Rock of Ages

[teachmevp]

This is a dumb question, but I do not know, Why did the way get rid of the Rock of Ages?

[Bolshevik]

The adversary fell from the sky, and people kept getting it on.

Oh, and the homos had (through a coordinated, systematic, terrorist-like ploy) infiltrated the WOW program.

[teachmevp]

What year did this happen? They were doing something in Buck Stoves camper?

[WordWolf]

This is a dumb question, but I do not know, Why did the way get rid of the Rock of Ages?

The OFFICIAL reason, or the REAL reason?

The OFFICIAL reason was that, around or during the 1994 ROA, lcm said it was about rampant

homosexuality, and about rampant heterosexual sex among the teens.

http://www.greasespotcafe.com/main2/waydale/waydale-corps-notes/corps-notes-from-09-14-94.html

He couldn't just make up ONE lie and stick to it- he was all over the map there.

The idea that people were having sex in twi and lcm being offended about it is either funny in

a sad way, or hypocritical as all hell. It's like the organization was his PERSONAL harem,

and having the teens do what he had been doing for over a decade was offensive.

Notice that he says there's no verses of Scripture that address pre-marital sex.

That was the President of a purported Biblical research ministry who said the closest you

could get was Ephesians 6:1 "Obey your parents".

This, of course, gets back to the previous decade, and the shocker that Adultery and Fornication

are considered Bad Things in the Bible-and that this was news to the twi higher-ups.

For fun, go ahead and read what lcm said- he seems to have no idea what goes into anything.

He mentions wanting to shut the ROA down- and to burn all the tents down.

Of course, if he did that, then twi would have to pay for the Big Top, and any other of the

tents they used for ROA but didn't OWN.

==================================

The common thinking is that the REAL reason the ROA was canceled was lcm's recent decision to

put the entire corps on salary.

Why did that change the ROA?

Well, before, the preparations for the ROA were done by the corps. People used up what little

vacation time they'd accrued at work, then came to hq and WORKED FOR FREE, setting up the ROA.

Then they stayed through ROA, using up their remaining accrued vacation time, and WORKED FOR FREE,

putting on the ROA. So, twi had a slave labor force for both weeks, setting things up and

doing the "grunt work". (Of course, there were also other volunteers who walked in and worked

for free during ROA- twi was always great at inspiring "free" labor.)

lcm never had any appreciation for the amount of effort that took, nor the amount of personal

sacrifice that was. He was not original- vpw himself had no appreciation for it either.

In "vp and me", lcm documented how vpw was offended how some corps used up all their vacation

time to show up for Corps Week, perform unpaid labor, then went home without staying for the ROA.

It comes as less of a shock that neither appreciated such things when one realizes that neither man

ever worked a day's labor in his life. Both men went straight from school into "the ministry",

and lived on other people's money the entire time.

Anyway, what that had to do with ROA '94.....

lcm put the corps all on salary without finding out if it was economically feasible.

His thinking (if you can call it that) was that this move would be self-supporting,

since the full-time corps would be able to promote that inferior ripoff class that lcm made

of pfal, and that people would actually pay to take it (when already people had to twist arms

to get people to take it), and that people would all suddenly start paying for it,

and all suddenly stick around twi, paying 10%, 15%, 20% of their income, swelling the coffers

of twi and paying the expense of the full-time corps everywhere.

What resulted was that nobody could "polish a turd", so having 1 person or 100 people try to push

lcm's stupid class made little difference- almost nobody took it, and even fewer stuck around

after finishing it. So, lcm's decision meant twi was paying out a lot more money and taking in

no more money to make up for it. This became a LOT more obvious when Corps Week and ROA came

around. Where the non-salaried corps normally had to pay their own way through both weeks,

NOW twi had to pay out salary for both weeks AND the cost for the entire salaried corps to

make it to both- since the "salaries" were pretty meager and there wasn't any money left

over to pay their OWN way to ROA.

So, ROA now became a cash sink for twi. Worse, the people who did show up got to compare

notes every year, see how much smaller twi got every year, discuss who wasn't there anymore,

and compare notes on everything twi tried to hide.

[waysider]

I went to my first ROA the year that it became a weekend event, rather than one day. I think that was 1972. (I used to have a tee shirt around here that said "Rock of Ages, 1971", but, I think somebody gave me that one.) I was 21 years old and had been to several secular music festivals. It was the parallel similarity of the two that attracted me. As time went on, though, the ROA resembled those events less and less. The disparity grew with each passing year. After a while, there was essentially NO similarity. So, whatever it was that I found appealing at that first one was no longer in evidence. I think I went to my last one in about 1980. I had no desire to ever go again.

[teachmevp]

Wow, thanks for sharing all that with me, that is wild stuff there; I got to go to the rock in 82, and 83, it was a blast for me, sad all that craziness had to happen.

[dmiller]

My first ROA was in '75, and my last was in '85. 11 years of having "fun" in Ohio, in August.

I only went that last year in "85, because it was docvic's memorial. I never planned on attending another after that.

The first few were fun, but it got more and more "legalistic" as the years passed. I didn't need that, or want it.

With each passing year, I wondered why I was packing up, traveling 1,000 miles, and going to the thing anyway?

I never was corps, or a "volunteer" there at ROA, so I never had "duties" there.

By the time I found out they'd discontinued it, it was a "thing of the past" for several years.

I never was very good at keeping up with "present truth".

WordWolf gives the most complete explanation you're going to hear on the subject.

[teachmevp]

I am lucky in away, I got to enjoy it two times, and never got the chance to go again, WordWolf told me that story, it is sad about what it became.