WordWolf

Probably what you mean by "least intrusive". However, even the "least intrusive" answer contradicted what you just filled in immediately preceding it. A lot of people noticed it, too. They all had one question for the proctor, and it was at the approximate time they each reached the second question. Sort of like: 1) "How often do you beat your wife?" Uh, never, I like her. I don't even call her names. 2) "When you beat your wife, how quickly does she recover?" What?

Shaz, Statistically, it's more likely those "bless" notes were props to hold up his ego, ego massages with all the sincerity of canned applause, the equivalent of what God would have gotten from us if he'd made us robots instead of beings with free will. They were all basically carbon copies of 3 or 4 originals, so it would be impossible to see any victims unless someone wrote something truly original there. Personally, I doubt lcm had the brains to pull that one off by himself.

Ex, he'll need to "dumb down" his answers so he's in step with his teachers.... =============== Zix, No, some standardized tests have contradictory information. I took one where one question was based entirely on scenarios in the previous question, where the most common answer was zero, as in "this never happens". So, we filled in "this has never happened to me" and then the next question asks "what do you usually do when this happens?" without a "n/a" option.

I got the joke.... But there's always someone who doesn't get the joke..... So I warn juuuuust in case. Besides, I thought the title of this thread meant the "chain letter warning" was dangerous, meaning "don't take this seriously if you see it"...

Not meant to derail this, but.... Am I the only regular poster here in regular contact with teenagers who are Christians who are NOT ex-twi or splinter connected? In case I am, I'd just like to point out what I keep hearing from them, VOLUNTEERED by them, to be specific.... they mention they don't have any plans of fooling around outside of marriage. Perhaps they are naive and don't know what they'll really do when they get there, perhaps they are fully aware. I just think it's so peculiar that people in twi, especially certain leaders *cough* lcm *cough* would think this is such an impossible task, when these kids think it's VERY possible, and plan and act accordingly. Some of them are already past 20 and in college, BTW. twi has/had a very atypical view towards sin compared to other Christian groups. Perhaps sometimes that was healthier, but it also became a license to sin all too often, and for the mog, it was carte blanche. (Or possibly 'cart blanche', as in "Find Blanche and cart her over here- I'm in the mood for a quickie.")

There's links on the GSC main page http://www.greasespotcafe.com that talk about clergy and conduct and stuff. I won't rehash that here. I WILL point out the hypocrisy between claiming to be an authority on the Bible, and a leader according to Biblical principles, and violating its ordinances against fornication, adultery, etc. God never approved of it, whether or not the local government would consider it a crime. For those of you who don't care what the Bible says, this is simply hypocrisy. For those of you who DO care, it is sinful.

Those of you who don't have http://www.snopes.com saved in your favourites, I recommend you do so. I read about this months ago when I sat down and started to work my way thru the entire site. It's one of the sillier e-mail scams, but, apparently, it's still going around, like the "just announce you're not going to incur any income they can tax, and they can't touch you" e-mail. No, you'd still have to pay, and probably add on late charges plus a fine for being an idiot and dragging it out.

*checks* Hm. Slow morning. Only 35 port scans. Higher activity times (like during primetime tv) I can get 100 in an hour or more. We've discussed various security measures in the computer forum. I'm no expert, so anything I can use, you can use. First one, e-mail addresses. I have a public e-mail address. It's not posted here. I don't use it here. If I have problems with an e-mail address, I know roughly where it came from-my public one is limited, etc. A number of exploits are specifically designed for Outlook, and attempt to hijack your Outlook address book. If you must use it, may I suggest putting one of your own addresses in it, so if they spoof your name as a header, then you'll get one from yourself, and know something's up? I'd chill in the computer forum and look over the security suggestions, if I were you.

Johnny Lingo, Congrats on getting genuine benefits from the copse. I won't doubt your words. However, I do question whether you got what SHOULD have been the emphasis of the program, out of the program. Further, from what I've seen, you would have gotten much of the same if you signed up for the Reserves or the National Guard, and gotten paid rather than paid them. More, various organizations teach managerial skills" out there, professionally. I try to bring in an expert on a subject if I can. twi always seemed to be loaded with leadership who thought they were experts on EVERYTHING.

A common method of "phishing" now is to make a phony copy of a legit website, and spoof the URL. Then you send an e-mail saying "your account has been charged for $8,000 of porn. If this is not a correct charge, click here to correct this." Whenever you need to fix something, ignore the link you were sent. Go to the website and access directly from there. If you think you were hacked, change your password AND secret question. I don't use yahoo, since spammers know to look for it. There's dozens of free e-mail domain with more memory, and I use some of those. If they can't FIND me, they can't SPAM me. I'd also make sure all my security was up-to-date, just to be sure.

If they actually slapped the cuffs on him, I suspect there's part of the story you didn't hear.... It reminds me of all the times twi claims to be the innocent one who is being harassed unjustly by bitter people... Otherwise, even a lukewarm lawyer could win this one.

Or when it's coersion, social stigmas and abuse of power, if shy of fullblown brainwashing-is that ok, then?

lcm himself bloviates about this in passing in the Tape of the Month: "The Mark of Quality." (God, in hindsight, tragically funny to have HIM address "quality"...) He was talking about some venue where he had detractors in the audience, and how clever he was in defusing them. (In his world, anyway.) "Then they asked me, "Well, what qualifies you,academically, to be the head of a 'research ministry'?" I said "nothing." I laughed-I said "nothing." I got a BACHELOR'S Degree. In PSYCHOLOGY. Academically, that qualifies me for NOTHING...." AFAIK, athletes need to have an outside major other than their sport. I'm unsure if they took it easier on the team in their major, but I've not seen him demonstrate even a Bachelor's level of understanding of Psychology and the human condition. Then again, he never WAS known for his brains or acumen, was he? I mean, his ONE pet project, Athletes of the Spirit, was ripped off from a term in college, when he ran the local chapter of the Fellowship for Christian Athletes, and from whoever wrote "Stayin' Alive" (the movie, not the song.) After that, his claim to originality was the wap crapola, which is about as great an achievement as inventing dysentery. ====================================== BTW, it's "jai alai". His ministry hit the wall harder than Mr Magoo playing jai alai. And he was greasier than Zorro's hatband.

Seems to me that whoever was speaking redefined the corpse so that whoever was listening would want to join, even if what they said was wildly inaccurate. That was a sales thing. "Never be afraid to mislabel a product." (The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.)

In case you were still wondering, lcm's highest degree was a bachelor's degree in psychology. Unless you count whatever he got from the way copse.

In the same breath, he had the nerve to spin his threesome fantasy AND make fun of the Lilith myth? That's rich.

The young people tore a hole in the horizon. I think I saw them in towards the back of a "Where's Waldo?" picture.

Papajohn, you DO realize that you said "We had a great year! We broke the rules because we were independently financed, and we NEVER ate bad!" right? I mean, having someone off-field sending money even ONCE was a no-no..... I'm not saying you shouldn't have done it, just that your story is not a "fair" representation of wow years.

Now, now, let's be fair..... All right! All of you who were in the corpse or family copse, sing out! The program ITSELF-were there blessings to be found of it? I DON'T mean "when we had a day off, me, Maggie, and Johnny had some of the sweetest fellowship time together". I DON'T mean "this one person on staff was a special blessing to me". THAT's almost accidental. The programs were DESIGNED, organized, and regimented. They included lots of stuff those of us who were not there never saw. Lots of stuff. Any of that stuff a genuine blessing? Any skills you learned that you use now? Please sing out! (Not like the Chorus Choir-I mean, inform us.)

That was a slow evening, I take it, PJ?

We can discuss that in the Doctrinal forum without derailing the thread about the evils of wap...... :)-->

Good question, Oakspear. Speaking for myself..... The impression I was getting second-hand was that there were some problems at the bot level-specifically with lcm. Since I was naive enough to credit them with every positive motivation, I actually told someone the higher-ups will settle this amongst themselves. I said it and I was confident that lcm would come around. (I already said I was naive.) One of the people I said would talk to lcm and make sense would be vf. The next news I got on the subject was the letter. (vf is fired, signed lcm.) So much for making sense. I reviewed the letter itself, and concluded the letter was flawed in doctrine. Being the kind of guy that likes to see things for himself, I attended the '89 ROA. I said "If there's a turnaround, it will be announced here. If there isn't, this is my last chance to hit the bookstore." (I didn't know how much was available in bookstores outside of twi. Naive.) I spoke to people from all over the country, listened as leaders, spokesmen and self-appointed thought police spoke and watched my movements, I was threatened with physical violence for asking questions, (which was a more revealing answer than I got otherwise), and I noted error after error from the mouths of leaders at every level. Comments from other people attending for the last time included words like "dismal". That was as much information as I really needed.

I've learned here that those of you who were forced to sit thru lcm's wap class had to sit thru lcm redefining "original sin". If vpw's explanation-which as LEAST was not tossed at newbies in the intro class-was odd and ill-documented, lcm's seemed invented from whole cloth. Apparently, his one piece of documentation consisted of a single painting done in the Renaissance or something. (Feel free to provide specifics.) He then spins this "explanation" about how the original sin was some sort of sex act with the devil on the part of both Eve and Adam, with the devil in the physical form of a woman at the time. So, it was an "original threesome" that was the original sin of Man. (I'm not going to speculate on lcm's fixation with threesomes at this time.) According to you people, this pronouncement naturally results in the entire room looking puzzled at lcm, wondering if he's lost his mind. Seeing he's completely lost the room, lcm said "You don't see it? Too bad-I do." In other words, 'I don't care if it makes no sense at all. Since I'm in charge, that's the answer, and that's what you'd better be teaching.' Seems lcm's policy was one of divine fiat. He made little effort, if any, to actually be scriptural in his answers. He declared certain things were true, and that others were to adopt his statements as gospel or else. Never mind if the Bible really says what he's saying. (Hm, that sounds vaguely familiar.)

Hope, It's still about Craig's loy-alty letter. We're going into intent and results and so on. One poster here seems to think that it was appropriate for lcm to draw the line in the sand, saying twi was a corporate entity that was entitled to demand loyalty to it's chief executive officer. Others seem to say that the motives for such a demand were flawed, the demand was ungodly, and the results decimated the organization's effectiveness to do anything except micromanage. Me, I think the evidence bears out the second point of view in exacting detail and by a mountain of evidence, horror stories, personal testomonies, etc.

You got a subwoofer? I'd make sure your windows are all set in properly. Someone I know had their bathroom mirror shake when someone had their playback set to "seismic". It's like having those speakers with the settings that go up to "11". -->