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Thing about a "class" (any class) is that it should ultimately become invisible. It should become a basic instruction - about anything - and one builds upon it, with experience. For instance: I know where I did my legal studies. I know what classes I took: land law, constitutional law, tort, etc etc. I studied law for three years for my Bachelor's degree, then did my Law Society finals (a really intense year) then did my legal apprenticeship ("articles") for another two years. Then, I was admitted to the Roll as a lawyer. And I practised and got better at applying the law, and finding new law to fit different situations. But what I learned, in which class, well, sometimes I can say and most often I can't. The real learning isn't in whatever classes I took, of varying levels of depth and complexity, but it's in the application. Mrs Smith, getting a divorce, doesn't care where I learned matrimonial law, but she does care about custody of the kids, whether she gets a good settlement, my being able to read her husband's company's accounts (and discern less-than-legit entries therein); what to do when husband assaults her or steals property or badmouths her; and so on. Which is lotsa different classes, and not necessarily interlinked in the teaching. That's lifelong learning, basics plus updates plus a lot of experience, understanding, thoughtfulness. And learning scripture is about that. No good unless applied, and no-one cares where you learned it as long as you apply it, and then learn to apply it better next time. There is so much more to learn as set out in the Bible than is ever covered in PFAL. Of course!!

"The reason I left was to APPLY the class to my life more, as opposed to just debating about it. I wanted to see people thrilled by the PFAL info again, and was very tired of trying to debate it all the time with people who did not want to apply it (again)." The reason you showed up was to advertise your paradigm. The reason you left was that A) you were getting nearly no nibbles on the bait; and B) you kept getting refuted, which made the bait look more like bait and less like substance. I say that, knowing you were asked to discuss substance lots of times, and you used every excuse to avoid it- changing the subject, accusing everyone else of being dishonest, etc. (Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated thread, I ended up reversing my position on something as the result of an honest discussion, so it's not like it was impossible to change my mind, if you had substance.) What was really tiresome was all the dancing around, and page after page after page of someone saying they didn't have time to devote to giving a substantial answer to ANYTHING even though they had time to fill pages. If you actually wanted people to "apply the class" (which wasn't your thrust then, that was to adopt your position for no reason in order to get results months later), you would have needed to address the question "WHY should I apply this class?" Without a respectable answer to that one, you were advertising and virtually nobody was buying. "Guess what? Plagiarized material, which is accurate with the Word, CAN BE just as effective as original material that is accurate with the Word." Guess what? We all knew that! Long before you ever posted your very first post here, Raf himself pointed out that plagiarism does not affect the SUBSTANCE of what is plagiarized. "Truth from the pen of a plagiarist is still truth." The problem with the plagiarism was never that "the material is useless if it is plagiarized" (a claim not adopted by anyone, but often propped up as a strawman for those seeking to accuse a certain plagiarizing rapist). The problem was that the plagiarism reveals a lack of character by the plagiarist. A serial plagiarist lacks a LOT of character. A serial plagiarist who copyrights his plagiarism shows he understand plagiarism full well, but is fine with it as long as he gets away with it.. Committing a crime is fine for him as long as he doesn't get caught? That's not a position for any supposed "man of God", and demonstrates both unsuitability to lead, and that there's more flaws we don't see. And we didn't see them- he was fine embezzling "church" funds, drugging women and raping them, and so on. But this is all glossed over with a veneer of "nobody's perfect" so long as the pfal fan gets his pfal. They don't say that's fine for ANYONE else- just that vpw gets a free pass, and they trust that his class was accurate despite coming from someone so utterly deficient in Christian morality and Christian character that he shouldn't be trusted to reliably tell you the name of Jesus' mom. "The problem is there are no original writers out there who could do the job, so it got done without academic approval. That's ok, because I don't approve of them." "The problem" is that your position begins by saying that pfal was not only of God, but was THE vehicle that God Almighty endorsed, authorized, and approved of (which is FAR from what any evidence shows, so is purely a leap-of-faith position), and that, SINCE pfal was THE God-endorsed class, that anything is worth overlooking because we got pfal in the end (another leap-of-faith position that is NOT in accord with the Bible.) BTW, for those wondering, vpw rarely made any comments about other sources. If you went by the written pfal stuff, you'd find ZERO references to other writers. In fact, you'd have to either stumble across some teaching tape where he said something to a limited crowd, or dig over 100 pages into "The Way-Living in Love". There, there's no admission either. There's a single comment about nothing he did being original. pfal apologists blow that up into a full confession that he plagiarized leonard's class, Stiles' book, Bullinger's books, and so on. It's absolutely nothing of the kind, and his intent to fool everyone is rather transparent- especially if you read the openings of the Orange Book and the White Book. In fact, an early version of the Orange Book makes mention of an anonymous man who helped vpw learn (it was Stiles), and all the editions afterwards edit the paragraph so the man drops out of the picture as if ne never existed. So, it's backwards. You don't approve of academic approval- and legal ways of using material- because they expose vpw as a liar, a thief, a plagiarist and a conman. The work OF the "original writers" , the actual plagiarized work- that gets deprecated because otherwise there's no excuse for the con job that was pfal. We've been through all of this, lots of times. However, since you do not WISH to see any of these points, you've never learned any of them, and to you it's as if we never wrote them. That's fine, I'm writing this for those who come along later and wonder what happened.

Back to process a little more with you kind smart supportive ppl. The deep meaningful attachments to past way leaders are the toughest I find, to handle. I know it is like family members that one is contemplating breaking contact with (to varying degrees) due to toxic behaviors, etc. E.g. the minister, G.E., a Very Good Friend, who married my (now ex-)h and me, and was honored and excited b/c he had just been put on full time staff as our Branch was growing; we were his first of three couples to marry that spring; G.E. then dedicated both of our children in the hospital after difficult deliveries; and he virtually gave his window cleaning business to my h. ALL of the weddings, ALL of the showers, ALL of the baby dedications, ALL of the meetings, ETC ETC ETC in our closely-knit fellowship that our branch coordinators supported... Then came the Loyalty Oath; agreeing with G.E. and becoming Geer-ites; being marked and avoided by 1/2 of those dear friends... ALL of the following havoc- divorce, trauma with the kids, etc etc. Now thanks in large part to wonderful posters here at GSC, I am finally and fully identifying vpw's terrible abuses, wrong doctrine, and my naivete/misplaced trust, and how the demise of the way ministry was inevitable. I just became a full partner (member) in a local church b/c it is much safer, open, and more soundly based than the way EVER was. B/c of the PTSD I still have from the unsafe attachings, it is all part of the recovery process, apparently, to evaluate how much to interact w/ old way friends when the opportunity still pops up from time to time. FB is a great way to say Hi, like things, restore some of the connections from a distance. Guess I will still play it Very Safe, and carefully pick and choose what happens IRL; and be ready to exit if I trigger from anxiety (flight), or want to explode (fight) if someone starts defending vp, e.g. Oh BOY! The Best Part about this Whole Process has been learning about how my Father, my Comforter, and my Jesus are fully functioning as Safe Present Nurturing Guiding places/beings to Fully Attach to and Trust In!! Just sayin' for anyone who has taken this spiritual path... THANKS MUCH for listening!! Best to all here!! Onward!!

As far as standing up, talking back. People did that a lot, especially after POP. People got "mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!" Of my personal pet peeves was the whole money thing. The "need based salary" was a thing of the past. We were long past the days when the ministry didn't have two nickles to rub together. I for one, was VERY thankful to EVERY SINGLE BELIEVER who ever came to visit HQ. I spent my Sunday afternoons on call to conduct tours of the grounds and was HAPPY to spend any WHOLE afternoon showing guests around the whole grounds, Way Cultural Center in New Bremen, I'd tour people till they said, "No MAS!" (another refernece ) Whe the IRS came after TWI and threatened to, then TOOK the tax exempt status, my thinking was... FINE. Let em have it! I'd say if I GOD can meet my needs, He'll meet the ministry needs too. The IRS can KISS us where the sun don't shine, as far as I'm concerned. Lots of folks felt that way too. WE don't work there anymore. WE were purged. WE were marked and told AVOID them. By comparison. I now attend and am very active in one of the largest, most active and progressive churches in the Dayton area. On an average weekend we bring in about $68,000.00 in tithes & offerings. How do I know that? I read the weekly church bulletin the ushers hand out to EVERY person (other than kids) who walks into the sanctuary for one of the FOUR services we do each weekend. It has an itemized section that tells us how much money was bugeted YTD for that week in categories; how much came in YTD for that week. EVERY person, even a visitor, stranger off the street who can read can see how much money we have, whether we are behind or ahead of budget. Our "leadership," the senior pastor and the church board, addressed a problem the ministry was having with a traffic jam of people coming to & from each service. Somebody figured it would be a good idea to widen the end of our driveway and add a turn lane. The called a special "members meeting" did a formal presentation and open mike discussion on the matter then we, the church members VOTED whether to do it or not. The vote was yes. The people who own the land adjacent to the church at the end of the driveway were selling. We voted to basically empty the church's reserve cash fund and write a check for $250,000. to buy the property. We also VOTED to start a building fund to pay for the plans and cost to redo the driveway. I can see how the fund is doing every week when I come to church. We ALSO have a yearly thing we do at the end of our fiscal year. We started it about 3 years ago and call it "Takin' it to the Streets." (Ye we use the Doobie Bros song...) "You, Oh you; keep telling me the things you're gonna do for me... Well I aint blind and I don't like what I think I see ... Takin' it to the streets...." are the lyrics. The board decided, since we had money left over at the end of our fiscal year (NON profit status, I might add) that we should take 20 THOUSAND DOOOLLARS and GIVE it AWAY. The first year the board members stood up at the front of the sanctuary and gave envelopes with $20.00 per adult, $10.00 per teen and $5.00 per child to anyone who went up there to get it. The only stipulations were: 1. Use it to DO something for somebody in the community. 2. Fill out the card in the envelope and let us know what you did so we can "share" the blessings with our church family. 3. Tell whomever you give it to them that this is a small blessing from God that our church wanted you to have. That first day we did that was one of the spiritually hottest days I've ever seen there. People really got jiggy with it. My family had $45.00. Some guy asked me on the street if I had a buck or two cause he was tryin to get to work. I said sure & gave him $40. The kids asked me if I they couls use their money to get the kids in the neighborhood some stuff from the icecream truck. Now I'm the coolest Dad on the block. This past year we switched up and gave $100 to each small group (our version of the twig). People were pooling their funds anyway we found out, sooo.... One small group I'm part of took out $100. and paid the $$$ to keep the girl next door to one of our members from having their utilities turned off. We threw in some extra and bought her a basket of some girly stuff. We also made sure we got her on the list to receive a "Thansgiving Basket" (last year we put together [from donations from out people] one THOUSAND 2 HUNDRED Thansgiving dinners, w/turkey & all the trimmings and fed 1200 FAMILIES who needed help). My Karate class is classified as an official small group, as part of our outreach ministries. We took our $100 and decided to do an appreciation dinner and Karate demonstration for the local firefighters and paramedics that serve in the area our church is located in. We held it in our gym and used our big industrial kitchen to cook it & some kitchen staff helped, etc. That only covers some of what we do from October to the end of November. Did I mention that our gym is open Friday evenings for anyone who wants to come shoot some hoop? AND what about how we use our gym as a home court for some local home schooled girls' volleyabll team? NO. they are not part of the "HOUSEHOLD" of our church. They are not all members of oour church. Heck, I met a guy & his daughter in the gym last night who doesn't even ATTEND our church. I think he said he was Russian Orthodox (whatever THAT is???). Oh yeah. We have to do our STS FOUR times each weekend (one Saturday, three times in a row on Sunday morning) because our sanctuary, which seats as many as your "Prevailing Word(?) Auditorium can't fit THREE TIMES IT'S SEATING CAPACITY. Catch my drift?