Oakspear

As a non-Christian, obviously I don't believe that churches are a "mandatory step", however I think that for some people they are crucial for getting through the post-cult time and getting settled in a Christian life. As far as living a Christian life, I think that one would be hard pressed to identify me as a non-Christian just by observing my actions, my beliefs differ, but if you followed me and my two Christian brothers around for a year with a camera I doubt you could easily say which of us was the pagan. But as far as church attendance goes, many people benefit greatly from the structure, the guidance, the fellowship, and that makes me thankful that they're out there.

People who have left seem to have the same amount of heartache and problems, successes and triumphs as the general population. When I first was kicked out I probably looked like the poster child for being a grease spot by midnight. My wife threw me out, most of my kids wouldn't talk to me, I lived in an apartment that I nicknamed "The Hovel". But that was temporary. I remarried, get along fine with my kids (am officiating at one son's wedding tomorrow) remarried to a wonderful woman, my salary has about doubled, I'm out of debt, have started a business, lost weight and am generally healthy and really enjoy life!

Getting over it for me was fairly straightforward. I spent several years before I actually left questioning and re-examining virtually all of their doctrine, so their teachings were pretty much dismantled in my mind when I was booted. As far as "the fellowship", I was treated so nastily the last few years that I was 'in' that I felt no love or affection for anyone still involved in TWI.

I too would like to thank the Board of Directors, formerly the Board of Trustees, because, according to the Region Coordinator who threw me out, the Trustees were deeply involved in every decision to mark & avoid someone. I'd also like to thank: John Reynolds for telling me to talk to Tom Horrocks about the problems that I was having with TWI doctrine. If not for that conversation I would never have heard Horrocks say "I don't need to work the Word, if the Way of Abundance and Power Class is good enough for the trustees, it's good enough for me, showing up the shallowness of the supposed "research" The late Fred B whose nastiness to me and my family in the name of 'The Word' and whose lack of logic and critical thinking helped me to see that 'leadership' were devoid of any practical use to me My fellowship coordinator Roger T whose attempts to drive a wedge between me and at least one of my children made it easier to leave the organization and speak out against it without any second thoughts or regrets Eric K, the Limb Coordinator who put me on 6 month probation and called my actions 'trecherous' while defending Martindale's actions - he made the organization's hypocrisy crystal-clear and last but not least all the TWI peons who meekly accepted the directive to mark and avoid me, making it easier to cut all ties with that evil group Thanks guys! (Livin' the dream!)

In my opinion a splinter or offshoot is founded by ex-twi folks with part of the motivation being to "get back to the Word" that supposedly was no longer part of twi proper. I would view a group as a splinter also if it was started as more a less a haven for people leaving twi. Due to these two foundations, a splinter would resemble twi in some fashion, either doctrinally or organizationally. While some of the splinters question twi doctrine and practice to some degree, some acceptance of twi's basics appears to be a given.

Um...I was already happy...and still am

I think John Popper of Blues Traveler made a good point about the words being the most important... It doesn't matter what I say So long as I sing with inflection That makes you feel that I'll convey Some inner truth of vast reflection But I've said nothing so far And I can keep it up for as long as it takes And it don't matter who you are If I'm doing my job then it's your resolve that breaks Because the hook brings you back I ain't telling you no lie The hook brings you back On that you can rely There is something amiss I am being insincere In fact I don't mean any of this Still my confession draws you near To confuse the issue I refer To familiar heroes from long ago No matter how much Peter loved her What made the Pan refuse to grow Was that the hook brings you back I ain't telling you no lie The hook brings you back On that you can rely Suck it in, suck it in, suck it in If you're Rin Tin Tin or Anne Boleyn Make a desperate move or else you'll win And then begin to see What you're doing to me This MTV is not for free It's so PC it's killing me So desperately I sing to thee of love Sure but also rage and hate and pain and fear of self And I can't keep these feelings on the shelf I've tried, well, no, in fact I lied Could be financial suicide But I've got too much pride inside To hide or slide I'll do as I'll decide and let it ride until I've died And only then shall I abide this tide Of catchy little tunes Of hip three minute ditties I want to bust all your balloons I want to burn all of your cities To the ground, I've found I will not mess around Unless I play then hey I will go on all day, hear what I say I have a prayer to pray That's really all this was And when I'm feeling stuck and need a buck I don't rely on luck because The hook brings you back I ain't telling you no lie The hook . . . On that you can rely The Hook, lyrics by John Popper

1. Listen to the tape (or live during phone hookup) 2. Listen to the review on the following week's tape before the main teaching 3. Listen to the teaching at twig based on the previous Sunday's teaching topic 4. Listen to the review of the tape at twig Yup...four times for each subject

When believers prosper it's because they are blessed by God due to be in the household When unbelievers prosper it's a counterfeit of the "Adversary" When rank & file believers get sick it's because they are off the Word When leadership gets sick it's because the "Adversary" is attacking them due to their stand on the Word

I recall the same thing

If they don't know your income, they can't do the math....[but[/i] - when I was in they had no problem asking me what my income was or if I was giving 10%...giving me the choice of (A) Telling them what my income was, (B)Lying about my income or ©Refusing to tell them. (A) gives them what they want, (B)puts me in a position of lying, which they'd likely figure out eventually and © earns me lectures about being meek, not being rebellious or "resisting the power".

Arizona must have incorporation laws that are favorable to religious non-profits, like Delaware is where a lot of regular corporations incorporate. And was the difference between assets and liabilities 54 million?

I suspected that Way Disciples at HQ was a back-door way to get some extra staff on board. If the purpose of the program is to "move the Word", why bury them in the middle of where the Word supposedly lives? <_<

Long & boring? Not from where I sit. When Waydale was up and in the early days of Grease Spot there were lots of folks at HQ and in field leadership positions who kept us up-to-date, as well as non-leadership folks like me and Belle who posted synopses of STS and Way Mag articles. The last few years have been kind of dry. Then the company line was that most of what was discussed here was old news. It's nice to have a recent escapee like yourself, who was right in the midst of the lions' den to give us current info.

I kinda like that new light...wait, we're talking about Bud's Golden Wheat right?

Oh yeah...I didn't mind it so much when it was used sincerely (albeit mindlessly) by someone, but when it was used out of context, for example:A couple of us are attempting to enter an area that the appointed TWI watchdog decides is off-limits for whatever reason; he steps in our path and says "bless you", when maybe, "Sorry guys, you can't go in there" might be more appropriate.

Not tarring all the Way Corps with the same brush, but in addition to the BOT not having a clue about what the Corps on the field had to deal with, oftentimes there'd be fresh from HQ Way Corps, mostly singles or young marrieds with no kids, who'd take HQ's crap to heart and would in turn have no clue what a typical family had to deal with. Probably the most enjoyable (or least stressful) time in TWI in the 90's was when a Family Corps couple with several kids came, first as WOW coordinators and the following year as Limb Coordinators. The couple both worked full-time jobs and were active in their kids' school. Their TWI responsibilities were over and above what regular people had to do. When they left we were saddled with several idiots who didn't understand that kids sometimes got sick, or had Boy Scout events, or that the parents had to work overtime and that we occasionally wanted to use our vacation time for something other than TWI classes. We home-schooled our kids and I worked out of the home so they assumed that we were always free to just drop what we were doing to go witness, or have a meeting, or have "leadership" drop in.

Well G, for some, logic is only embraced when it buttresses our own opinion. Of course, I could be wrong....

The very first to go was that the "original sin of mankind" was that the Devil had lesbian sex with Eve; I don't think that I ever 100% bought into it though! A lot the first batch of things to go were from Martindale's WayAP class. He had a whole segment on the "Face of the Deep" where he goes on about how the Devil and his angels, after being kicked out of heaven, went to the edge of the universe, the face of the deep, where the waters that supposedly surrounded the universe where, and due to the Devil & his minions being bereft of light and light being a form of heat, the waters were frozen. This was supposedly what really" happened between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2. While I was still "in" I did a teaching about the so-called gap at fellowship one night. I don't remember what the details were or if it's even "right", but it was completely at odds with what Martindale taught. After I was done, several people remarked that it made sense and that they hadn't really understood what was taught in WayAP. I guess other than Martindale's wacky stuff the things that went first were the belief that The Way had any claim to be God's ministry or a source of truth, that leaders of The Way were God's spokesmen, that the keys to research were any guarantee to reaching the truth, that I needed a "ministry" to get me closer to the divine... The rest were just details...

It's a good example of residual waybrain in action that I was momentarily surprised at your initial post. Even though I have long since put Way doctrine and loyalty for the organization behind me, I still thought that they did a good job of "stewardship". Thanks for the behind-the-scenes info

Yes I do

I was unaware of the adultery and most of the "big" issues that get discussed here while I was "in". Most of the crap that I put up with was more along the lines of big egos, hyper-control of our lives by leadership, the yelling etc. That kind of stuff often changed when leadership did. I, like so many others, rationalized leaders' behavior, "reasoning" that a little yelling, or writing up a schedule was nothing compared to "Da Greatness of Da Word". For a lot of people, being in TWI was a classic abuse situation. Why do people stay with abusive spouses? Why do people stay in jobs that they hate? Why do people do any number of things that they don't like, or know is wrong? It's not logical, it's not reasonable, but there you have it. There's always something, whether it's fear of the unknown, a conviction that you'll be alone/be unemployed/be outside God's protection or just ignorance that keeps one in a bad situation. For most, however, there's a final straw, a tipping point, where the imagined benefits are outweighed by the negatives and out you go. Good for you that you supposedly never fell for the bull and that it was all so obviously wrong to you. Pat yourself on the back and buy yourself a drink.

I didn't discover the plagiarism until much later.Martindale's admission (after being confronted with a lawsuit) of adultery made me want to investigate everything that he taught. My thinking was that if someone was so screwed up that he couldn't tell that something so glaringly obvious as screwing another man's wife was wrong, how could we assume that he had the soundness of mind to put together a set of teachings (the WayAP class) that was to be the foundational teaching for The Way? Before this, I was troubled by many practices by The Way's leaders, but was willing to put up with what I saw as human frailties in order to have access to "the greatness of The Word". I began a systematic study of Martindale's WayAP class page by page in the syllabus and found enough glaring errors and inconsistencies to fill ten closely typed pages. I did not compare what he taught to mainstream Christianity, but used the standards of study and biblical research that had been taught in The Way for decades. In my opinion, what he was teaching just did not hold up to careful scrutiny. Eventually I began to look at some of what Wierwille taught, mainly in places where Martindale quoted him or used one of Wierwille's doctrine's without any change and found some of the same inconsistencies and errors as well. I brought these questions and concerns to Way leadership and was rebuffed and with the doctrinal underpinning eroded, I was no longer so accepting of bad behavior in the name of 'The Word' - my loyalty to the organization evaporated and I was eventually banned from contact with TWI.

Not really. I was in full waybrain mode back then. Even though I was not active I was still clinging to Wierwillian doctrine. My kids are pretty smart, they figured it out for themselves. In some ways I was relieved; I wouldn't be living the "double life" that I had been living for the previous two years. What cracked me up about the whole phone call was the wording. TH never came out and said "We are excommunicating you for posting on Greasespot" or anything like that. His exact quote was "You are no longer welcome at Way fellowships due to the fact that you do not believe that the Trustees are leading the ministry in the right direction". Really? Then he started to give me instructions on things he wanted me to do, including having my wife call him later that day. My response was along the lines of "yeah, sure". He then told me that my reply did not convince him that I would do what he asked. I answered by telling him that he had just given up any authority he had over me and that I was under no obligation to convince him of anything.