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This was a topic that was always puzzling to me. Mostly because I would watch what people who other people told me were these "gift ministries" and see what they did. What I observed was that first of all there was this really cool sounding expanded definition of these terms in Paul's letters that the Veepster came up with. Next they are compiled into this really cool list of 5, which appears nowhere as a list in the Bible, but people like lists, so hey. Plus 5 is a really great number. You can make little objects with 5 sides, like say little pentagon figures, which translate nicely into stained glass windows, decals, and hockey puck like objects which can be placed on people's desks to really impress others, along with a miniature bronze of VP. I mean Walt Disney didn't even accomplish that!!!! Now as I've started reading the Bible more in context, and less with a puffed up head, I see these titles which the Way handed out like the Queen of England does Baron titles with a little word of prophecy or a "reverend" word causing endless antics in people like you read about with Jesus 12 apostles. The "sons of thunder" were always measuring something, that's for sure. However, as you might guess, my views on this are more towards the interpretation that as Jesus Christ my Risen and Ascended Lord and Savior moves about and energizes His Body in the day, it is not in the fashion of the ego combined with the pyramid scheme, speaking to "right reverend so-and-so, the Limb coordinator of the great state of Confusion". No, people just help other people and God energizes and Christ brings the fire. But as a little fun, I thought I would list out all of the Way "Gift Ministries" and what I observed about the people that "had" or "operated" them: Apostle - Pimp Daddy. Owns multiple cars, motorcoaches, motorcycles, airplanes, sexual partners. Brings "new light" to a generation, and if that light in the eye is evil then how great is that evil. Prophet - @sshole Evangelist - Field Mage - once got someone to "take the class" in the 70s now organizes "witnessing charts" so everyone else can do the same now Pastor - the trickle down gift. If the "prophecy" flows down past #1 - #3 and didn't stick to you, then this is probably you. The average good joe "gift ministry" Teacher - never met anyone who admitted to having this one, it was kind of swept under the carpet. So according to the teaching of the display in the Houston art gallery "Complex 3", we are to dress in athletic rainbow colored tights to identify ourselves as the non-reptilian team, and lead others in synchronized dance so they too can avoid the lizard-people humping in the middle of the floor. What say you Spotters??? Gift Ministries ???????? !!!!!!!!! ?????????????

Makes no diff to me. (But I blame waysider for posting the link that brought me here... lol.)

No, and I also didn't know that all the hair bands in the 90's were "disgraceful" naturally per I Cor 11:15. Didn't seem that way to me at the time - all the girls wanted to hang out with them. I also know the Way jargon interpolation of that section of scripture how "covering" really means you are obedient and have the permission of your husband. But the husband only has to ask the Lord, that is unless he is in the "household" where he has to tell Rosalie if he's going off grounds to buy flowers for his wife. Many women I conversed with in the Way felt that to be demeaning, and certainly the male leaders used it to make their spouses walk 10 feet behind them. And mind you now, God is breathing all this stuff. Right?

So as an individual functioning, you would not tend to notice in what area your talents are showing results? Or are you saying this is a Zen kind of thing? Just stay your mind on stringing those chairs, and people walking by will know you're a pastor? People with talent who brag about it are intolerable in any field, sport, group, or sense. Those with talent who display humility are usually universally loved.

(blushes again) Thank you, Skyrider. Yep. If it's "you" that got hurt, it is a big deal. "You," basically are all you've got. Yep again. I've posted this before: I was so desperate and destroyed that I was prepared to crawl across broken glass to get back to TWI after ten years in the wilderness. I got on the net to find their zip code. The first result for TWI was - GreaseSpot Cafe! I looked. I was appalled, horrified. And ultimately healed. My grovelly letter of apology for my imagined sins never got written. I thank God for Saint Pawtucket and this place.

Another wonderful post Skyrider....encouraging both critical thought and self-reflection. Your willingness to reveal your deepest personal “lens” view of experiences you witnessed or endured, without worrying about covering for your own naïveté at the time, due primarily to the vibrant idealism of youth at the time many of us got involved, is most admirable imho. I appreciate your honest insight and your reflection of TWIt “history” as you experienced it then, and as you understand it now, some 40 years later. I am far less “kind” to dictor paul than you are. From my own interpersonal interactions with dp, I don’t think he had near the cleverness you give him credit for, Sky. He was a spoiled little brat, sexually abused baby of an Aryan family of 8. His intellect was a C- at best throughout his academic career, when he wasn’t failing. He mastered one thing. Plagiarism. Vic was a charlatan from the beginning. But, he was just a small-time crappie in a huge pond of Elmer Gantrys in the 1940s who were looking to make a comfortable living and stay outta WWII. Plus, Adolph Ernst...his daddy...was a Nazi supporter in the German-American Bund founded by Lindbergh and Fritz Kuhn in 1936. Young dictor grew up in that racist, fascist environment, and they even spoke German in their home, before they learned English! So, dp’s “call to ministry” was nothing more than a fortunate turn of events which got him through a cheap Evangelical and Reformed seminary, and ordained as a clergyman in that denomination with his own church, St. Jacob’s in Payne, OH, as Skyrider has recorded. That began a bumbling, stumbling, rumbling, bull-in-a-China-shop romp through the Bible Belt Fundamentalist Jesus culture of the post-war Midwest. Quite a conservative area of the USA at that time. His entire Chimes Hour Youth Caravan “founding” of TWIt was just the beginning of his hustle. He saw what worked with kids, had a nice, steamy affair with Rosalind Rinker, and had his first child, a son, Donald Ernst. Then he got a promotion to a bigger, more important, better tithing E&R church in Van Wert, St. Peter’s. Got him out of Payne before his shenanigans could be uncovered, settled him into a comfortable, economically stable community with a built-in guaranteed flock to fleece. He was simply playing the denominational pastor game and really just wanted to be as big as his heroes, Oral Roberts and Billy Graham. At the AC at HQ in the sumner of 1972, dp said: “I’m not an Evangelist like Billy Graham, or Oral Roberts! I’m a teacher! I tried to reach out to them in the 50s to work together for the Lord. You know, when they pack ‘em into their tents and stadiums, get ‘em born again and then what?? Send them to ME! I’ll teach them the greatness of the accuracy of Gawd’s rightly divided word!” He said that right after he finished playing a tape of Oral Roberts’ preaching his famous 4th Man Sermon. Dic was just a greedy young ne’re-do-well from a hick German farm town in the middle of nowhere Ohio, who got outta the hard work of taking over daddy’s farm, or starting a business of his own like his brothers, by choosing the easy, well-respected con of Midwest clergyman, knocking up his HS sweetheart, and grabbing and groping his way through one small group of suckers after another. When he was lucky enough to stumble across folks like Peter J. Wade, David Anderson, John Somerville, Ken Klug, Walter Cummins, Jim Doop, Steve Heefner, and Donnie Fugit, it was THEIR gifts, abilities and enthusiasm that made dic’s class a hit, not dic’s personal presence. Often, his personal presence just caused trouble for everyone! He was a jerk in the opinion of many. Until those same men had the Bible ministry they loved stolen from them and brought under the iron fist of Herr Victor the First. The progress of dic’s new possession really took off when he got rid of his competition. He started the corpse in 1969 with Ken Klug in it, John Lynn, Pat Browning, Johnny Townsend, and couple of others. The famous Zero corpse. Started again in 1970 with the first corpse of 9, including 1 guy at ECU. Again, not really planned or thought through beyond the free-spirited idealism of young hippies who really believed ole Dic was teaching the word like it hadn’t been known since the 1st Century and there were miracles, signs, and wonders everywhere! Dic wanted a core group as disciplined and tough as the Marine Corps after the Zero corpse pooped out to get married and take care of other personal priorities. That’s why he loved ECU so much. John and Tim Somerville started the “work” at ECU. John volunteered for Vietnam Nam to prove the revelation and power manifestations to himself, and was truly a hero and esteemed warrior among his fellow Marines. Dic said if John could do all that for the Marines, why can’t I get people to do that for God and His word??! Why can’t God have a Marine Corps?? Hence, the concept of the way corpse was born. Again, no cleverly calculated, sinister, MLM plot. Just the continued outworking of one man’s pathology now gathering steam through a serendipitous cult of personality that was building around a completely incompetent, dumbass, perverted drunk. Imho, Dic had a lot less to do with building his cult than the first 5 corpses and the WOW program. It was those groups that most adored dictor, enjoyed the thrill and joy of genuine Christian revival when they first took that class thing, were free enough to just pick up and go wherever the man-o-gawd told them too. It was not dictor or the stupid class that got me into TWIt. It was my closest and most beloved friends. It was the power of miracles, signs, and wonders and no authoritarian control. As the money began pouring in, Harry and Vic figured they better invest it. Best investment?? REAL ESTATE! Emporia, Rome City, Gunnison, Limb homes in OH, IN, MI, NC, KS, CA, NY, all bought by TWIt in the early 70s. The Colleges, campuses, camps, limb homes, etc., were all money-laundering schemes that Dic and Harry stumbled into, which were then “perfected” by Howard and Don, and all the new early corpse grads flooding HQ and all the new “Root Locales” with millions of laundered abundant sharing dollars. The only names on ALL the deeds to those properties were those of TWIt trustees.....Harry Wierwille, Ermal Owens, dictor paul, Howard, Don, and da Forehead. That was it until the Allen lawsuit was settled. Whose names are on the remaining deeds?? Ohio? Gunnison? That’s when the real systemization of dic’s evil began imo. Dic himself was too dumb to do anything but drink and molest women while reading anyone else’s Bible teachings a couple of times a week in some quaint little midwestern hamlet in Ohio. He was a slick con. He knew the game. He was always on the prowl. He was clever, not intelligent. He was deceitful, and ambitious, not honest or humble. He was mentally ill....untreated, uncontrolled mental illness dysfunctionally working itself out since his teens. He was a charmer and manipulator, not by will, but by nature. No redeeming social value, spiritually empty, and intellectually vapid. So, though dictor paul was lucky enough to attract some very talented people into his sex/personality cult, I don’t give him credit for diabolically planning, thinking through, or conceiving what he eventually destroyed. Sadly, he used a lot of wonderful, smart, talented, authentically loving, idealistic young people, who loved Jesus and just wanted to do the right thing to pay for and fulfill his own hubris and lusts. A pimp and a whore and a bully. What a ministry!