Oakspear

Any of you Corps folks have to clean up the "cotton" from the cottonwoods out at Gunnison?

I have seen individuals give out of their own pocket, and I've heard about some leaders using "abundant sharing"* money and not reporting it, but I have not ever heard that TWI officially helped anyone out. *A personal note: I abhor using the term "ABS" - it was a friggin' blue form abbreviation!

For Way Corps grads as well as the non-Corps twig leaders, some folks just revelled in the power that they could have over people and others just took things like chair-stringing as something that could be used when necessary. The number of things that should have been "helpful hints", like chair-stringing became laws that could never be deviated from for some people.

During the mid-nineties, our high exalted Way Corps branch coordinators were running the first of the WayAP classes for non-Way Corps PFAL grads. The class was going to be held in their living room, while twig meetings were to take place downstairs in the finished basement. I was asked to run the twig meetings and oversee witnessing downstairs while the BC & his wife did the class upstairs. I specifically asked if I could leave the downstairs "set up" for twig since I was coming from across town after a full day of work, had several kids who attended twig with us and only had one car, precluding separate trips for me & the wife & kids. Mr. Leader agreed. On the second day that I would be over at the WC home to run the meeting I received a call from Mr. Leader about a half hour before start time. According to him, the room was a mess, disorderly and not at all ready for a meeting "where God's Word was to be held forth". Frantically trying to figure out what I had done wrong I raced over to receive instruction in proper room setup from the expert. When I arrived I found that all the chairs had been moved into the laundry room, the coffee tables had been stacked off to the side and the lamps were moved against the wall. He and his wife forgot that they told me to leave the room set up and rearranged everything in order to 'work out"

Although I never said so out loud, I thought that the TWI vision of the afterlife had more detail than what you could reasonably find in the bible. The doctrine about losing rewards balanced on a lot of assumptions about what certain verses meant. As I recall Martindale would say "It says that you can't lose eternal life, but it doesn't say that you can't lose rewards". Yeah, but it doesn't say that you can lose them either, nor is it real specific about what those rewards are exactly. It seems like TWI leaders had to dig hard to find places in the bible to back up their belief that there were (eternal) consequenses to being a Christian that didn't hang out with TWI. I never realy thought that they adquately made their case, so I wasn't any more afraid of death than anybody else in this world, and being "out of fellowship" or leaving TWI didn't make me any more or less afraid. I wasn't really afraid of being a "greasespot by midnight" either. Any fear that I had was of being cut off from a group that at one time I thought was the only one accurately teaching the bible. When I finally was kicked out I had left TWI teachings so far behind that there wasn't any fear then either

When I first heard about chair-stringing I thought it was a pretty cool way to set up chairs in a lrage room. My WOW bro' and I even used it when we set up an auditorium for a musical production in Amherst, Nebraska that we were involved in. The rest of the crew was amazed at how well it worked. It was the same level of detail for a living room PAL class that struck me as pretty stupid. Probably the worst example of room set-up that I ever encountered was at a Word in Business in the 90's. I don't recall if it was at the Wyndham in Dallas or the Hilton in Chicago, but the chairs were set with no air between them, so that if the whole row was filled, everybody was crushed between the people on each side, and since this was a TWI event, there were ushers to ensure that every row was filled!

Are you asking if the KJV was a cover up? If so, then, no, he's called "The Christ", which is translated from Messiah. What is your evidense that the word spirit "should be new nature"?

I was in a couple of Way Homes in 1979-80. In the first one, the coordinator was a heavy drinker who pretended that he had a job that he went to each day. He was also the Way Home treasurer, which meant that all the rent and utility money went to pay for his drinking. We discovered what he was doing when one of the other ay Home inmates was home sick from work and found that the phone was dead. She went to the corner pay phone, called the phone company and found that we had been cut off for non-payment. Same with heating oil, electricity and rent. We confronted him on it. He swore he'd get a job and pay it all back, so we gave him a second chance, but got the leadership to remove him as coordinator. He paid us back with rubber checks so we threw him out and got yelled at by leadership for being unloving and for making decisions without checking with them first. Mid-year I moved into another Way Home where the coordinator there was also a heavy drinker, albeit not the treasurer, and he actually had a job. He was verbally abusive and had several coercive sexual encounters with women in the twig. WOW year 1980-81 the coordinator wasn't a heavy drinker, but hit on both WOW sisters and any other woman who got near him. His "job" was to put in a lawn at our rented home, for which the landlord would let him deduct money from the rent. He slept in every daty and killed the lawn. The landlord naturally wanted to be paid back, but the rent deductions had gone into the coordinator's pockets as his salary, so in effect the other 3 of us paid for him to live. Coordinator couldn't find a job for a while after that, so the 3 of us continued to support him. Eventually his father lent us some money to pay the rent. When we paid him back at the end of the year his dad gave the money to our coordinator, so we got screwed again. I was also in a couple of Way Homes in 1981-82 that were a lot better in that nobody was drinking the rent money, stealing from us or trying to screw everything that moved (figureatively or literally.

The Greeks had a three-in-one god concept? :huh: Where did you get that information? Nonetheless, breaks of some kind make it easier to read and follow. Probably not very well, since it was written initially in Greek. 'Lord' is generally translated from kurios, so 'Lord' is more or less correct. There's a perfectly good Greek word that is equivalent to 'Messiah' and that's Christos (Christ). What 'spirit teaching' are you referring to? What do you think it means?

The last time I saw Tina was sometime during the early 90's at an Advanced Class Special. She was still involved, but don't remember where she was living.

I had not heard of the context outside of TWI, but I googled it & found these links http://executableoutlines.com/ro2/ro12_16.htm http://www.yourrenewedmind.com/ http://www.seegod.org/the_renewed_mind.htm

You know, any other organization would be letting folks know what's going on, be proud of their mission, yet something like this, apparently a big deal, is nowhere to be found on their website. Sections on "What's New" and "Current Events" have nothing new or current. :blink:

I think it's destruction that pride goes before and it's a haughty spirit that precedes a fall. Just sayin'

The WOW pin was one of the last things that I got rid of. I think that I dumped it and all my old name tags the same weekend. One thing that I probably would have kept was my Corps Spoinsorship ring: silver with carved leaves and a dove on it. But I lost it at a Weenie Roast. During the late 90's, after the WOW program had been scrapped in favor of the Way Disciple program, we were told that wearing a WOW pins was "old wineskins" and was therefore discouraged. That made me want to wear it more. Old green advanced class nametags were frowned on too.

I don't remember being "wined & dined" before taking the class, or any change after taking it. The local branch had already gotten their quota together when I started showing up and I felt no pressure one way or the other. However I did see this behavior later on in the TWI timeline.

The WayGB reminder got deleted because I tried to post another, more recent picture and I couldn't get it to come out right. Anyway, I recognize Kevin, vest man and the woman in between the two of them, as well as the girl in the yellow sweater (my girlfriend at the time). I'm not sure how anonymous they want to be, so I'm not sayin'. Kevin and I took PLAF (The Wonder Class) together about a year before this picture was taken. The others I have no recollection of. Kevin, is that the Kew Gardens Way Home or the Queens Village Way Home?

uxorious One entry found. Main Entry: ux·o·ri·ous Pronunciation: \ˌək-ˈsȯr-ē-əs, ˌəg-ˈzȯr-\ Function: adjective Etymology: Latin uxorius uxorious, uxorial, from uxor wife Date: 1598 : excessively fond of or submissive to a wife — ux·o·ri·ous·ly adverb — ux·o·ri·ous·ness noun well yeah...but not back then

Many people, whether in a church situation or out of it, shrink away from any responsibility or "leadership". It really has nothing to do with how much work is involved or how hard it is or how much support there is, some people just don't seem wired to be in charge. With some people it is a fear that they will be "stuck" with all the work, with others it equates to a committment that they just don't want to make. Still others work jobs where they have responsibility as a manager or supervisor and don't want what they perceive as stress outside of work. It's all about the individual perception of being a supervisor, rather than the reality of what is actually being expected.

I think it's fairly likely that whoever translated sheol as hades didn't fully understand one or the other of the two concepts (assuming of course that sheol does mean an unconscious state of the dead). The Septuagint is, in some places, translated beautifully and idiomatically, while in others it's a poor translation indeed. It would have been very easy to transliterate "sheol" rather than translate it inaccurately. After all, isn't that what they did with "gehenna"?

Good to see ya Zix baby!

We have a winner! There's not as much hair under the hat these days as there was in that picture.

Oh, no secret...I use a handle, but I've never hid my real name, T0m J0yce.

HmmmmmmThere are about 30 posters who have actually seen me in the flesh...but I have changed in 30 years

I received this picture in the email this week. Can anyone guess which one of those handsome lads is me? If you're in the picture, speak up!

It's a spiritual ring!