In the cold light of day,
it makes perfect sense that the corps program was rotten, and the few times people came
out as successes were due to the fact that they were successes going in and the program
failed to ruin that for them.
Let's look at what went into the program...
Who designed it? Was it a man with training in leadership programs and decades of
practical application and pastoring, a man who'd gotten his hands dirty on the mission
field in other parts of the world, a Mister Rogers of gentle admonishment?
NO.
It was the brainchild of a man with an entirely different agenda. He started out as a lazy
child, running off for hours in the woods and shirking his chores-consistently. He became
a teenager who was a showoff and a bully. He looked for a career where he could use his gift
of gab and personality for success-he considered business and music, but settled on ministry
as a cold business decision. (It was a year after he COMPLETED HIS MINISTERIAL DEGREES that
he ADMITTED he'd first heard- and believed- that the Bible was the Word of God. That means he
was working as a minister for a full year BEFORE believing that, by his own admission.)
By the accounts of his admirers, he bullied his own congregation, and his own accounts document
him chafing at having to answer to ANYONE. Years later, he encountered the JE Stiles and BG
Leonard's works (books, classes) on the Holy Spirit, and his work completely changed in a short
time. He also began reteaching Leonard's own class with a new name, with all the material identical
but people fooled into thinking he had originated it. He continued to teach Leonard's material for
the rest of his life, supplementing it over time with the works of Stiles, Bullinger, Kenyon,
and a few others (but primarily their work).
Once he heard that there were hippie Christians on the West Coast, he went out to recruit them
and had a peculiar agenda while actually recruiting them. (He claimed God Almighty was all right
with ORGIES but wasn't thrilled with them. It's shocking to hear a minister claim God's all
right with extramarital sex of any kind, or any sex other than that between a married man and
a married woman, but vpw came up with God being all right with ORGIES. No verses about orgies-
he claimed that the verse that said it was good for a man not to touch a woman meant that it was
a gradient between "best" (marital sex or abstinence) and "worst" (with ORGIES as not the worst,
I shudder to imagine what would be "worst" to vpw.) He asked for details about participation in
them, what it's like. Technically, he never said he specifically was looking for an invitation
to one or asking how to get invited, but that level of questioning is rather specific.
So, vpw returned, having conned a bunch of young folk into thinking that himself was some great
one, and that this man was the great power of God. They all showed up for the work of Leonard,
Bullinger, Stiles and Kenyon, and were given a side order of "obey vpw" at the same time. So,
he now had a sales/ recruitment force, composed of Christians who had been making a big difference
on the West Coast, and now weren't quite as effective but were still changing lives in between
shilling for vpw. What to do now?
Well, he now had the impressionable youths hanging on his every word, paying for his classes, and
paying 10% of their income. He upped the ante. He set up programs for them. For a fee, he would
let them travel for a year at their own expense and sell pfal to people (while still tithing,
of course.) For a tuition, he would run a leadership training program for people on grounds.
What qualifications did vpw have for that?
Less than none. He lacked the pastoral personality (like Mister Rogers) for bringing out the best
in people. He lacked the hard grounding in Scripture he claimed- that was all plagiarized from the
authors he ripped off. He lacked the academic training to impart intellectual knowledge from
university- he studied HOMILETICS, which is the least rigorous field, academically, that they
offered (their softest option.) He lacked ANY kind of leadership program training of ANY kind.
(vpw was typically lazy and never put in EXTRA work like entering programs.) He claimed he was
going to base it on the military- but he had no military experience! So, he based it on some
wild ideas he picked up from movies and television, and said it was based on the military.
vpw made many claims as to WHAT the corps was supposed to be based on- but they were all talk
and the program never resembled anything he mentioned. The supposed resemblance to the military
was laughable and based on the misconception that soldiers are supposed to salute and obey
without question, and that he would be the one all the corps would salute and obey. He told the
Bible fans that it was based on Acts, but the conduct and actions in Acts looked NOTHING like
what vpw was doing. There was some Bible study, and exercise, and physical labor-
all of which was done at the student's expense, and students were allowed to enter and to stay
"as long as their money holds" with nobody turned aside who could PAY.
Then there were some people who were told it was about "accomplishing feats" or some other
circus-sounding things. Why were there so many inconsistent explanations about what the corps
was based on? vpw didn't base it on anything- he was improvising the whole time, and telling
different people what they wanted to hear, whether it was military, or studious, or Biblical,
or super-heroic, or whatever. When someone came along with a good idea, he slapped it into
the program as he was going along (like the Spring cleaning thing.) When bad ideas or lack of
preparation caused problems, vpw went into attack mode and blamed the participants for being
inadequate in some way. But there was, eventually, some professional training he did bring
in- Dale Carnegie stuff on SALES. The corps were trained in SALES, in how to sell the class,
No professional training in anything else- and, naturally, vpw plagiarized the Dale Carnegie
stuff- someone who went into their program came back to teach it to the corps with no money
going back to Carnegie.
There were lots of fringe benefits available to the plagiarist who set all that up. With
a campus of young folk who worshipped him, it comes as no surprise (in hindsight) that he'd
plan out some extramarital sex (the kind he missed on the West Coast.) What IS a surprise
is that he did a great deal of planning- the kind he never did for the programs.
He set up a system for finding the most likely women to victimize (making the "From Birth
to the Corps" papers mandatory and using those to troll for victims.) He set up locations
to best accomplish this (how many places did vpw personally have to sleep? His bed at home,
his office's couch, and the outfitted bus when parked meant at least 3 just reserved for
him and private when on campus.) He set up strategies involving lowering inhibitions-
teaching that and plying them with drink and drugs in the drink. He set up strategies to
play on their sympathies- saying his wife was unable to do anything for him so he was
going without. He also set up a cadre of conspirators. Step 1, they would contrive
to get the victim in place for him. Step 2, they would appear and move the victim if it
looked like she was going to refuse to cooperate. Step 3, they would "counsel" the
victims afterward so they wouldn't go to the police or anyone. Step 4, they would rush
her off the campus and ruin her reputation if she showed signs of talking.
All of that happened, and all of it meant he put in more work to facilitate rape than he
put in to actually running a leadership training program.
