Oakspear

Sure, there are some people like that, but most of us are socialized to think that yelling is unacceptable, no matter how inclined we may be in that direction.

It was in other categories as well Old Skool. Like lambasting other Christians, especially the Catholics for being "observers of days and seasons" when they did the same themselves (Uncle Harry Day, Anniversary, etc)

You people are making us witches look bad by comparing Wierwille and his cult to us...

There were always TWI "urban type" legends floating around about this guy or that gal "getting into the Word". A lot of the time somebody would have a chance meeting with a famous person, in an elevator or a county fair or something. The wayfer would have a "hey how're ya doin" or "Nice weather" conversation but tell his Way buddies that he "witnessed" to Mr. Famous Guy. Before you know it the story would grow and morph into "Mr. Famous guy took the class".

You just couldn't miss one show or you'd get all confused and whatnot... Okay, her husband died, but at the same time another guy was dying and her husband's spirit jumped into the other guy's body. But he had amnesia and didn't know he was her husband and he didn't have memories of this other guy either. No...nooooo...I don't wanna go to the light!

Ah...nothin' like the old stowries!

In August of 2001 I had been a poster on Waydale and Grease Spot for about a year and a half. I progressed from being a bit of a TWI apologist to being committed to telling "the other side of the story". I stayed in due to being married to someone who did not want to leave, who saw TWI as the center of God's will. I stayed undercover, endeavoring, like so many before and after me, to change things from within. I was vocal about what I saw as "inaccuracies", especially in Martindale's WayAP class. At fellowships I taught subjects covered in WayAP (and even PFAL) differently that what the company line was (and no one noticed) At some point the WayGB made the connection between what I was saying publicly and what I was posting on Grease Spot. I was summoned before Tom & Dorothy H, the region coordinators, as well as the local fellowship coordinator and "confronted. Within a week I received a phone call from TH, informing me that I was "no longer welcome at Way functions" because I "did not believe that the Trustees were leading the ministry in the right direction". That was almost nine years ago. It seems incredible in retrospect that I was a part of that organization for so long. My troubles, unfortunately were just beginning. My wife at the time threw me out 2 months later and managed to turn most of my children against me. My finances were a mess and I lived in a crappy apartment that I dubbed "the Hovel". Little by little I rebuilt my life, remarried, reconnected with my children and now live more of an "abundant life" than I ever did while involved in TWI.

The high pressure tactics were embarrassing at times. Cornering people and browbeating them into signing the card. Yikes

Well said. "9-5" jobs are getting more rare these days, as are Monday - Friday gigs, especially in any kind of retail business. Yet TWI always seemed to assume that everybody worked those perfect days & hours and leaders were very put out when you couldn't make it to the evening & weekend fellowships and "events".

How about all the WC who gave up jobs/careers that they spent years developing to become "full time ministers" only to be dropped from active Corps status within a short time? Or even those who didn't get dropped had to start job hunting again when the "full time minister" experiment went bust.

...or: "One God...at most"

Just slipped?

My own family all know that I was involved in TWI and most have the opinion that it was a cult, but like another poster's family, their negative opinion of TWI was in large part due to it not being Catholic. Many people who got involved in TWI when I did were in their teens or early twenties; there was a vicious cycle between us and our parents where anything that we did confirmed for them how bad TWI was and anything that they did confirmed for us that they just didn't want "the Word". Their reactions to our reactions to their reactions to our reactions...just cemented attitudes on the part of both sides. Alienation from family wasn't always 100% the fault of those of us in the cult.

It really depends on why one left. I left TWI in 1983 for seven years. The reason that I left had absolutely nothing to do with the teachings, but had everything to do with being treated badly by leadership. I did not attribute this to a pattern, but to this person alone. Because of this, I retained most, if not all the TWI teachings. When I left again in 2001, I had spent over a year examining TWI doctrines in detail and had lost my confidence in them. I had also seen via Waydale & Grease Spot how the abusive leadership that I experienced was not an aberration, but just the way it was. So when I left the organization I had a lot less waybrain than I had the first time.

When I first got out I would tell people that I had been in a cult; I found that most people were very judgmental and thought that there was something wrong with me for having been involved in something like that. These days, I find that they only people who really get it are those who have "recovered" or gotten out of abusive situations themselves, e.g. drug addiction, alcoholism, abusive relationships, etc. These people understand how one can be sucked into something harmful, and even stay in it after recognizing the harmful aspects of it. These days I avoid describing the doctrine of TWI to people, partly because I usually find their own religious beliefs as far-fetched and improbable as some of the crazy stuff that Martindale & Wierwille peddled.

Yup, good point...to derail just a teensy bit...Wierwille taught that Asia = Asia Minor, i.e. Turkey, when "Asia" was a province of Rome, that included Ephesus and was only a small part of what we now call Turkey.

Did (all of) the early Christians turn away from Paul? This presupposes that the early Christians were a monolithic group that all believed the same thing and that Paul's teachings represented this "same thing".

This breakdown also occurred out "in the field" among non-Corps.

Those plastic forks in the meal tent worked well for poking one's eyes out before going into the showers....

Thought I'd bring my own post back up. The last ROA was the first one where that whole family (me, wife & 6 kids) went to. Before that I'd usually just take the older ones. As usual it rained buckets early in the week. The water flowed like a f'n river through my tent. The kids ended up sleeping in the Corps tents while I spent the night in one of the buildings drying out my stuff. We were in a "suburb" of Tent City, not far from the Corps and International tents; I thought I had it bad until I went over to the main area of Tent City to help folks get their things together to dry out (this in the pitch dark middle of the night) and was literally up to my KNEES in water. On the way home we were supposed to "caravan" home with our Branch Coordinators (a newly married couple with no kids) who yelled at us because we were slow to pack up our sodden clothes and mud-encrusted tent. They insisted on picking up food at a drive-through when it was time to eat, rather than taking a break and sitting down and then halfway through the drive home decided to leave us in the dust.

The buzzword in the middle 90's where I was (probably everywhere) was "resist", from that verse about whoever resists the power resists God. Every time I expressed reluctance to do some stupid-@ssed thing that my leader "suggested", I was "resisting". The thing that I saw a lot was that Martindale would teach something at Corps Night and the next day, week, month, that would be all that you'd hear about, whether it be the sin du jour, the "correct" pronunciation of a Greek word or just the newest wacky doctrine.

Here's a summary...http://www.greasespotcafe.com/main2/editorial/editorial-items/actual-errors-in-power-for-abundant-living.html

When I left in 2001 a branch was defined as "two or more fellowships". Then WC were defined "leaders of tens" i.e. more than one "ten", aka "a fellowship". I know of several instances where a small to medium sized fellowship was split into two tiny fellowships so that the local WC could oversee a "branch".

I dislike using the term "ABS"...it's TWI's f'n blue-form abbreviation for what they called "abundant sharing"...