Off we went to the Infamous Corps Week of 1986. The first night we were there, Johnny Townsend was on the stage and he said, “You’re all probably wondering ‘What’s going on?’†I thought to myself “Huh?†I had no idea what he was talking about.
There had evidently been corps meetings all over the country about the current state of the ministry since C Geer had written The Passing of the Patriarch. Its message had affected LCM deeply and had reverberated through HQ and the rest of TWI leadership. Some of this stuff had been discussed at these meetings BUT Orlando and I had been on our honeymoon when the corps in San Diego had met. Cliff had evidently overlooked updating us on what we had missed.
Well, it’s TWI history what happened that Corps Week. The culmination was the dramatic appearance of C Geer, who read “The Passing of the Patriarch†out loud to the entire corps there. I remember wandering around one night, along with everyone else, in shock from seeing TWI start to fall apart. There was some unannounced pizza put out in a tent, and people were just grabbing pieces, and it was all so weird.
I think I got more of an idea of what was going on by conversations I had here and there with people. That was very cathartic. People were actually TALKING about something with an honesty that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I thought at the time that this was all going to be good for TWI in the long run. I still believed in TWI but I had no clue about the depth of ungodliness, corruption and sexual immorality at the top. I thought that all this would “clear the air†and things would get better.
Corps Week ended and ROA began. I woke up and heard the voice from the loudspeaker welcoming everybody to the Rock, and for some reason it really ....ed me off. It seemed so hypocritical. We were just going to go on with the ROA like nothing had happened.
So ROA went on. I had trash detail like I’d had for years, and I rode around on the back of the tractor, jumping on and off collecting trash and replacing trash bags. It’s funny, but I don’t have a lot of clear memories of it all. I just know that that Corps Week was the beginning of the end for me in TWI. To me, it was the perfect opportunity for people to stop the bull$h1t, take an honest look at wrong, and fight for “The Ministry.†But it didn’t happen. I was starting to get it that maybe TWI, “God’s Ministry,†was screwed up.
We went home. I found a clerical job as a temp at a company not far from home. Again I got hired permanently, and I was pretty happy there. My boss was a nice guy.
We were running a little twig. A married couple and a guy named John attended regularly. But I was just going through the motions, coming home from work, dusting and vacuuming etc on the nights we had twig. And then there were twig coordinators’ meetings on Sundays. I remember being at work one day, when I realized that it was a non-twig day, and the incredible sense of relief I felt.
Over a year went by....We didn’t make it to Corps Week and ROA ’87. Somewhere during all of this Papp decided that he wanted to have a San Diego Way Productions group. So he put together what became to be called the “Travellites.†Here we are practicing:
Even being in a band wasn’t much fun. Those guys were good musicians but we just didn’t jell. One night we were supposed to play in Escondido up north but no one had thought to get directions. We did get there eventually, but Papp wasn’t too pleased. After awhile we were disbanded.
Later on I was in another group with one of the Travellite guys, “Mock Tireknees,†and “Steve Stripp.†This one was more enjoyable because I liked singing and they were good together on their guitars. We did a jazzed-up version of Lisa Locheridge Tracy’s “Man of Galilee†and that was fun. But that one disbanded too though I don’t remember why.
One Sunday, after the twig leaders’ meeting, Cliff mentioned that there was this 30-page letter that four leaders who were now out of TWI had written to the Trustees. Then Cliff surprised me by saying that he had copies if anybody wanted to read it. I was a little shocked by that, since in my Way Brain I still believed that anyone outside of the Walls of Zion had to be in the realm of the Devil, so I was too afraid to take go near that letter.
Then word went out that Ralph Dubofsky was coming to town. He was evidently on the outs of TWI at that point as well. This was getting confusing to me, because some of the teachers and leaders I had thought the most of were getting fired or leaving. Ralph was one of the best teachers of the Word I had ever heard. When he taught us Romans in the corps, it was incredible. At a corps meeting, Papp read scriptures about “tailbearers†out of Proverbs, which was his indirect way of saying “Don’t go see Ralph Dubofsky.†So I didn’t.
Then one day the phone rang, and it was Papp telling me that Cliff and Johanna weren’t our branch leaders anymore! They had left TWI and now Papp was our branch leader. I just told him OK, and agreed with everything he said, even though I was in shock.
I can’t say how I eventually decided one day to go to Cliff’s house where he was now having an “Ex-Twi†fellowship, but I did. On the way, I was afraid that I would have an accident or something because I was daring to walk out from the safety of God’s Ministry. When I got there, there were people that I knew from TWI and they all seemed so happy. They didn’t seem guilty or like they were “walking in darknessâ€. I was starting to feel like Alice walking through the Looking Glass.
At this point, I had an intense mental hunger to find out EVERYTHING that I had been forbidden to know. Cliff had copies of John Schoenheit’s paper on adultery, the “30 page letterâ€, Passing of the Patriarch and a 3-hour tape by John Lynn. I asked to borrow the tape and Cliff gave me copies of the rest.
After the fellowhip, we all went out to breakfast. My former roommate, Cripp was there, and this couple that had been country coordinators in Japan. I couldn’t believe I was sitting there with all these “defectors". I was sharing things with a woman sitting next to me, who had already been out of TWI for awhile, and she said, "Oh you'll be SO happy once you leave!" If some one had said that to me a few months earlier, I would have thought they were from the pit.
Later, I read the infamous “Adultery Paper†and didn’t see anything scandalous about it that I could tell. It just seemed like a good piece of biblical research confirming a truth in the Word that I already believed to be true anyway. More telling to me was the overreaction it had generated among some of the top leadership.
The 30-page letter was a little too long-winded for me. There was nothing particularly shocking about that either. I know there had been a lot of talk after Corps Week '86 about how the “Trustees haven’t repented of their broken fellowhip" but since no one was being specific about what that was, I never got what people were talking about.
OK, so then I started to listen to JAL’s 3-hour tape. I found it fascinating. I can’t describe what was going on in my head. I was starting to actually think my own thoughts. But I had to go to work, so I couldn’t listen to all of it, but as soon as I was off, I listened to the rest.
Orlando didn’t quite understand what I was going through. He had never been all that gung-ho about TWI anyway, and he hadn’t been as indoctrinated as me, so it wasn’t as dramatic to him that we were in the process of actually leaving. For me, it was like finding out that black was white, the sky was the earth, what is ok isn’t, what I thought wasn’t ok really is...
For every new “anti-TWI†thought I had, I would have an opposite thought pop up from what I’d been taught in TWI. Sometimes it was in the form of something Craig had been yelling about. I even put a line down the middle of a piece of paper and wrote down the conflicting thoughts as they went back and forth. (one side “Me,†the other side “The Wayâ€)
Then I got hold of a tape of Ralph’s meeting when he had come to San Diego, (the “forbidden†meeting with the “talebearerâ€). He had done a critique of Athletes of the Spirit while he was running the video. I put the audio tape of the meeting in the tape player and popped our copy of Athletes of the Spirit in our Beta video player and sat in our living room listening to Ralph’s critique while watching our AOS video. My Way Brain was getting blown away even more.
Here I was, seven months pregnant and going through this turmoil, but it was a good turmoil, a process of liberation. One of my greatest realizations was that I would no longer have to be in bondage to my lifelong “commitment†to being Corps, which had been a source of misery since I'd graduated.
I was starting to get it. God was God. The Word was the Word. And TWI wasn’t God, or His Word. Therefore, if I walked away from TWI, I wasn’t walking away from God or the Word!
I had become friends with the other woman in our twig, and she also worked where I worked. I tried to express to her everything I was going through, but I could tell she wanted to keep her distance.
And then in the middle of all this, John Lynn came to town. So I went to the meeting and there he was saying these mind-boggling things, like, TWI was “being run by devil spirits†and there were people “six feet under†because of TWI. And it was “a biblical research ministry no more.†Later we all met in Cliff’s living room and John answered actual questions like, where were certain people and who was still in and who wasn’t.
Soon after that, I was sitting at lunch with some co-workers and I mentioned that there was this Biblical group that I used to be in. I knew right then that I was already out of TWI in my head. The trick was to actually get away from it. I sat on our bed and composed at letter to Papp. I said to Orlando, "This is our ticket out!! I’ll mail this to Papp and officially quit!!†He still didn’t get what I was so emotional about.
So I wrote the letter and in it I said there were two main reasons why I had chosen to leave TWI. I had thought through the ABS thing, and come to the conclusion that it had been dishonest to say that the Old Testament applied to the New. I had also realized that TWI was a hierarchy but they were claiming to be a tree. Sexual immorality wasn’t the issue with me, because I had always been blissfully ignorant of that situation. At the end of the letter I said I was thankful for the Word I had learned from TWI, and do not call us.
Orlando and I went to make some copies of my letter on a copier at a grocery store, and I put the original in a stamped addressed envelope to Papp. Orlando drove by a mail box and I dropped it in. I was still scared inside, but at the exact moment I dropped that letter in the mailbox, I FELT a weight lift off of me. It was more than psychological, it was like a physical weight just took off and I immediately felt lighter and freer.
I unplugged the phone because I didn’t want to deal with any confrontations. I still had a few moments of fear and regret, but when I thought it through, they passed.
A few days later I reconnected our phone. Nobody from TWI called.
And we were out.
