talk to a violent criminal, and the results would not be pleasant. Whose fault would that be? The wow is following his instructions correctly. The fault is the PROGRAM. They sent the person to an unsafe place with unsafe instructions. ==== Last scenario. A Christian is sent to my neighborhood and told to open conversations with EVERYONE ALWAYS. Eventually, they speak with an unhinged, dangerous person, who attempts to rob them. That Christian stands on their authority in Christ, and the attacker leaves. Does the organization get credit for a "victorious" incident? No, the organization's lassitude is almost criminal. They placed the Christian where they were likely to be robbed, and gave them instructions to maximize that chance. The Christian transcended their instructions and the CHRISTIAN and GOD get the credit. If the Christian had been beaten and robbed for following those orders, the Christian STILL wasn't to be blamed for needed to pull a miracle from their pocket. If an organization arranges things so that the Christian's ONLY hope of avoiding injury is to pull miracles, the organization is at fault- unless the organization has prepared by ensuring the Christian can pull miracles all the time, and is prepared to do so here, expecting danger. THAT is why it is not a double-standard.

Doesn't make his own evaluation- listens to one guy and makes acapricious decision. Typical, unscriptural, and sloppy. They made a committment for the four years, and so did the organization. That agreement-which was in writing-was an enforceable contract. vpw reneged on his contract with the corps students. That was HIS decision and HIS FAULT. Those who decided to leave, apparently, realized that vpw sawnothing wrong with demanding THEIR full committment, then reneging on his OWN promises, which demonstrated a lack of substance on HIS part. vpw was UNTRUSTWORTHY as demonstrated. Except, as we just saw, you can throw them out without warning. You accepted the responsibility of being a leader of these people.They accepted the responsibility of following your lead. You ALREADY made a "gentleman's agreement" or a LEGALLY-ENFORCEABLE CONTRACT. (No real Christian would violate a 'gentleman's agreement- his yea is yea, his nay is nay, and that's it.) BEFORE you become leader, you see if you HAVE the time. If you discover later you lack the time, you MAKE the time. It is your responsibility-so you spend YOURSELF for God's people as you promised. vpw often made claims that he did this sort of thing when addressing the public, like at the ROA, but, in private, he seems well aware that he was lying. Often, that there IS a crisis demostrates a failure in the leader to head one off. Not "foolish", just "unprepared for the job."

And if he'd managed to assault and rape her, it's because of her 'lack of believing.' Finish the sentence. Sounds like a f*ing stupid perspective that could have gotten her killed to me. Sounds like a perspective with blinders to reality to me. Sounds like how people WERE killed and raped in the field. Sounds like I'm gonna get another snow job on how the program's failures are not the fault of the program's implementors.

Hm. Good point. But vpw viewed twi's stuff as "his", you know, it was his personal piggy bank. Whenever he wanted something, twi bought it no questions asked, so long as it wouldn't exhaust the finds (like the restaurant and the ski lift.) God didn't need a plane or a BUNCH of motorcycles, after all.

Well, that was JT's set of blinders. lcm believed if vpw said it, it was somehow true and spiritual no matter what.] JT believed that if it was downright stupid, it didn't come from vpw.

Gotta be "Stand By Me", then, based on Stephen King's "the Body".

If you have Apostolics or Christadelphians in your town, you'll find they're not trinitarians either. And that about sums it up. I don't think I can improve upon this post.

It was a GOOD START. However, he was still undertrained and underprepared. They DID take care. They protected the floor, they protected the piano. Were they supposed to fight for the plywood? They did the right thing, and if he wanted something different, he should have given specifics rather than make a rant and let THEM figure it out. "Tenderness and aggressiveness were exemplified." First of all, you can't "exemplify" both at the same time.... As someone pointed out, it wasn't good enough for vpw, who was NOT cremated.... The program was insufficiently adapted to accomodate families. That was a careless mistake that illustrated that its leader was unfit to run it. They then said "we accept families", which means they claimed they were sufficiently prepared to do so. lcm AND vpw should have apologized. Failing to keep up HIS side of all committments was standard operating procedure for vpw, and he taught lcm to do the same. It was the easier approach and demonstrated a tyrant mentality. That was very thoughtful and considerate of lcm! It was a nice thing. Oops. Well, no big deal. After all, he obviously MEANT to bless vpw, and was considerate. His only mistake was in asking first. Surely, someone with a caring heart would take that into consideration. After all "the ministry comes first"... vpw should have apologized. Instead, he threw a tantrum that someone else touched one of his toys-even though it was to bring it to him. His "stuff" meant more to him than the people. No, that wasnt "teaching", that was a tantrum. No, his stuff came before the people-we JUST saw that.

The question is what kind of ego trip vpw was on. When he doesn't hear from lcm, this isn't about whether or not they arrived safely-it's about vpw. The "ego trip" comment is telling. vpw immediately thought it was personal, when lcm probably thought vpw didn't need to hear-like vpw got news by revelation or something. I believe lcm believed this. As you can see, lcm wasn't very observant, even about what was under his nose. Of course, vpw stays comfortable and dry, but expects lcm to get wet. The best way to lead is by EXAMPLE. If he wanted lcm to get the idea about getting out in the rain, he should have walked out HIMSELF, then introduced lcm, which would have required lcm to join him in the rain. This would have been obvious- if "Dr always put the ministry ahead of himself."

Possibly-but I trust neither vpw or lcm to know what makes a COMPETENT student, let alone a GOOD one. Which goes back to my point. A student needs DOWN-TIME when learning, otherwise they might as well attend a viewing of someone washing dishes. The retention of what is taught drops sharply. How about screaming expletives at them in front of the group? Do they require THAT to learn? As a teacher, vpw had no qualifications to tell when his students were learning or not. We will see that a bit later. "You don't look for negatives in people." Having found them, is it appropriate to scream them in a group, and make announcements about them over lunch? That became very popular by the man who reported all this... Corps Principle 1 is "Acquire an in-depth spiritual perception and awareness." What does "Horse-Sense" have to do with "an in-depth spiritual perception and awareness"? What does "an in-depth spiritual perception and awareness" have to do with repairing and refurbishing a trailer? Does one need divine revelation to see a broken window-handle needs replacing? DUH. An underexperienced, undertrained-but incredibly loyal- young man is trusted to run anything? I believe history has shown what a disastrously STUPID position that was to hold. Then again, a cold analysis could have predicted this. Worse- almost all of his "training" and "experience" can exclusively from whatever vpw said and taught- which meant he could not exceed vpw's abilities in anything. This was a good start. If it had been continued, eventually lcm might have finished maturing and might have become a competent-if undistinguished- leader. I don't believe he could ever have been a GOOD leader-but he could have led without disaster, given training. So said the man who will always be remembered for living by his emotions and discarding clear thinking. This is what's called a 'pep talk'. Anyone who was on a high school or college football team should have no difficulty recognizing it. It's HARDLY profound, HARDLY noteworthy, but lcm views all vpw's casual utterances as if they came down on 2 stone tablets.

"What does God want with a starship?" vpw was always looking to increase the public image of the group, almost at any cost. He takes the most famous pfal grad and gives him awards he did nothing to earn, to increase visibility and add cachet to things. It strikes me that he gave the football player the pin so that the player would have increased loyalty to the group. "See, we're big time-we have professional athletes here." lcm name-dropped Pau1a Sm1th for the same reason. vpw puts a federal judge on the mainstage- knowing that this was a bad idea and admitting it to lcm- but does it anyway because it impresses the audience of already-faithful members. Was it really that, I wonder, or were there guests among the audience that he was trying to impress? Either way, it's the APPEARANCE he was so eager to raise, at the COST of substance.

I never got THAT one. POSSESSED, yes, HERETIC, yes, UNSAVED, yes, IDOLATOR, yes, but not 'antichrist'. Some people seem to derive comfort by labelling others "wrong"."Wrong", you see, is often largely a matter of "different than me". Thus, those who left twi before or after me were "wrong". George Carlin pointed out that all drivers driving slower than you are "idiots", and all drivers driving faster than you are "maniacs". All Christians who have a different belief than you are "wrong" and face any of a number of sanctions or penalties. Thought you'd like to know, the original saying is "He who is forced to agree against his will is of the same opinion still."

I call that one a "3", or a "4" if you were in the late 90s-early 00s. They could communicate with Americans, but their vocabulary WAS largely limited by the terms they were REQUIRED to use in conversations. This limited the subjects they could talk about, but it wasn't as far as, say, a Spanish-speaker and an English speaker communicating. In rare exceptions, it was more like Spanish vs Italian, where you can kinda-sorta communicate.

They promised the assignments were by revelation. Thus, the assignments were NEVER to be questioned, just accepted. In your mind, it would have been fine for a wow to have questioned openly whether or not his "leader" was competent, but in the world we lived in, this would have produced a lecture, censure and kicking the questioner off the wow field, if they kept asking questions. twi CLAIMED to operate in a way that questions were allowed. However, reality miserably failed to match up to promises there (surprise surprise!) ====== IF the bot was operating HONESTLY, they either would never have made such outrageous claims- but they did ANYWAY to stifle dissent, or they really SHOULD have done them all by revelation- which would have weeded ALL the bad volunteers out. Since there was virtually no "quality control" we know this didn't happen. Want to join? Got your money? Ok, here's your red armband. Make sure to attend your preliminary meetings. ===== The claims they made were not of a financial organization like a bank. They chose to make lofty claims, and demanded to be believed. They thus chose a high level of responsibility and performance-which they never had any ability to deliver, and kept THAT information a SECRET. In other words, if they could not guarantee safety on a large-scale program, they had no business RUNNING IT. Even the atheists know that! Either run it at the level you can do it right, or don't run it.

'Thomas Loy Bumgarner': "Harve was made area/limb leader for Ohio and proably for his callous letter to John Paul about his mother and her condition which caused a lot of furror publicly." ==== Which, I'm certain, he was ORDERED to write, and was later blamed for writing. That's just another day in the Promised Land of the Prevailing Word..... "A new day is dawning on fewer than expected, business as usual."

Oh, and one of the more striking pieces of "cognitive dissonance": "the CFS class says a guy isn't supposed to 'help himself' to a woman." (Explanation of I Corinthians 7:1.) "Husbands and wives should look to each other for 'satisfaction' in that sense." (Explanation of I Corinthians 7:2.) vs. "If you're spiritual enough, you can have sex with someone other than your spouse and just keep that information 'lockbox'."

Let's compare this with the SAME incident seen from a different set of eyes.How was this described in TWLIL? "There were two men in Van Wert." "Now, they got together every morning at 5am and believed together for an hour. Every morning. I don't know what they called it. But they would set their minds on an agreed project. They never spoke; just got together every morning and both concentrated on whatever it was, until it came to pass." "They just got together and put their minds on it every single morning for a couple of weeks, and lo and behold, one day suddenly some guy who wanted to sell his distillerry just called them up, and asked if they wanted to buy it. They'd never heard of the guy with the distillerym before. He found them. Yep, they made millions, gambled, won. One man set up a foundation for children from broken homes, also built the YMCA, YWCA and a hospital. It was something." "I used to watch how they operated. I was a minister there in Van Wert....here were the two meanest guys you could ever want to meet. Nobody liked them because they were so successful and no one else could hold a candle to them." As outlined in the other thread, my conclusion was that these men in his congregation in Van Wert NEVER EXISTED. They had no names-but he studied them for weeks and weeks. He supposedly built part of his understanding of the "LAW" of believing on them. They gave generously to their community-and the community HATED them, including the Christians. They were incredibly mean, but gave generously. He just happened to know these guys got together 5am and sat in silence in a room. (Did he have a camera in the room?) These imaginary folk are just there to exist as examples. vpw's actual degree was in HOMILETICS, so he was trained in INVENTING a story when a real one wasn't handy. The result? lcm thinks he told the truth, and goes off to memorize chapter 1 of the Blue Book. He's said in other places that he spent a month reading that chapter EVERY DAY. That's one result vpw was aiming for-unquestioning acceptance of his doctrine, and the nonexistent "LAW". UH was the exception. As long-timers have said, UH stopped vpw from proceeding with his most stupid ideas-saying they wouldn't work. UH could argue with him in public. Anyone ELSE tries that, and..... Obviously, this is how "spiritual" men speak. (I have to retype to bypass the censor-"spiritual" guys say obscenities in meetings. How spiritual vpw was. Apparently, he was unable to communicate the same concept without an expletive. "Literals according to usage." This means "rewriting the verse so it says what you want it to." Groups of people are on staff, and NOBODY has a lick of medical training-no medical doctor, no nurse, no paramedic. This can be expected with the program, but some contingency should have already have been in effect in case of this sort of thing, or ANY medical emergency. Sure would be nice to know what happened beyond she "had gone off her rocker". lcm had a bachelor's in PSYCHOLOGY, yet, somehow, he could express this incident in no more specific terms? lcm was an athlete and he NEEDED TO LEARN THIS? He wasn't applying what he already knew? A man unprepared to run the wow program is now put in charge of the corps. What DID he know? He knew athletics. That's why the 2 pics of him in TWLIL show him in a group sitting to talk Scripture, and LEADING THEM ON A RUN. He could only teach to the limit of his understanding. Bill Cosby explained his own limitations with raising children-they were similar to lcm's skills with the way corps. " My wife graduated with a degree in Child Psychology with a B+ average, which means that if you ask her a question about a child's behaviour, she will give you at least an "85" answer. I graduated Tempe University with a Physical Education major with a Child Psychology minor, which means that if you ask me a question about a child's behaviour, I will tell you to tell the child to 'take a lap'." And doesnt this encapsulize his management strengths over the corps nicely?

Clicking this up to make it easier to compare the 2 Wonderland threads.

Nice double-standard. He taught the corps they needed to roll up their sleeves and workfor hours "as part of their training to be leaders." Yet this same man said the top leader should never roll up his sleeves and work at all. The phrase "athlete of the spirit" is straight from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which lcm was connecter with in college. vpw ripped it off of them, and boy, did it come back to haunt him..... When it was to his advantage, hq was "home" for the youngsters-but not ALL THE TIME,and not ALL THE GROUNDS, especially as time passed. vpw makes a blanket statement about "home", and lcm attributes great meaning to it- which, I think, was the reason vpw SAID IT. vpw usually made such comments to EVERYONE at the opening of ROA events. (Check the opening tape of ANY ROA.) Simple management is SOOOO spiritual. That vpw has a special connection to Gawd... I Timothy 3 speaks of Christian leaders, and the qualities they should have. Let's skip the "should not love alcoholic beverages" in 3:3, since we're talking lcm. I Timothy 3:6 says he must be "Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil." vpw took a newbie straight out of college, a NOVICE, and put him IN CHARGE of a program. Not "assisting the leader and learning what he does", he puts him IN CHARGE. According to I Timothy, this is dangerous for the Christians. This is what we call a newbie mistake. Anyone with sufficient experience as a LEADER, or if he had experience with THAT program, would easily have known better. lcm focused on MONEY rather than what the WOWs NEEDED. We know he didn't get that in college- college students focus on how to get food! Where did he learn to concentrate on MONEY? WHOM did he learn that from? (Hint: "You can stay as long as your money holds!") This was not LCM's fault-it was VPW's fault. He put an OBVIOUSLY UNDERQUALIFIED man in a leadership position, then left him alone to figure things out all on his own. At the VERY least, he should have really been running it, making all the decisions, explaining the whys, and having lcm implement vpw's decisions.

As has been said before, lcm was originally a jock, a college student who had some religious convictions. His initial exposure was Donny Fugit teaching. In hindsight, he concluded this was a "GREAT man." At the time, he was probably convinced he was pretty good. vpw was VERY good at manipulating his image. lcm was young and wanted answers. He was VERY typical of the recruits of the time. Looking back, this was his first personal interaction with vpw. With the cold light of day, vpw sounds incredibly shallow and secular. This young man comes up to learn the Bible-vpw blows him off for dessert. He didn't even invite him along-he had to "GO" and eat his cake. Was lcm convinced THEN that big guys always know everything, or was this a by-product of remembering things later? vpw asked questions when it made sense to. That does not require any special spiritual connection. That's AVERAGE leadership. vpw and ha put the squeeze on the new student. With the right training, lcm might actually have been something-with real Christian training and the REAL hard lessons of humility and substance. Instead, he was subverted into the corps. The bottom line? Is it 'if you do your best for God always, you can stay.' No, it's 'if you have money, you can stay.' The priorities are clear, here.

Cognitive dissonance: that's when you're required to hold internal contradictions in your brain. "You believe as much as you want to live!" "The mog believes more than any human who shakes the earth!" "The mog died very young." "wows are sent to locations determined by divine revelation!" "many sites were stupid choices determined by a coin-flip." "corps are top leaders by the world's standards!" "Anyone with the money is allowed in the corps and put in leadership positions." "we will teach you how to prosper!" "you will survive off mac & cheese, wear hand-me-downs, and drive a beater." "Leadership are most holy people!" "Leadership use filthy language freely in large groups, and rape the followers." "This is a books on keys, not Genesis to Revelation." "This book replaces Genesis to Revelation!" Those are contradictory. Holding both in your mind produces a jarring note. That's "cognitive dissonance".

And, when you DO let him surf, use a kid-specific browser.

That's correct (and correct.) If you saw the movie "La Bamba", Ritchie Valens mentions covering it in passing. *outside local bar* "I thought I'd start with 'Bony Maronie'." "'Bony Maronie'? To THESE sh*-stompers????" Yours, George.

"She's as skinny as a stick of macaroni"