Oakspear

You're right, and I do, after careful consultation with my wife and when my own family's financial needs are taken care of, and usually to individuals and groups that I feel are doing so quantifiable good, or have a dire need. Not an automatic percentage come h*ll or high water.

I love that movie, but once a season is enough! The missus & I watched it Sunday night after we exchanged gifts. The movie is hilarious, but there's some very touching scenes too, like when mom covers up Ralphie's use of profanity during his big fight, and when dad surprises him with the gun on Xmas morning.

I performed a wedding ceremony today.

You can overdo the "lying about Santa" thing either way IMHO. Some look at it as lying to their kids, some think that it's a harmless childhood custom. I was brought up believing in Santa Claus but don't recall being devastated when I found out otherwise; I never told my own kids that Santa was real, and they don't think that they were neglected or abused as children. Frankly I found TWI inconsistant about Christmas. On the one hand they decried its pagan origins and that Jesus was not really born in December, on the other hand most wayfers observed Christmas traditions like gift giving, trees, etc., even at HQ at times. In my opinion they made a big deal about something small and made themselves appear ridiculous in the process.

I don't think I ever was financially prosperous when I tithed or when I "abundantly shared". I even let myself get talked into going up to 14% at one time. We dropped back down to 10% for one reason or another and the "leadership" started hitting us to "increase the proportion of our giving", which we didn't. Right about that time we were able to trade our clunker in for a nicer car; the leadership immediately assumed it was because we had increased our percentage and announced that that's what we had done in a meeting. They were pretty peeved when I told them later that we had not increased. I still chuckle at the BC's response: "So you just were able to buy a car using worldly means, like saving money?" Once I stopped tithing I got out of debt and have been in the best financial position ever.

...that could be something to celebrate ;)

I think that our culture has ingrained in us that a "minister" has some kind of special knowledge and abilities and is on some level at least, worthy of respect and deference. Some ministers take advantage of this. I'm always amazed at how some people treat me differently when I'm in my "reverend" role as a wedding officiant. It's an internet ordination that I got just so I could legally perform weddings, so it's not like I've got any special training or anything, but a lot of people get all deferential when I'm around. Until they really get to know me of course

While I was still in TWI my kids heard Adam Sandler sing his Hanukah Song on the radio and were curious about what Hanukah was. Having had a number of Jewish friends growing up in NYC, I explained it to them. We ended up celebrating Hanukah for 2 or 3 years. This thoroughly confused everyone who knew us, since they all knew that we weren't Jewish. Amazingly, we never were "reproved" by TWI leadership, and our TC's daughter gave me a dreidel one year. As a pagan, Midwinter's Night, aka Yule, aka Winter Solstice, is the "holy" day for me these days. So happy whatever your holiday is

Who are these mysterious judgmental people? <_<

johnj's post brings up a contrast: there are many things that people expect of pastors, and many, if not most, see it as their mission to help, not rule over. In TWI and some other organizations, those in leadership positions see their role not as helping the individual, but guarding the larger entity, whether that be "the ministry" or "The Word" itself. Granted there were some TWI leaders who did not see themselves that way, but the prevailing mindset was "The Word" first, people second.

I was up to my eyebrows in debt and needed to get a second job to start digging my way out. I had worked as a night manager at a grocery store about 15 years earlier and still had some connections. One of my old buddies was a manager at a grocery store and got me a job as a part-time night stocker. The company was doing some expanding, so there were a greater-than-usual number of management openings. I was hired for the first one that I applied for. There wasn't anything specifically about grocery management, I was just in the right place at the right time. I've been a manager of one kind or another since I was 18, and I believe that the skills transfer across types of businesses. There was an opportunity and it turned out it was a good fit for me. Not a lot of deep planning went into the move.

I left the newspaper circulation business (not as glamorous as Raf's job) 9 years ago and went into retail grocery management. Most days I like my job and the pay's better.

Those are the only two choices? We "see your heart" or we're "going off on you"? Some of us just disagree with your conclusions. You are using wayspeak, which may or may not be true. Many of us who are still Christians have quite a different take on what the bible says than we did in the TWI days. Simply not true? I think some of our conservative Christian could make a case otherwise. waysider said it best. Check out some old threads on plagiarism to see "so what?" What Wierwille did wasn't standing on anyone's shoulders, but theft. But you don't get to decide when that is. Granted that "scripture" says that, but I am under no compulsion to obey it. Folks have differing opinions on SIT post-TWI. You can stop "dissing" difference of opinion, thank you. What? You haven't reached a point with that other stuff that you vent about that you can just let it go? Not for you, perhaps you should re-read some of the posts that you so blithely dismissed as "going off on you". Maybe you'll see that for some, there is a point. Perhaps you can expand for us about these miracles. We have had many threads where folks talk about miracles in their lives. Please don't pray for me. I'll stop complaining when I decide to

When I first got involved in TW, I didn't know too many full-timers. I was part of a branch. A full branch, seven twigs, none of these "paper" branches with two twigs and enough people for one small twig. The branch leader was a WOWvet, but had not been in the Corps, most of the twig leaders hadn't had the advanced class yet. We were part of an "area" that had nine or ten branches, none of the branch leaders had graduated from the Way Corps. One branch was a WOW branch led by an interim Corps guy. The area leader was on his interim corps assignment. He might have been full time, I only talked to him once in a year, so I'm not sure. The limb leader was John Lynn, and I only had personal contact once with him in 2 1/2 years. This was during a time when TWI was actively expanding, PFAL classes were running "back-to-back" and new people were popping up regularly. It seems to me that full-time staff during that time spent a lot of time travelling around visiting different twigs, teaching meetings, etc. When I went out as a WOW the scale was smaller, but there were two decent sized branches, one in each of the two largest cities, and twigs, sometimes two, in most of the medium-sized cities as well as seven or eight WOW families and about the same amount of WOWvet Way Homes. The LC spent a lot of his time travelling around. Fast forward to the nineties. A total of four twigs. We had a full time LC couple and a full time BC couple. No travelling involved. A lot of busy work. One of the stupidest was when they were instructed to witness for three hours every day and "teach" us poor stupid twiggies how to witness. We had people who had single-handedly put together film classes of 25 people, we had a woman who with one other gal had driven to her mother's house one weekend, convinced her mom, sister, niece and assorted cousins to take PFAL, and a month later had established a twig that lasted for years. We had another person who had built a small anemic twig into a branch. We had people who knew how to witness, TWI style. But they were going to teach us. That mainly consisted of getting ion people's faces and "confronting" them. Ah...the good ol' days

Some of the refugees from the early Way Corps could probably answer that definitively, but I think that the first one or two groups did not have to jump through the hoops that later groups did. I seem to recall Martindale (2nd Corps) talking about taking the Advanced Class after entering WC training. (Early on there was no separate "Intermediate" class. What was later expanded into the Intermediate class was a segment called T.I.P. (Tongues, Interpretation and Prophecy)

There is a discussion on another thread about what staff did and how it contrasted with what the big-wigs did at HQ. What about full-time TWI employees "in the field"? How did they spend their time? I was still "in" when Martindale turned all Way Corps into full-time, salaried employees of TWI. At the time we had two married Way Corps couples in the state, one couple were the Limb Coordinators in Omaha, the other were the Lincoln Branch Coordinators. There were a total of four twigs in the whole state. I never saw any of them do anything that rated being paid, nothing that a regular unpaid, non-Corps Twig Coordinator didn't do. Sure, they got up early and "studied the Word", but we were all supposed to do that; they witnessed, but we were all supposed to do that; they had blue forms, which every twig coordinator had to fill out. All I saw was that not having to work a regular job freed them up to mind other people's business more thoroughly and efficiently. But even before those days in the 90's, there were always Region Coordinators and guys who ran the larger limbs who were full time. hat the heck did these people do?

I submit that this was an illusion. Many of us wayfers came from the mainline denominations, which didn't teach much bible. Plenty of the more evangelical and fundamentalist churches did teach the bible. Just because we didn't run across them, doesn't mean that they didn't exist. Another thing to consider is that once most of us got hooked on PFAL we stopped considering anything else as worthy of our attention.

C'mon Mike, come back & play with us

Why don't you keep the arguments on the threads where they started? Wow! $1.35!

Is that from X-Files? The one about the hooker who was really Bigfoot?

Chapter 1 of "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash" by Jean Shepherd Verse 2 of "Love Reign O'er Me" on Quadrophenia by The Who.

Welcome to the Cafe, that place where any five posters will have eleven opinions! I hope you decide to stick around, and not just be one of those drive-by posters. I disagree with you in that speaking up about the abuses of TWI helps, not hurts in my opinion. It tears away the veil. Granted, it could be hurtful, but it's hard to see the whole person from what you see posted here. Plenty of us live lives with little or no connection to what went on in TWI, but come here to vent. There's plenty of threads on forgiveness. Many of us feel that since no one speaking officially for TWI has admitted wrongdoing and asked for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. Check out some of the forgiveness threads for more in-depth discussion. And lastly, while most of the posters here are Christians, there is by no means a consensus regarding what that means or what the bible says about various subjects, and there is a small but vocal minority of non-Christians (like me), (who I guess would, in your terminology, be "the world") who don't feel constrained by any biblical standard. Welcome aboard, bro'

naw.

But then we get new people! Perhaps he never left.