I did encounter some Corps who seemed to be decent enough and didn't exhibit that arrogant sense of entitlement and self importance that later came to mark so many of the leaders and those who wanted to be leaders.
Still I can say with total confidence that my most negative experiences while in TWI all involved encounters with Corps people trying to tell myself , others, or our fellowship what we should be doing. Seems to me that once HQ sent the "pros" into a given town then things turned sour and people left and classes stopped running because the Corps were busy "cleaning the household of the chaff" - and all this while the average joe believer were cleaning their homes , fixing their cars, and babysitting their kids all free of charge. And these people would still whine about "Attention to detail" and how someone's car or house wasn't clean enough.
I'm like " Sorry your highness - in between working a full time job and going to ministry functions 4 times a week , (not including classes), and fixing your car engine, and cleaning your basement I might have forgotten to pick someone up for fellowship."
Is this everyone's experience ? I don't know.
Thats what the forum is for. People can pipe up with their 2 cents worth and I'm sure we all have different experiences and while I did meet some nice Corps people that doesn't change the fact that all the provocations I experienced in TWI were initiated by Corps. I will NOT rewrite my personal history to make someone else feel better. If you went Corps and you felt like you were a good person then excellent but I know of many Corps who were total suckups and simply wanted to dominate and control everyone they could. Your mileage may vary....
I think Anchorage Alaska was the dumping ground for many of the WC rejects. They were WC but, for what ever reason it was clear they would have lasted 2 seconds in a larger area.
But, there were a few gems in the Mix, M**E S***H and his wife, M***Y, K***Y B***D and her husband and a few others. Really sweet loving people. I noticed that they were the work horses, the ones who were expected to get things done while the rest of the godlets walked around pontificating and sneering at the rest of us.
But these people I just mentioned and afew others were the most loving people you could wish for--true servants of GOD who tried mightly to keep the train on track.
One branch leader would have his fellow way corps come over and clean his house and fix up his yard while he worked the word in preparation for that day's teaching. Never saw him put forth the same effort he required of his fellow corps. But it is easy to look down the nose at someone else and violate Romans 8:1, and that seemed to be the formula for upward mobility for several.
Everyone's story is a little bit different...There were lots of folks who went into the corps during the years that they should have been going to college...
Instead of getting an education, settling down in one place, planting roots and building a future for themselves...they decided to go into the corps, take corps assignments, wash windows and live like a gypsy...
Sure, when they finally woke up from waybrain, they could have picked up where they left off and went to college at the age of 34 or so...but that's not an easy thing to do, especially when they have a wife and kids...
Twi robbed the prime years from a lot of people...
That could mean that they had integrity and stoodup to the tyrants--not rejects in God's eyes.
Nope Integrety was in real short supply In fact just plain common decency. Wife swapping, pedoiophilia, just to name a few of the more life destroying predilictions here in Anchorage. Am old there were some godd WC in other parts of the State--could be--but here in Anchoarage it was really scary.
It's such a complicated question... so many of us were college-age, or just out of college when we went into corps training... we already thought we knew a lot, and the training made us think we knew even more, but many, many of us had never lived much life, really.
Add to that, if you were trained after 1985, the focus shifted from reaching outward and helping people wherever they were at in life, and "growing them up to the level of the Word". It shifted to purging the household, and perfecting the flesh, and expecting a high standard of OBEDIENCE TO THE WORD right off the bat.
Many of us did things we shouldn't have done, because it was what we were trained and ordered to do by someone who WE BELIEVED was the man of god for our day and time.
If you were a natural-born @**H***, you took to all of this quite easily and probably rose right up the ranks of leadership. (I can name several from my corps who are on the current leaders list.)
If you were a decent person to start with, you pushed your questions to the back of your mind (held them in abeyance) and waited for understanding... over time, either the questions got to be so many, you couldn't shove them to the back of your mind anymore, so you left,
OR, you gradually stopped asking questions because you knew they wouldn't be answered and eventually forget you ever had any questions at all. In my opinion, those are the folks that are still "in" and just trying to get by. It's a habit they don't know how to break.
In my experience it is the lucky few who had enough maturity and self-confidence to stand up to the leadership right from the start and avoid doing things if they didn't agree with them. Some of them managed to stay in twi for years, but they didn't cave or bend. And several of those folks are here on this forum. (But still, I believe they were all trained prior to 1985, when defiance of any kind got you booted from the training program.)
Anyone here think it is a pipe dream for someone to go in to the wc now and not turn in to a raving idiot ? If you had a pure heart for God and wanted to make a diffrence for people still in is it possible?
Can someone with stand the training and not be a wc robot?
I believe there are still some good people in the way.
Not all have put to sleep by all the stupidity put out over the last few years.
If they went in and made it out they could make a diffrence.
I think it is a pipe dream for anyone to go through the Way Corps training, especially nowadays, and think they can possibly "make a difference." That is, if you define making a difference as changing the fossilized erroneous practices that have become doctrine at The Way International, into something godly and productive. Many have tried for decades to do it, and have failed.
People who go into the Corps training with the view to get trained and then "fix" TWI are doomed from the get-go.
One reason? I think Albert Einstein had a clue:
"You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it."
The two I thought wanted to make a difference lived with and were pre-trained by the Moneyhands. It was obvious that they were pre-disposed to "WC are always right" by the time they were leaving for training. They know a lot of the dirt and where some of the bodies are buried and still wanted to go WC. I don't get it, but I don't think they came out the same people that went in and they will easily become Mini-Moneyhands. (The will also most likely get the same kid glove treatment that Brian Moneyhands has obviously gotten)
unbreakable, sure, what you're saying is highly possible. There are some good WC and some have insulated their people from as much of the hurt, pain and abuse that they can, but they can't protect them from the teachings and doctrines of TWI which is the foundation of the destruction of the spirit.
Good WC who may be left have a lot of broken hearts and wounded souls in their area and it will take a lot of love and work to heal those hearts. Sure, they can make a difference, but it's limited because TWI still teaches through fear motivation and TWI still spiritually abuses people through their teachings. The only way WC could truly be good is to not teach what TWI teaches and to tell their people NOT to read the Way Rag and NOT to listen to the STS tapes.
I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear, but the way I see it, the WC are just one part of the problem, no matter how good they are, they can't take away the hurt of the teachings that have been and continue to come from TWI.
p.s. Unbreakable, if you haven't read "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse", I highly, highly, highly recommend it! It will answer some of your questions, I'm sure. :)-->
If you had a pure heart for God and wanted to make a diffrence for people still in is it possible?
If you did, why would you want to have anything to do with twi? The only way to make a difference for people still in, is to help them recover themselves and get themselves out, imho (and help them change self-destructive habits).
I think the real answer is, why do you want to make things "better" for those who are being mistreated by staying in and being mistreated along with them? What Catcup said.
The truth is, if you stand up and say what's right, you're outta there, so everytime you back down speaking your mind when you know something's wrong, you become weaker and weaker and you lose self-esteem, until finally, you're gonna need someone to help dig you out of the self-destructive habit patterns that you've established in your own life during this codependent cycle.
If you're in the way corps you need to worry about helping yourself to get healed before you can help anyone else.
One problem with the 'good' way corps in the nineties, is they might be good to you, and keep the local hounds off your back, while at the same time they were participating in grinding up some other believer who was no more evil than you were--just not their buddy from the 'old days'.
When you need to have high muck a muck leadership as your friends to protect you against other leadership, well, something is very wrong there.
The people who know their higher-ups are screwed up and try to stay to "protect" the people under them, are bound up in error, good though their hearts may be. Their efforts are thwarted for the most part, because they are not only misled, but are misleading others.
Rather than leading their flock away from danger, they are actually shepherding them right into into the wolf's den and trying to protect them there.
People stay in for a lot of different reasons, some being family, others for friends. But by and large, the main reason people want to "stay there" and "make a difference" is because they have bought the line from TWI that "there is nothing else out there."
Bottom line, that is staying "in" out of fear.
Fear of leaving everything you've known for years. Fear of leaving the only friends you've got (a true test of their friendship is how they treat you AFTER you leave). Fear of leaving "God's chosen ministry." Fear that you've fallen out of God's good graces because you are no longer in "the household."
Those fears are what make people stay in there and try to fix the devil's house with the tools he's loaned them-- while he sits back and howls with laughter.
I remember when Selina and I decided to split out of Indiana campus, I was talking to Bo Th**as about it and he said that if we were peaceful about the decision it was the right one !!
Recommended Posts
Top Posters In This Topic
4
9
4
10
Popular Days
Jul 11
16
Jul 13
13
Jul 3
11
Jul 4
7
Top Posters In This Topic
coolchef1248 @adelphia.net 4 posts
waterbuffalo 9 posts
unbreakable4god 4 posts
Ham 10 posts
Popular Days
Jul 11 2005
16 posts
Jul 13 2005
13 posts
Jul 3 2005
11 posts
Jul 4 2005
7 posts
diazbro
I did encounter some Corps who seemed to be decent enough and didn't exhibit that arrogant sense of entitlement and self importance that later came to mark so many of the leaders and those who wanted to be leaders.
Still I can say with total confidence that my most negative experiences while in TWI all involved encounters with Corps people trying to tell myself , others, or our fellowship what we should be doing. Seems to me that once HQ sent the "pros" into a given town then things turned sour and people left and classes stopped running because the Corps were busy "cleaning the household of the chaff" - and all this while the average joe believer were cleaning their homes , fixing their cars, and babysitting their kids all free of charge. And these people would still whine about "Attention to detail" and how someone's car or house wasn't clean enough.
I'm like " Sorry your highness - in between working a full time job and going to ministry functions 4 times a week , (not including classes), and fixing your car engine, and cleaning your basement I might have forgotten to pick someone up for fellowship."
Is this everyone's experience ? I don't know.
Thats what the forum is for. People can pipe up with their 2 cents worth and I'm sure we all have different experiences and while I did meet some nice Corps people that doesn't change the fact that all the provocations I experienced in TWI were initiated by Corps. I will NOT rewrite my personal history to make someone else feel better. If you went Corps and you felt like you were a good person then excellent but I know of many Corps who were total suckups and simply wanted to dominate and control everyone they could. Your mileage may vary....
Link to comment
Share on other sites
unbreakable4god
Thanks everyone for your insight.
I have seen a truck load wc come and go.
I really do rember some wonderful people from years past, whats left is a far cry, of the good people i once knew in the way or wc.
It seems now they all want to climb the wc ladder, no matter of the people they step on climbing up.
unbreakable
Link to comment
Share on other sites
templelady
I think Anchorage Alaska was the dumping ground for many of the WC rejects. They were WC but, for what ever reason it was clear they would have lasted 2 seconds in a larger area.
But, there were a few gems in the Mix, M**E S***H and his wife, M***Y, K***Y B***D and her husband and a few others. Really sweet loving people. I noticed that they were the work horses, the ones who were expected to get things done while the rest of the godlets walked around pontificating and sneering at the rest of us.
But these people I just mentioned and afew others were the most loving people you could wish for--true servants of GOD who tried mightly to keep the train on track.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tumbleweed Kid
One branch leader would have his fellow way corps come over and clean his house and fix up his yard while he worked the word in preparation for that day's teaching. Never saw him put forth the same effort he required of his fellow corps. But it is easy to look down the nose at someone else and violate Romans 8:1, and that seemed to be the formula for upward mobility for several.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waterbuffalo
That could mean that they had integrity and stoodup to the tyrants--not rejects in God's eyes.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
GrouchoMarxJr
Everyone's story is a little bit different...There were lots of folks who went into the corps during the years that they should have been going to college...
Instead of getting an education, settling down in one place, planting roots and building a future for themselves...they decided to go into the corps, take corps assignments, wash windows and live like a gypsy...
Sure, when they finally woke up from waybrain, they could have picked up where they left off and went to college at the age of 34 or so...but that's not an easy thing to do, especially when they have a wife and kids...
Twi robbed the prime years from a lot of people...
Link to comment
Share on other sites
templelady
Nope Integrety was in real short supply In fact just plain common decency. Wife swapping, pedoiophilia, just to name a few of the more life destroying predilictions here in Anchorage. Am old there were some godd WC in other parts of the State--could be--but here in Anchoarage it was really scary.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
TheHighWay
It's such a complicated question... so many of us were college-age, or just out of college when we went into corps training... we already thought we knew a lot, and the training made us think we knew even more, but many, many of us had never lived much life, really.
Add to that, if you were trained after 1985, the focus shifted from reaching outward and helping people wherever they were at in life, and "growing them up to the level of the Word". It shifted to purging the household, and perfecting the flesh, and expecting a high standard of OBEDIENCE TO THE WORD right off the bat.
Many of us did things we shouldn't have done, because it was what we were trained and ordered to do by someone who WE BELIEVED was the man of god for our day and time.
If you were a natural-born @**H***, you took to all of this quite easily and probably rose right up the ranks of leadership. (I can name several from my corps who are on the current leaders list.)
If you were a decent person to start with, you pushed your questions to the back of your mind (held them in abeyance) and waited for understanding... over time, either the questions got to be so many, you couldn't shove them to the back of your mind anymore, so you left,
OR, you gradually stopped asking questions because you knew they wouldn't be answered and eventually forget you ever had any questions at all. In my opinion, those are the folks that are still "in" and just trying to get by. It's a habit they don't know how to break.
In my experience it is the lucky few who had enough maturity and self-confidence to stand up to the leadership right from the start and avoid doing things if they didn't agree with them. Some of them managed to stay in twi for years, but they didn't cave or bend. And several of those folks are here on this forum. (But still, I believe they were all trained prior to 1985, when defiance of any kind got you booted from the training program.)
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ham
I have had my share of nosy, nasty, controlling, hitler-types, and they were the majority. But I can't say they were all bad.
My cousin and her husband went through it, and turned out to be a couple of terrific folks, who love God and God's people to this day.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
unbreakable4god
Anyone here think it is a pipe dream for someone to go in to the wc now and not turn in to a raving idiot ? If you had a pure heart for God and wanted to make a diffrence for people still in is it possible?
Can someone with stand the training and not be a wc robot?
I believe there are still some good people in the way.
Not all have put to sleep by all the stupidity put out over the last few years.
If they went in and made it out they could make a diffrence.
unbreakable
Link to comment
Share on other sites
coolchef1248 @adelphia.net
i think there are too many debble spirits in the wc now so a person with a sweet heart for God and people would bot stand a chance
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Catcup
I think it is a pipe dream for anyone to go through the Way Corps training, especially nowadays, and think they can possibly "make a difference." That is, if you define making a difference as changing the fossilized erroneous practices that have become doctrine at The Way International, into something godly and productive. Many have tried for decades to do it, and have failed.
People who go into the Corps training with the view to get trained and then "fix" TWI are doomed from the get-go.
One reason? I think Albert Einstein had a clue:
"You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it."
Link to comment
Share on other sites
unbreakable4god
To make a diffrence now matter how big or small
is to still make a diffrence.
I have had rc that were very cival and understanding, who never chewed my head off when I blew it.
I also had little fellowship cords(wc) rip me a knew one for what seemed like fun.
What if someone made it threw the wc and what ever position they held they were able to teach and love the people in the fellowships.
Is that making a diffrence ?
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Belle
The two I thought wanted to make a difference lived with and were pre-trained by the Moneyhands. It was obvious that they were pre-disposed to "WC are always right" by the time they were leaving for training. They know a lot of the dirt and where some of the bodies are buried and still wanted to go WC. I don't get it, but I don't think they came out the same people that went in and they will easily become Mini-Moneyhands. (The will also most likely get the same kid glove treatment that Brian Moneyhands has obviously gotten)
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Belle
unbreakable, sure, what you're saying is highly possible. There are some good WC and some have insulated their people from as much of the hurt, pain and abuse that they can, but they can't protect them from the teachings and doctrines of TWI which is the foundation of the destruction of the spirit.
Good WC who may be left have a lot of broken hearts and wounded souls in their area and it will take a lot of love and work to heal those hearts. Sure, they can make a difference, but it's limited because TWI still teaches through fear motivation and TWI still spiritually abuses people through their teachings. The only way WC could truly be good is to not teach what TWI teaches and to tell their people NOT to read the Way Rag and NOT to listen to the STS tapes.
I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear, but the way I see it, the WC are just one part of the problem, no matter how good they are, they can't take away the hurt of the teachings that have been and continue to come from TWI.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Belle
p.s. Unbreakable, if you haven't read "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse", I highly, highly, highly recommend it! It will answer some of your questions, I'm sure.
:)-->
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waterbuffalo
If you did, why would you want to have anything to do with twi? The only way to make a difference for people still in, is to help them recover themselves and get themselves out, imho (and help them change self-destructive habits).
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waterbuffalo
I think the real answer is, why do you want to make things "better" for those who are being mistreated by staying in and being mistreated along with them? What Catcup said.
The truth is, if you stand up and say what's right, you're outta there, so everytime you back down speaking your mind when you know something's wrong, you become weaker and weaker and you lose self-esteem, until finally, you're gonna need someone to help dig you out of the self-destructive habit patterns that you've established in your own life during this codependent cycle.
If you're in the way corps you need to worry about helping yourself to get healed before you can help anyone else.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Bramble
One problem with the 'good' way corps in the nineties, is they might be good to you, and keep the local hounds off your back, while at the same time they were participating in grinding up some other believer who was no more evil than you were--just not their buddy from the 'old days'.
When you need to have high muck a muck leadership as your friends to protect you against other leadership, well, something is very wrong there.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Catcup
The people who know their higher-ups are screwed up and try to stay to "protect" the people under them, are bound up in error, good though their hearts may be. Their efforts are thwarted for the most part, because they are not only misled, but are misleading others.
Rather than leading their flock away from danger, they are actually shepherding them right into into the wolf's den and trying to protect them there.
People stay in for a lot of different reasons, some being family, others for friends. But by and large, the main reason people want to "stay there" and "make a difference" is because they have bought the line from TWI that "there is nothing else out there."
Bottom line, that is staying "in" out of fear.
Fear of leaving everything you've known for years. Fear of leaving the only friends you've got (a true test of their friendship is how they treat you AFTER you leave). Fear of leaving "God's chosen ministry." Fear that you've fallen out of God's good graces because you are no longer in "the household."
Those fears are what make people stay in there and try to fix the devil's house with the tools he's loaned them-- while he sits back and howls with laughter.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waterbuffalo
That's good, Catcup!
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Allan
Very good points WaterBuffalo and Catcup !!
I remember when Selina and I decided to split out of Indiana campus, I was talking to Bo Th**as about it and he said that if we were peaceful about the decision it was the right one !!
Link to comment
Share on other sites
waterbuffalo
....and you probably don't need anyone's opinion in order to do what is right for you and your family now, do you?
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Allan
I actually still do consider opinions and advice
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.