You name it - TWI can turn it into a witnessing event and completely ruin the fun.
They still do these things. They are going back to "coffee houses" with skits and singing and such, but they are so lame and frequently there's no one there but the faithful followers with their Stepford faces on pretending to have a great time.
Heh, all of the above. Plus, shopping, going to Barnes & Noble, doing laundry, fellowship meetings at public parks, etc. The thought was that if you were around someone who was not in TWI, you should be witnessing.
Coffee houses....ewwww!!!! I was involved in one of those before I left. Hardly anybody showed up. It was mandatory for us to attend from our nazi TC. We all HAD to do something. There were only 5 of us in the fellowship. I sang "In the Garden" acapella. I cringe every time I think about that.
Nobody was so moved by our love that they came to fellowship either. I think they could tell it was kind of forced upon us.
And for Pete's Sake don't EVER get a group of twi(t)s together to just have fun! If you tell the hfc you have to invite them or report back on how many contacts you had. They went so far as to reprove a group of us one time because we went out somewhere for fun and didn't tell anyone much less invite any leadership.
We just wanted to have fun for cryin' out loud. I told them I didn't realize we had to ask permission to get together with our friends. They said their concern was "the ministry be not blamed" if something were to happen with so many ministry people together because people might think it was a ministry function. yeah, right. gotcha. -->
quote:And for Pete's Sake don't EVER get a group of twi(t)s together to just have fun! If you tell the hfc you have to invite them or report back on how many contacts you had. They went so far as to reprove a group of us one time because we went out somewhere for fun and didn't tell anyone much less invite any leadership.
Talk about taking control over people...sheesh! I remember being on staff and it was a requirement for us to report to our overseers if we had a gathering of more than 3 people. We had to report who was coordinating, who was coming, where we were going, how we were getting ther, and how long it was going to last. The explanation I was given for this was because if there was a gathering of more than 3 people, then it was an event. Crap like that caused so much confusion. What if I made a trip to the mall with one other person. We run in to 2 others, then what? It's a ministry event? So God forbid, don't eat lunch together when you see each other out and about!! Their STUPID rules caused more questions because THEY DIDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!!
HEAR THAT BOD OF TWI????? You think you cover all ground, but you confuse the hell out of people!!! Can you say "anal-retentive"? That's what your attention to detail is...
During the 70's, there was no compulsion to report "get togethers"...that's insane. I would have walked away then and there. The leaders would run their meetings and there was not even any real pressure to attend those...they might "talk to you" and encourage you to get more involved, but there was nothing punitive...nobody ever got M&A for lack of involvement. They made it clear that if you wanted to become leadership (climb the waytree)...involvement was mandatory...but it was pretty freewheelin' in those days.
Any event that twi scheduled, always had a view to the end of recruitment. Green cards flowed freely..."your pen or mine"...all that crap. I find it interesting to note, that IMHO, the most sincere witnessing took place during NON-twi events. When you were half in the bag with your "old-man" buddies...or when friends or relatives would inquire on their own, rather than being brow beat at some twi event, where most of the wayfers were only trying to look good for the leadership and generally came across as insincere amway salesmen.
When I hear the stories about the evil regieme of lcm, I find it difficult to believe that so many bright folks, allowed such outragious intrusions into their personal lives to occur. Sorry, I'm not trying to make anybody angry or defensive...but, holy crow! I wonder how many actually WOULD have chugged down the koolaid, had lcm filled the cups.
We had a Christmas, oops, I mean HoHo party at our house for the folks in our fellowship. It became a ministry function because our FC, who was also the BC, scheduled the whole night!
Okay -everyone arrives at 7:00 pm - for 30 minutes we'll have some food, then for 15 minutes we'll get together and sing Ho Ho songs (ya know, the TWI yucky ones), then we'll exchange gifts (they weren't purchased gifts, but things like "dinner at our house followed by your favorite video)... then we'll break for 30 more minutes for food again - and then we'll all play a board game for one hour. Then we'll go home.
No sponteneity whatsoever. No room for anything else to occur. God is in the details, people!
Oh, and new people were invited, but they had to follow the schedule, too.
We never hosted one of those again. Who needs that kind of "fun"?
ROFL WordWolf :D--> Loved John, but ooohhh that Yoko ! And Trefor and all you other long time ago'ers, it was that way for us too, and thus, part of the appeal for me. We had "open house" in the Way home where I lived, and while we had posters up on the wall with verses on them, anybody could come hang out, play ping pong (yep, we did), talk, listen to non-ministry music...whatever-without being recruited. And it was not a plan to nab em into a class. All kinds of folks came--all races, walks of life, economic backgrounds, etc. IF they showed interest, we followed through. Same went for going out with folks we worked with, went to school with, etc. It was not at all forced or pressured. But that was then--before TWI started acting like Amway salesman. Or maybe we all had it "wrong" from TWIs standpoint from the beginning, they found out, and set out to put a stop to all our nonsense. That's when this ole gal beat a trail...
though I do recall some that ended up with people getting pretty wild but that was typically hours after the official event had ended. One night we had a marshmallow roasting
thing setup for the Branch and there was a teaching and some singing followed by an hour
of standing by the fire. so after the rank and file left someone broke out the beer and it got
pretty wild in a good way (at least as far as I was concenred).
No one seemed to care so much becuase the limb guy was standing there getting hammerred right along with everyone else. But this type of think never happened that often.
JustThinking, perhaps you were at my little brothers graduation party. I went as a brother and could immediately tell this was also a ministry "event".
Pampered Chef parties, no no no....that's a ministry event.
If you want to go anywhere go two-by-two and when you do go two-by-two you had better plan on speaking da verd. I remember a girl I was dating got reprooved once with the BC's daughter because they didn't witness to anyone while they were out one afternoon.
I was invited to a coffee house not too long ago. I posted about it but we couldn't make it. Too bad.
Recently my wife and I have been talking about how we can get my wayfer parents to get more involved with their grandson's life. So we decided to ask them over once a week or so. they helped us out and watched the kiddo the other weekend.
My mom asked afterward if we would like to come to an ice cream social the next Friday. They left and I immediately told my wife that this was not just an ice cream social....it was a ministry "event".
Well, since we were trying to get more involved as a family, we decided to go. It was OK. I saw some old innies I knew, and some neighbors and they saw the baby. They were good, nice folks, just lost. No one mentioned fellowship or even God that I can recall. We had ice cream and talked for a while. When we left my wife said "that didn't go so bad". I told her of course not, that is how they suck you in. Be all nice at first, then they get you hooked, once you get serious, they get pushy and anal in the worst of ways.
Oh I forgot. My mom was the one who invited us, but when we drove up she came out to us. My step dad I guess found out we were coming and wanted her to come clean and tell me there would be some wayfers there and to make sure that wouldn't be aukward for us. That was nice of him. (but like I couldn't figure that out? --> )
So yes they still do it. Even to their own family. Ain't that sweet?
Yeah, I've been to something like all those "events" you listed above but the weirdest one I went to was a "Naughty Nightie" party my TC had. It was just the girls from the fellowship, of course, but then there was their girl friends from work, etc. - how that counted as a "witnessing night" I'll never know...
I've stated in another board that I was never "actually" apart of the Way, however, I was taught by people who were. I always found it odd how the leader was like, "yayy fun and games as long as he was in the mood." Then as soon as people started having fun - it was quiet down now, we need discussion on how the class changed your life. Everything always turned so formal and it made those people I brought to events very uncomfortable. I was even uncomfortable. Nothing is fun and everything has to be in "decency and order" -- well who decides that?
If the leader is still "old-school TWI" then he decides EVERYTHING. After all, in his mind, he's walking by the spirit. My experience was that they always had to be at the center of everything. If everyone was doing just fine without him, he would have to grab the spotlight back.
Yeah, it was funny watching him sit there with a leopard printed blanked on a lawn chair -- while everyone else had to sit on the "dirt" and him asking about everything "he" taught us while he picked his teeth.
You are probably right about the correct order, but the ministery was still supposedly behind your family. That is surely not the case.
The ministry is behind your family, but since "God" comes ahead of your family, they sneak the allegiance to TWI in there by making themselves seem inseperable from God.
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WaywardWayfer
Dance recital
Band concert
Super Bowl party
New Year's Eve party
Graduation party
"Game Night" (pretty lame at that)
Neighborhood block party
Apartment complex pool party
You name it - TWI can turn it into a witnessing event and completely ruin the fun.
They still do these things. They are going back to "coffee houses" with skits and singing and such, but they are so lame and frequently there's no one there but the faithful followers with their Stepford faces on pretending to have a great time.
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Mister P-Mosh
Heh, all of the above. Plus, shopping, going to Barnes & Noble, doing laundry, fellowship meetings at public parks, etc. The thought was that if you were around someone who was not in TWI, you should be witnessing.
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WordWolf
God help you if you have a few friends over to hang out and have fun
and leadership finds out!
People here have said that when leadership wandered in, they decided
(all by themselves) that this would now be an official ministry event,
with a teaching and songbooks and stuff. That buzzkill bombed the
evening in record time and sent the normal people fleeing as if Yoko
Ono was singing in the room......
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Nottawayfer
Coffee houses....ewwww!!!! I was involved in one of those before I left. Hardly anybody showed up. It was mandatory for us to attend from our nazi TC. We all HAD to do something. There were only 5 of us in the fellowship. I sang "In the Garden" acapella. I cringe every time I think about that.
Nobody was so moved by our love that they came to fellowship either. I think they could tell it was kind of forced upon us.
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insurgent
And for Pete's Sake don't EVER get a group of twi(t)s together to just have fun! If you tell the hfc you have to invite them or report back on how many contacts you had. They went so far as to reprove a group of us one time because we went out somewhere for fun and didn't tell anyone much less invite any leadership.
We just wanted to have fun for cryin' out loud. I told them I didn't realize we had to ask permission to get together with our friends. They said their concern was "the ministry be not blamed" if something were to happen with so many ministry people together because people might think it was a ministry function. yeah, right. gotcha.
-->
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Nottawayfer
Talk about taking control over people...sheesh! I remember being on staff and it was a requirement for us to report to our overseers if we had a gathering of more than 3 people. We had to report who was coordinating, who was coming, where we were going, how we were getting ther, and how long it was going to last. The explanation I was given for this was because if there was a gathering of more than 3 people, then it was an event. Crap like that caused so much confusion. What if I made a trip to the mall with one other person. We run in to 2 others, then what? It's a ministry event? So God forbid, don't eat lunch together when you see each other out and about!! Their STUPID rules caused more questions because THEY DIDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!!
HEAR THAT BOD OF TWI????? You think you cover all ground, but you confuse the hell out of people!!! Can you say "anal-retentive"? That's what your attention to detail is...
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outandabout
It reminds me of being treated like children. Like grown adults who still have to obey their parents.
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Trefor Heywood
In the "old days" we were actually allowed just to go out and socialise or do something interesting for its own sake.
We went our for a drink, we went to visit different places, we went to parties.
And this was on the WOW field too!
Now it sounds like an electronic tag would give more freedom!
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GrouchoMarxJr
During the 70's, there was no compulsion to report "get togethers"...that's insane. I would have walked away then and there. The leaders would run their meetings and there was not even any real pressure to attend those...they might "talk to you" and encourage you to get more involved, but there was nothing punitive...nobody ever got M&A for lack of involvement. They made it clear that if you wanted to become leadership (climb the waytree)...involvement was mandatory...but it was pretty freewheelin' in those days.
Any event that twi scheduled, always had a view to the end of recruitment. Green cards flowed freely..."your pen or mine"...all that crap. I find it interesting to note, that IMHO, the most sincere witnessing took place during NON-twi events. When you were half in the bag with your "old-man" buddies...or when friends or relatives would inquire on their own, rather than being brow beat at some twi event, where most of the wayfers were only trying to look good for the leadership and generally came across as insincere amway salesmen.
When I hear the stories about the evil regieme of lcm, I find it difficult to believe that so many bright folks, allowed such outragious intrusions into their personal lives to occur. Sorry, I'm not trying to make anybody angry or defensive...but, holy crow! I wonder how many actually WOULD have chugged down the koolaid, had lcm filled the cups.
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Hope R.
Okay - here's my TWI "organized fun" story...
We had a Christmas, oops, I mean HoHo party at our house for the folks in our fellowship. It became a ministry function because our FC, who was also the BC, scheduled the whole night!
Okay -everyone arrives at 7:00 pm - for 30 minutes we'll have some food, then for 15 minutes we'll get together and sing Ho Ho songs (ya know, the TWI yucky ones), then we'll exchange gifts (they weren't purchased gifts, but things like "dinner at our house followed by your favorite video)... then we'll break for 30 more minutes for food again - and then we'll all play a board game for one hour. Then we'll go home.
No sponteneity whatsoever. No room for anything else to occur. God is in the details, people!
Oh, and new people were invited, but they had to follow the schedule, too.
We never hosted one of those again. Who needs that kind of "fun"?
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houseisarockin
UncleHairy, not to say I am bright but I tasted the koolaid. Why? That was another lifetime!
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way back in the 70s
ROFL WordWolf
:D--> Loved John, but ooohhh that Yoko ! And Trefor and all you other long time ago'ers, it was that way for us too, and thus, part of the appeal for me. We had "open house" in the Way home where I lived, and while we had posters up on the wall with verses on them, anybody could come hang out, play ping pong (yep, we did), talk, listen to non-ministry music...whatever-without being recruited. And it was not a plan to nab em into a class. All kinds of folks came--all races, walks of life, economic backgrounds, etc. IF they showed interest, we followed through. Same went for going out with folks we worked with, went to school with, etc. It was not at all forced or pressured. But that was then--before TWI started acting like Amway salesman. Or maybe we all had it "wrong" from TWIs standpoint from the beginning, they found out, and set out to put a stop to all our nonsense. That's when this ole gal beat a trail...
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diazbro
Way social events were quite boring in general
though I do recall some that ended up with people getting pretty wild but that was typically hours after the official event had ended. One night we had a marshmallow roasting
thing setup for the Branch and there was a teaching and some singing followed by an hour
of standing by the fire. so after the rank and file left someone broke out the beer and it got
pretty wild in a good way (at least as far as I was concenred).
No one seemed to care so much becuase the limb guy was standing there getting hammerred right along with everyone else. But this type of think never happened that often.
I remember we had some parties that were well
attended and on occassion the neighbors would
mistake it for a real party and we would get
party crashers who would get disappointed rather
quickly once they found out that it was a bible
group and that the pretty girls they saw weren't
going to go home with them.
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lindyhopper
Ah yes, fake events.
JustThinking, perhaps you were at my little brothers graduation party. I went as a brother and could immediately tell this was also a ministry "event".
Pampered Chef parties, no no no....that's a ministry event.
If you want to go anywhere go two-by-two and when you do go two-by-two you had better plan on speaking da verd. I remember a girl I was dating got reprooved once with the BC's daughter because they didn't witness to anyone while they were out one afternoon.
I was invited to a coffee house not too long ago. I posted about it but we couldn't make it. Too bad.
Recently my wife and I have been talking about how we can get my wayfer parents to get more involved with their grandson's life. So we decided to ask them over once a week or so. they helped us out and watched the kiddo the other weekend.
My mom asked afterward if we would like to come to an ice cream social the next Friday. They left and I immediately told my wife that this was not just an ice cream social....it was a ministry "event".
Well, since we were trying to get more involved as a family, we decided to go. It was OK. I saw some old innies I knew, and some neighbors and they saw the baby. They were good, nice folks, just lost. No one mentioned fellowship or even God that I can recall. We had ice cream and talked for a while. When we left my wife said "that didn't go so bad". I told her of course not, that is how they suck you in. Be all nice at first, then they get you hooked, once you get serious, they get pushy and anal in the worst of ways.
Oh I forgot. My mom was the one who invited us, but when we drove up she came out to us. My step dad I guess found out we were coming and wanted her to come clean and tell me there would be some wayfers there and to make sure that wouldn't be aukward for us. That was nice of him. (but like I couldn't figure that out?
--> )
So yes they still do it. Even to their own family. Ain't that sweet?
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lindyhopper
My wife recalled her one and only twi meeting.
She said that my mom said that your priorities should be:
your family
yourself
god
the ministry
etc etc.
At the time she agreed with that but now she doesn't see that as the order of my family's priorities.
I remember that was supposedly how you were to decide on where you would like to request to be sent in the corps.
Don't think that was ever the real order of things in the ministry. Its evident in the way they do these "events".
Family is somewhere down the list. Somewhere after The Ministry.
its sad.
and pathetic
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JustThinking
Lindy,
I do think I was there. In thinking back, were there any "social" events that weren't cover recruit jobs? None come to mind.
JT
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ChasUFarley
Yeah, I've been to something like all those "events" you listed above but the weirdest one I went to was a "Naughty Nightie" party my TC had. It was just the girls from the fellowship, of course, but then there was their girl friends from work, etc. - how that counted as a "witnessing night" I'll never know...
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JustThinking
Chas,
It has to beat board game night.
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Hooner
I've stated in another board that I was never "actually" apart of the Way, however, I was taught by people who were. I always found it odd how the leader was like, "yayy fun and games as long as he was in the mood." Then as soon as people started having fun - it was quiet down now, we need discussion on how the class changed your life. Everything always turned so formal and it made those people I brought to events very uncomfortable. I was even uncomfortable. Nothing is fun and everything has to be in "decency and order" -- well who decides that?
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Mister P-Mosh
I thought TWI's priorities that they always harped on were:
God
Yourself
Your immediate familyTWI
Your "earthly" family
etc?
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JustThinking
Hooner,
If the leader is still "old-school TWI" then he decides EVERYTHING. After all, in his mind, he's walking by the spirit. My experience was that they always had to be at the center of everything. If everyone was doing just fine without him, he would have to grab the spotlight back.
JT
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Hooner
Yeah, it was funny watching him sit there with a leopard printed blanked on a lawn chair -- while everyone else had to sit on the "dirt" and him asking about everything "he" taught us while he picked his teeth.
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lindyhopper
Mr. P
You are probably right about the correct order, but the ministery was still supposedly behind your family. That is surely not the case.
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Mister P-Mosh
The ministry is behind your family, but since "God" comes ahead of your family, they sneak the allegiance to TWI in there by making themselves seem inseperable from God.
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