This is fun, catching up on all the aholes ... my image of putz was she really didn't want to be there, so went out drinking with the corps to fill the time .. is there more to this story? Oh, and I heard Jack Daniels was on the list of things to provide for her ... well, at least she didn't ask for Johnny Walker red or anything ... she was a little humble LOL
Actually, it probably would have won more brownie points asking for Johnny Walker Red since Dottie Moneyhands comes from that family, no? I know Boob calls her "Walker" all the time and she comes from the illustrious inheritance that comes with that name.
Actually, it probably would have won more brownie points asking for Johnny Walker Red since Dottie Moneyhands comes from that family, no? I know Boob calls her "Walker" all the time and she comes from the illustrious inheritance that comes with that name.
WOW, a Johnny Walker family member ... why the heck did she hook up with twi? So Boob was a kept man? The plot thickens ...
I've never been accused of being too bright concerning twi's bait and switch techniques. Fell for nearly every single one of them.
However there is one I saw coming even at 16yo...
And that is the one that had a few little qualifying clauses that left the definition of 'Lifetime' and 'Christian Service' up to twi.
Something in me told me that twi was going to expect complete, willfully blinded loyalty and servitude if one went corpse.
Don't know what that something was exactly, but I do know how people went into corpse as free-thinking, God-loving servants with hearts of gold...and came out of corpse as arrogant, argumentative, anal Pharisees. Saw it in every single person I ever knew before and after corpse. Still see it in people I still know.
That kind of change doesn't happen because of true Christian Service.
Thank You, Thank You ,Thank You COOL Even at 16 it was pretty obvious to you and most, that you were headed for a lifetime of service in the Way,if you went into the Corps. My point exactly, it was not to hard to see. HOW it turned out is yet another subject......
Don't know what that something was exactly, but I do know how people went into corpse as free-thinking, God-loving servants with hearts of gold...and came out of corpse as arrogant, argumentative, anal Pharisees. Saw it in every single person I ever knew before and after corpse. Still see it in people I still know.
That kind of change doesn't happen because of true Christian Service.
I've been thinking all night about what made me so 'bright' at 16 to see what was being demanded if one went corpse.
Finally figured out that it was my rebelliousness...not any wisdom or understanding of what was being presented.
I saw how going corpse turned decent people into mean, cowardly little automatons. I rebelled and said, "Not me!" (Little did I realize that staying around for all those years was going to do the same thing to me...only slowly and much more insidiously.)
Had anybody who had graduated from corpse been even a little bit nice to me...well...I would have fallen for going corpse, too. Because what twi was putting out in front about corpse was very attractive...and very, very misleading.
I didn't see through twi's BS. I just didn't want to spend a lifetime with mean, cowardly little automatons.
I've been thinking all night about what made me so 'bright' at 16 to see what was being demanded if one went corpse.
Finally figured out that it was my rebelliousness...not any wisdom or understanding of what was being presented.
I saw how going corpse turned decent people into mean, cowardly little automatons. I rebelled and said, "Not me!" (Little did I realize that staying around for all those years was going to do the same thing to me...only slowly and much more insidiously.)
Had anybody who had graduated from corpse been even a little bit nice to me...well...I would have fallen for going corpse, too. Because what twi was putting out in front about corpse was very attractive...and very, very misleading.
I didn't see through twi's BS. I just didn't want to spend a lifetime with mean, cowardly little automatons.
yeah me to cool waters.
Im glad. but I at times when I first got involved bought the spew about I was inable to understand the higher mightier more Godly spiritual things "they" knew.
they were special for a while.. till I saw how miserable real life was for them.
Well Cool I can't put everyone in that box, but some I'm sure fit quite nicely. But as I said HOW it turned out is another side of the story. I still think most people went in expecting to be trained to serve in the Way in some capacity not at Dairy Queen serving ice cream...
Dove! You're looking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day through some very rosey glasses! LOL But I guess that is one of the benefits of being our ages. Tee hee.
Maybe so Cool but your ability to see things for what they were/are is a quality I always admired in you. Even if I don't always agree. Now that other little thing you do letting us know how you feel.........Ahhh nevermind
my kids are in their twenties and some of them by far out wit me by decades with wisdom and vision for their life.
of course I am their mom.
but seriously I do think this is very telling on just why got burned so much the worse by twi and others did not.
why the experience varies the manner it does.
esp. in the eighties.
I believe it was a many facet problem, the growth was big in numbers of people vey fast and the sell was great so along came a large percent of young unprepared people who invited their friends and family who also had issues in life and it began a mess a solid mess .
no on realized many of the troubles some of these people had and even if they did it was assumed God would instantly heal everything anyways so no matter.
it mattered . many were very troubled and the push was so strong , for pfal to succeed . honesty about a individual issues in life went straight out the window.
many kept secrets just to have family and friends protected. many were idealistic or afraid to bring up problems.
if your not a grad of the advanced class of your not way corps if you never went wow you know it was a game and you just got out ranked and pushed around.
The Way Corps is somewhere in between. Not ministers by profession, but also not fully engaged in secular life. In ecclesiastical terms this is sometimes called being a "bi-vocational" minister or pastor, and is common today in small non-denomenational churches. (Indeed there is some basis for this in the book of Acts.) It gives you the benefit of relating more to the congregation - you have a job and family and face the same challenges they do - but it also engenders the conflict of trying to do two fulltime jobs well. Serving two masters, if you will. Most people can't do it for the long term, they either go one way or the other.
This made me wonder about what you guys thought you would do in the long term once you where corps. Or did you think long term at all at first? Some people have already said they were thinking they would be the best darn twig coordinator they could be, but I wonder how many people saw "lifetime commitment" and thought or had the goal of becomeing an ordained minister at some point.
I don't know who here was ordained except for maybe one or two of you. Was this a goal of yours that you set out for when signing up? How many of you had that goal but never made it there?
I remember hearing talk from my parents and others about so and so will probably be ordained. I kind of think that at one point this is what my parents wanted. I know my mom has said that of my brother and others. At what point did you realise this meant a lifetime of working two full time jobs with only one of them paying?
Personally, I viewed it as a career choice. I thought I would work for The Way the rest of my life, and I thought I would serve in top leadership positions (best term I can think of). I never intended it from a climbing the Way Corps-orate ladder ego point of view some have described here. I felt a sense of calling and felt I had the capacity for it. I guess in the back of my mind I also was prepared to work secularly, but I guess I never thought I would pursue a secular "career". I'm not even complaining, I'm just saying I don't think the system works well
While I was in training, craig raised the definition of what the Corps was supposed to be about. Not just fellowship coordinators - fellowship coordinator coordinators, that is, Branch and above. He equated the Corps commitment with ordination. This always made me wonder what the point was of ordination. Can you get any more committed than "totally committed" for life? The only answer I ever heard was it meant greater recognition and thus access for that minister, but that is a bit weak to me. Ordination is supposed to be one of the most serious commitments a man or woman can make. Which brings me to an interesting thought…
The New Testament has several cautions against ordaining too hastily. Perhaps there is some correlation between this and the high attrition rate of the Corps. (Yes, I know there are other reasons, but this was observable in the VPW era also). Maybe a "lifetime of Christian service" should be the commitment one makes at ordination and not before. The time after corps graduation could serve as a time to mature and prove oneself and /or prove to oneself that a lifetime commitment of service in the ministry is what he/she wants to do and is able to do. There would still be failures, but I wonder if it wouldn't be significantly less.
Then open the Corps back up to a broader class of leadership training, and reduce the expectation for the length of service following graduation. You'd bring more people into the training and more benefit to the ministry. What's better a few people for a lifetime or many people for shorter lengths of time? I would suggest the latter.
Going back to your question (well closer to it anyway), the "bi-vocational" ministers I know (non-TWI) pastor rather small churches about the size of a large home fellowship or small branch. They know if the work grows beyond a certain size they will have to do it full time. With these folks, that influences them to make no real effort to grow the size of the church. They are comfortable ministering to their current congregation and feel like they can focus on growing the church later in life when their kids are grown, etc.
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Actually, it probably would have won more brownie points asking for Johnny Walker Red since Dottie Moneyhands comes from that family, no? I know Boob calls her "Walker" all the time and she comes from the illustrious inheritance that comes with that name.
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rhino
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WhiteDove
Thank You, Thank You ,Thank You COOL Even at 16 it was pretty obvious to you and most, that you were headed for a lifetime of service in the Way,if you went into the Corps. My point exactly, it was not to hard to see. HOW it turned out is yet another subject......
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CoolWaters
Dear dear Dove,
I wish you had bolded this part of my post:
I've been thinking all night about what made me so 'bright' at 16 to see what was being demanded if one went corpse.
Finally figured out that it was my rebelliousness...not any wisdom or understanding of what was being presented.
I saw how going corpse turned decent people into mean, cowardly little automatons. I rebelled and said, "Not me!" (Little did I realize that staying around for all those years was going to do the same thing to me...only slowly and much more insidiously.)
Had anybody who had graduated from corpse been even a little bit nice to me...well...I would have fallen for going corpse, too. Because what twi was putting out in front about corpse was very attractive...and very, very misleading.
I didn't see through twi's BS. I just didn't want to spend a lifetime with mean, cowardly little automatons.
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pond
yeah me to cool waters.
Im glad. but I at times when I first got involved bought the spew about I was inable to understand the higher mightier more Godly spiritual things "they" knew.
they were special for a while.. till I saw how miserable real life was for them.
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WhiteDove
Well Cool I can't put everyone in that box, but some I'm sure fit quite nicely. But as I said HOW it turned out is another side of the story. I still think most people went in expecting to be trained to serve in the Way in some capacity not at Dairy Queen serving ice cream...
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CoolWaters
Dove,
Objectively...yes...it was all there to see right from the beginning.
But what teenager or what 20-something ever sees anything objectively?
And the ONLY time twi is ever objective about anything is when twi is defending its manipulations of the subjective.
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WhiteDove
Cool you sell yourself short,knowing you I'm betting you did. :)
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CoolWaters
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WhiteDove
Maybe so Cool but your ability to see things for what they were/are is a quality I always admired in you. Even if I don't always agree. Now that other little thing you do letting us know how you feel.........Ahhh nevermind
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pond
my kids are in their twenties and some of them by far out wit me by decades with wisdom and vision for their life.
of course I am their mom.
but seriously I do think this is very telling on just why got burned so much the worse by twi and others did not.
why the experience varies the manner it does.
esp. in the eighties.
I believe it was a many facet problem, the growth was big in numbers of people vey fast and the sell was great so along came a large percent of young unprepared people who invited their friends and family who also had issues in life and it began a mess a solid mess .
no on realized many of the troubles some of these people had and even if they did it was assumed God would instantly heal everything anyways so no matter.
it mattered . many were very troubled and the push was so strong , for pfal to succeed . honesty about a individual issues in life went straight out the window.
many kept secrets just to have family and friends protected. many were idealistic or afraid to bring up problems.
if your not a grad of the advanced class of your not way corps if you never went wow you know it was a game and you just got out ranked and pushed around.
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lindyhopper
A quote from a ways back...
This made me wonder about what you guys thought you would do in the long term once you where corps. Or did you think long term at all at first? Some people have already said they were thinking they would be the best darn twig coordinator they could be, but I wonder how many people saw "lifetime commitment" and thought or had the goal of becomeing an ordained minister at some point.
I don't know who here was ordained except for maybe one or two of you. Was this a goal of yours that you set out for when signing up? How many of you had that goal but never made it there?
I remember hearing talk from my parents and others about so and so will probably be ordained. I kind of think that at one point this is what my parents wanted. I know my mom has said that of my brother and others. At what point did you realise this meant a lifetime of working two full time jobs with only one of them paying?
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shortfuse
Personally, I viewed it as a career choice. I thought I would work for The Way the rest of my life, and I thought I would serve in top leadership positions (best term I can think of). I never intended it from a climbing the Way Corps-orate ladder ego point of view some have described here. I felt a sense of calling and felt I had the capacity for it. I guess in the back of my mind I also was prepared to work secularly, but I guess I never thought I would pursue a secular "career". I'm not even complaining, I'm just saying I don't think the system works well
While I was in training, craig raised the definition of what the Corps was supposed to be about. Not just fellowship coordinators - fellowship coordinator coordinators, that is, Branch and above. He equated the Corps commitment with ordination. This always made me wonder what the point was of ordination. Can you get any more committed than "totally committed" for life? The only answer I ever heard was it meant greater recognition and thus access for that minister, but that is a bit weak to me. Ordination is supposed to be one of the most serious commitments a man or woman can make. Which brings me to an interesting thought…
The New Testament has several cautions against ordaining too hastily. Perhaps there is some correlation between this and the high attrition rate of the Corps. (Yes, I know there are other reasons, but this was observable in the VPW era also). Maybe a "lifetime of Christian service" should be the commitment one makes at ordination and not before. The time after corps graduation could serve as a time to mature and prove oneself and /or prove to oneself that a lifetime commitment of service in the ministry is what he/she wants to do and is able to do. There would still be failures, but I wonder if it wouldn't be significantly less.
Then open the Corps back up to a broader class of leadership training, and reduce the expectation for the length of service following graduation. You'd bring more people into the training and more benefit to the ministry. What's better a few people for a lifetime or many people for shorter lengths of time? I would suggest the latter.
Going back to your question (well closer to it anyway), the "bi-vocational" ministers I know (non-TWI) pastor rather small churches about the size of a large home fellowship or small branch. They know if the work grows beyond a certain size they will have to do it full time. With these folks, that influences them to make no real effort to grow the size of the church. They are comfortable ministering to their current congregation and feel like they can focus on growing the church later in life when their kids are grown, etc.
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skyrider
Sounds familiar.
While I was in training, wierwille did the same.
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