Leaderboard

When it comes to stories of "and a twi leader abused his office and sexually assaulted the flock", it all comes back to twi. He educated lcm and some other leaders that this was ok with God or that God WANTS this sort of thing, and they went along, foolishly equating every fool thing out of vpw's mouth with Divine Revelation (mainly because that's what he taught them to think.) vpw started it, set up the ring of silence, and set up the whole system to use to get away with it.

I did not know this site was still up. When I got out of the ministry (around 1993 or 1994) I was so hurt and confused. I eventually went to this site and No Way Out (my story is still up there, I was Jennifer). http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/noway/experiences/jennifer.shtml I did not have bad initial experiences with The Way other than their persistence that I go to as many meetings as I could. It was not "each one win one" - it was a quota contest. (Please excuse this digression) I left when it became too difficult to fight the leadership anymore. The midnight scream fests, the accusations where they grabbed onto any innocent thing I said or did and tried to turn it into some kind of spiritual disobedience (before a meeting started I mentioned I was so stressed I considered a wine cooler before a meeting, but I decided not to. That comment was met with "So you said you felt like having a wine cooler at dinner before a meeting. Why would you think that?? What did you mean by that comment?"). Then I was a little too stubborn. At one midnight meeting I was yelled at for something I did that was as simple as missing a meeting or telling someone something biblical, and I yelled back "and what is wrong with that?"... and no verses were ever brought up, no "bringing it back to the word", just a fight. Then when I moved to a new location, I walked in to say hello to the new leader's wife, and she immediately began to tell me all my problems (excuse me, we just met)... and when I answered with "I am sorry, I will try to not do that in the future" she became livid because I would not engage with her. (Wow it felt good to finally say all of that "out loud"). Now to this thread of sexual abuse. When I was in, there were groupies that I nicknamed "darlings". I hung out with the Reverend P. because he spoke the word to me. It was that simple. I was so in love with God, and this leader talked about the bible constantly. I was shocked when he tried to become physical with me mostly because I was naïve and young, and I was living a dream to be around so much Bible - I saw it coming but so many people talked me out of those observations when I brought them up. I must have misunderstood, right? I was a groupie for God! I think so many of us were, right? Isn't that what excited us? Once I declined the leaders overtures, that was when the really bad things happened as mentioned above. I was suddenly accused of things I never did, my fellowship was told to stop coming, but no one told me they were not going to be there. When I asked where, they said "you didn't know? We were told to have twig at a different location". I was pushed into a very bad marriage with a dishonest man (Way Corps, who has since earned his practical ministry degree and is in a new ministry. I hope God worked a miracle.). In spite of all the backhanded dishonest tactics, I tried to stay. I fought for the way it had been in the early days, and I reminded leadership of the verses of love and tolerance. I dared once to pray for believers in every ministry, not just ours! I stood up to them in front of others, and I nearly died trying to put it all back together. I became so ill. When I left, I was labelled "mark and avoid"... and I was in good company but didn't realize it yet. The reason the leadership got away with so much is: (everyone sing along) "if you were not there and did not see it yourself, it did not happen". You can't accuse anyone based on "rumor", only my story was not a rumor. I was a witness. And believe me, no one in that ministry will believe anything said by any of us because of that saying. CL