Flash in the Pan

[Oakspear]

As much as we were fed the company line about TWI being the revival of the Book of Acts, and how it was a world-wide ministry, blah, blah, blah...

The Way as a functioning organization was just a flash in the pan

Even though in two years they'll likely be celebrating what they claim is their 75th Anniversary, how long did The Way really exist as anything other than a shell?

1941-1942 Wierwille was a church pastor who wasn't even sure that he believed the Bible

1942-1953 Wierwille was a church pastor in a small town dreaming of bigger things and running a small-time radio broadcast

1953-1957 Wierwille was STILL a small-time pastor, running a plagiarized class on the side

1957-1967 Wierwille was driving around the country, running his plagiarized class, but attracting only a couple of handfuls of regular followers

1967-1970 Wierwille finally finds someone who will listen to him AND who can attract others to the fold

1970-1985 Wierwille starts WOW program, Way Corps etc and takes advantage of the youthful enthusiasm of his new followers to build a national and international organization this is really the only time that TWI even came close to matching its big vision

1985-1990 Wierwille's dead - chaos reigns

1990- 2000 Martindale presides over steadily shrinking and increasingly irrelevant rump ministry

2000-2015 Rivenbark hunkers down with an even smaller and more irrelevent skeleton of the Way

[waysider]

"......we were fed the company line about TWI being the revival of the Book of Acts, and how it was a world-wide ministry...."

FellowLaborers was promoted as a way to gain an intimate understanding of how the church functioned in the first century through academic scrutiny and practical application in our everyday lives. After graduation, the idea was to take what we had learned back to our hometowns and put it into use so we could be better leaders. It fell short on all counts. The academic aspect was dismal at best. The promised study of Acts was almost nonexistent. The daily living aspect was nothing but a commune with a religious twist. We had some good times. We had lots of bad times. We learned some valuable life lessons. Few of them had anything to do with the Bible or how the first century church functioned. It was all a charade at best. .....but we did learn how to grow mung bean sprouts and make our own mayonnaise so that's nice.

Edited October 2, 2015 by waysider

[outandabout]

Oh yeah, the mayo. That was pretty good.