Leaderboard

I recently rediscovered this site and have spent hours and hours reading your posts and your stories. Despite how many years have gone by since you wrote them and since I have been out of twi, I have been moved to tears, outrage, gratitude and sometimes laughter. Although we may not know each other personally, I feel a profound connection with you from our shared experience in twi. Thank you so much for keeping this site going all this time. My brief history with twi: started attending twig in 1973 Fairfax, CA and first took PFAL at a live class (!) at Shaver Lake, CA that summer. I was 17. Took the Intermediate class, went Word Over CA, then Fellow Laborers, College WOW 75-76, 2 years "free" WOW ( NJ 76-77 and MA 77-78.) Was accepted to the 10th Corps, but did not enter. Returned to CA (San Gabriel Valley), took the Advanced class, married another WOW vet, coordinated a twig for several years, had 2 kids, finally had enough of increasing legalism, hard-heartedness, and arrogance from "leadership" and we ended our ties to twi around 1990. As was the case with so many of us, I had stayed in partly from fear of being "possessed" if we "tripped out." I did battle depression for quite a while after we left because we had lost our friends and social network and I didn't want to be "unequally yoked" with "unbelievers" or find a church, since I still believed churches were "whited sepulchres. " Sigh. I offer huge thanks to you all who have posted actual letters and documents from back in the day, particularly the infamous Passing of the Patriarch letter. All I knew about Chris Geer besides that he was at Gartmore then was that Something Big had happened which most of the rank and file were not privy to. I heard snippets of gossip ( "We're not supposed to talk about this, but I heard...") and observed jockeying for position amongst The Bigs, but had no real information. Some time after this, The Way Bookstore published one of their little booklets entitled "The Passing of the Patriarch" which I now know was so heavily redacted it bears no resemblance to his actual letter. The letter I read for the first time a couple months ago, 33 years after it was written. I briefly wondered if releasing that letter to the entire "ministry" at that time might have ushered in what some would call a cleansing revival. Yeah, probably not. "Godly sorrow leading to repentance" was not in our corporate repertoire. Not that the whiny, self-serving drivel I read in that letter would have inspired everyone to get it together. Earlier today I was telling my older son (who will be 36 next month) about some of the things I read in the GSC and got choked up and teary. Because my twi days were so long ago, I was surprised by this, but then I remembered how much of my heart and soul, time, effort, and money I gave to twi for so many years. I now sometimes wonder if there is a God, yet here I was crying that God's people had been so ill used and hurt by people who claimed to be men of God. The last time I took the Advanced class was in the summer of 1984 on the campus of San Diego State University. We stayed in dorm rooms. My roomie and I would make jokes about about certain Way Corps people such as "So and So must have forgotten their AC "retemory" that 'he who shall be greatest among you shall be servant of all'"and similar mockery. Mind you, I believed that many WC were genuinely trying to walk with God and serve the Body of Christ, but there were many more who behaved as though they walked on water and we worker bees should be grateful to breathe the same air and receive their wisdom. Our joking was a way to cope with their attitude. I have regretted not lovingly confronting b.s. when I saw it rather than putting up with it, but I don ' t know that even if most of the "believers" had done so, it would have made much difference. The house that was twi was built on sand and the storm causing its collapse was beginning in fury. That the organization still exists is a wonder to me. So again, thank you so much and heart hugs to you all.

Allan you are right about how much pressure she was under. We almost didn't go and that was being framed as a spiritual failure on her part and I was even spoken to about not having believing "big enough" to carry the weight my mother carries to take care of me. I really believed that if we didn't make it, I would have been to blame. I was proud of her but I was also relieved. I was afraid that I was screwing things up for her, which of course is ridiculous. I was 11. The only thing that bothers me at this point is the run around I got about it. If God wanted her to steal my money, why was she hiding it? I know exactly why. One lie causes another and she was lying about having spiritual partners and "earning" the money on her own and "coming up with it". It's funny (not haha) that she knew she was lying about getting into a Christian college. Twinky, you're right about the fees. Not only did we grow our own food, not only was the property paid for, but we were required to work for free. She paid money for the privilege of working her rear end off on a farm.