Wierwille the Patriarch

[skyrider]

In 1986, when I first heard of Chris Geer's The Passing of a Patriarch in reference to victor paul wierwille's life and death [passing].....my first reaction, and I STILL REMEMBER IT, was "patriarch?"

The word "patriarch" in association with wierwille was foreign to me. I had NEVER hear it used....not in corps meetings, staff meetings, not even mentioned in passing. Yet, here was Geer.....this man who had set out on a laser-focused goal to be the next right-hand man of wierwille. He, along with wife Barbara, were 7th Corps and spent their first in-residence year fixated on getting over to Anderson Library to listen to, and catalog, EVERY TEACHING TAPE that wierwille taught thru the years. Obsession would most probably be the best term to describe their hidden agenda.

Studying every tape, detailing every mannerism, likes and dislikes, observing wierwille's visits on campus....Chris and Barbara cataloged their notes into a "wierwille-project" binder. And.....their efforts were rewarded with an interim assignment as valets to Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille.

In their elder-year as inrez corps....Chris taught on a few topics of leadership, several times. In smugness, he flaunted his position as right-hand-man-of-wierwille as proof to his spiritual discernment. He had the stamp of approval of "the man of God" himself. That alone gave him entre into all kinds of backdoor meetings and motor coaches. And, with each passing year, even Craig, Don, and Howard sensed he was *beyond reproof.*

But......that "patriarch" thing, what was it anyways?

No one ever used that terminology. And, no one has ever used it since. Was Cgeer so elevated in his spiritual perception, that he saw in wierwille something that NO ONE else had ever seen? Here, all of a sudden, this new word in relation to wierwille had entered the lexicon of titles given to the deceased wierwille. Was he, indeed, a patriarch? What's a patriarch in the biblical sense? What's a patriarch in terms of the Church Age? Where does it show up in scripture?

Acts 2:29 Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David,

that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day.

Heb 7:4 Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.

Wowsers.....patriarchs David and Abraham. Clearly, Cgeer has catapulted wierwille into the pantheon of God's great and mighty men, David and Abraham. So, with brazen boldness Geer reads his lengthy paper to inresidence corps and further......is given access to read this diatribe to ALL THE CORPS at 1986 Corps Week.

BOOM......the contents were explosive. Geer had PROJECTED wierwille to the masses in all idolized glory. No mention of wierwille's plagiarism, predation or private interpretations. Nope. Wierwille was a PATRIARCH......and geer was the man who held "the last will and testament" of the last of the patriarchs.

And.....Geer went forth to franchise it.

[waysider]

A patriarch, in modern terminology, simply refers to the male head of a family or household. Geer, however, was using the term in a manner that deliberately bestowed Biblical status on Wierwille. Wierwille was not a Biblical figure. He had no status beyond that of a rural preacher. He wasn't the male head of my family, though he was a father and patriarch to the Wierwille clan, specifically. The only way to partially stretch any meaning out of the reference is to concede that The Way was synonymous with the household of God. It isn't and never was. It was a cult, like so many other cults that have come and gone through the years.

Did he teach "The Word"? No, what he taught was an amalgamation of works that had been prepared by other men and women, a fact he was clever enough to conceal from his devoted followers. He even went so far as to invent fairy tale-like stories about magical snow storms and divine, audible voices to obscure his dishonesty.

For what it's worth, I frequently heard him referred to as "our father in The Word", a term I personally objected to more times than I can count. Maybe some of you who know me can even remember me arguing that point with you if your memory stretches back that far. The only way to grant him Biblical, patriarchal status is to first acknowledge him as a Biblical figure. That's a big negative. Secondly, it would have to be shown that what he taught was "The Word". He fails the test on that as well.

In the end, The Passing of a Patriarch was really nothing more than a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, designed to advance the cause of an overly ambitious "wanna-be".

edit: HERE is a link to the paper being referenced. It's a perfect cure for insomnia.

Edited November 16, 2014 by waysider

[Twinky]

I just thought it was a fancy bit of alliteration.

Spose he could have called it Wierwille the Womaniser, but it doesn't have the same ring about it...

[waysider]

Something that just struck me as odd is that, for as much time as he spent studying every little detail of Wierwille's life, Geer seems to have never discovered that Wierwille's doctorate was phony. Curious.

You do know he wasn't really a doctor, don't you?

edit: spelling

Edited November 16, 2014 by waysider

[skyrider]

edit: HERE is a link to the paper being referenced. It's a perfect cure for insomnia.

Read this paragraph from Geer's writings.....

"The final Way Corps location was not at all what we had anticipated. It is located in an area that is far removed from easily accessible transportation. It is also in a very difficult part of the British Isles to facilitate business needs, and perhaps worst of all, it is isolated from any large groups of believers. Our primary choice in England would have had good transportation, easy access to businesses that we had long dealt with and been close to a majority of the believers in Britain as well as being far more accessible to the majority of European believers."

In other words, where was that super-duper believing by geer and vpw?

.....far removed from accessible transportation [sTUPID DECISION]

.....difficult to facilitate business needs [sTUPID DECISION]

.....isolated from any large groups of believers [sTUPID DECISION]

And, that folks.......is what Geer qualifies as a spiritual victory.

And, these are the guys who stood and pontificated about BELIEVING GOD.

[waysider]

Read this paragraph from Geer's writings.....

"The final Way Corps location was not at all what we had anticipated. It is located in an area that is far removed from easily accessible transportation. It is also in a very difficult part of the British Isles to facilitate business needs, and perhaps worst of all, it is isolated from any large groups of believers. Our primary choice in England would have had good transportation, easy access to businesses that we had long dealt with and been close to a majority of the believers in Britain as well as being far more accessible to the majority of European believers."

In other words, where was that super-duper believing by geer and vpw?

.....far removed from accessible transportation [sTUPID DECISION]

.....difficult to facilitate business needs [sTUPID DECISION]

.....isolated from any large groups of believers [sTUPID DECISION]

And, that folks.......is what Geer qualifies as a spiritual victory.

And, these are the guys who stood and pontificated about BELIEVING GOD. :biglaugh:/>

To be fair though, I think it may have had red drapes (fire engine red).

[skyrider]

To be fair though, I think it may have had red drapes (fire engine red).

Oh, okay.....I guess it's a fair point then.

But really......."the primary choice in England" didn't have ANYTHING

that would constitute good, solid decision-making.

How could these all nine all the time men strike out on

ALL THREE of these pertinent strongholds?

Geez Louise.....what a bunch of haphazard hucksters.

[WordWolf]

Oh, okay.....I guess it's a fair point then.

But really......."the primary choice in England" didn't have ANYTHING

that would constitute good, solid decision-making.

How could these all nine all the time men strike out on

ALL THREE of these pertinent strongholds?

Geez Louise.....what a bunch of haphazard hucksters.

Your point was correct, but you made a factual error in your post.

You confused the "primary choice in England"-the supposedly advantageous location-

with "the final Way Corps location" in Scotland- which lacked all the advantages

cited for the "primary choice" and offered a beautiful location.

Geer claimed that the reason they didn't get the "primary choice in England" was

"We had lost the original location in England that we had selected because our own Way Corps graduates were not capable of handling things involved in getting a location. They just collapsed under the pressure."

It's a typical, vague excuse for an explanation just like vpw used to do.

When the first way corps refused to fully worship and kow-tow to vpw,

he kicked them all out and claimed they didn't get it together, either.

Getting back to the main point, it was very poor planning, and bad business,

for vpw or geer to sign off on a location with even HALF the liabilities this one

was said to offer, without any easy method to correct them. It's obvious

that business went on as usual from their previous location, while geer went

off by himself, to a remote location, with a need for complete refurbishment of

the infrastructure and upgrades for insufficient systems- for water, for heating,

for telephone service. He proceeded to try to do it all with insufficient support,

insufficient personnel, and insufficient time, and had the nerve to try to use

the UNFINISHED, UNDERSTAFFED facility for all sorts of events, and was stressed

because he had to do it all himself.

"When we lost our initial location, time was short, so it required extreme effort to locate and evaluate other available properties. Even though we needed to move quickly, careful evaluation was required so that we would not find ourselves in a bind legally or caught in a bad business deal. This meant learning the legal considerations which differed from England to Scotland after having recently learned the English. Once acquisition was made, there was a voluminous amount of work to do in stocking the location so that we could begin to operate."

All of that was POOR PLANNING. Would the entire ministry collapse if they'd done things

as they'd been doing them for another year or so while they actually found a satisfactory

location and worked on THAT with sufficient numbers of people? I suspect it might have

been fully ready much sooner despite being acquired later. They WANTED to move quickly,

and CHOSE to move quickly rather than act when the time was right and not just because

they wanted to act NOW. It's obvious that rushing into this meant roadblock after

roadblock, and, frankly, it was his own fault that it went that way.

"Once we had done that, we had another problem, that of the platemaker. The platemaker that we had been using in Altrincham had broken just prior to our coming to Scotland. It was, in fact, an old, very slow platemaker that we had gotten secondhand, so we took in a photocopier that was meant to make direct-image offset masters. This deal on the photocopier which we entered into very shortly after the New Year's period turned out to be the one that taught us how difficult it is to trade in Scotland, and especially how difficult it is being an American. The issue of the photocopier/platemaker never really did get resolved and in the end we had to buy an Addressograph Multigraph platemaker which worked very well. "

twi's poor business practices are on display here. Rush into things,

and-especially- get the least expensive, second-hand version you can find

of things, because it's smarter business to try to keep it running and save

money on the purchase than to buy something new and maintain it when

in use. Again, the problem of rushing into a location-in this case, in

Scotland where all the rules were different and they'd prepared for one

in England- makes things difficult again. It was AVOIDABLE.

"One of the additional disadvantages to having to have a Corps location in Scotland as opposed to England was the need to re-establish business contacts. Every time you have to start over in business it takes time and work to develop good business relations. We had had quite a good reputation among the firms that we traded with regularly in England. When we started over in Scotland, it seemed to be a very challenging adventure because we seemed to be besieged by business "cowboys' out to take advantage of us, and we still had to rely quite heavily on our English contacts to fulfill our needs. "

Need I say it again? They rushed into a bad business decision

so they could brag about having MADE a business decision,

and the results made problem after problem. Geer never had the

intellectual honesty to admit he invited these problems by rushing

into selecting a location that failed to meet their needs, then

exacerbated the problem by rushing everything rather than

having all the work done at a reasonable pace and declaring the

place "under construction" until it was truly ready for use.

" However, during the course of the class it became more and more evident that the quality of the translated works was dubious. The French was clearly deficient and in places quite misleading. The Spanish was not laid out at all in the way that I had seen Dr. Wierwille lay classes out with the attention to detail that he paid. We discovered linguistic problems in both classes as well as inconsistencies in the class layouts, and it took an enormous amount of work to try to keep the classes as a whole on an even keel."

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Why weren't the translations gone over in great detail

years before this class, and corrected as needed long before this setup was being prepared.

If it was really 100% ready, they could have had each language's primary sessions taped ahead of time,

and corrected and re-taped as necessary until each session was satisfactory,

then host those sessions and have live teachers for the small groups?

Too much rushing, too little planning, and small wonder it became an ordeal to run rather than

something that went fairly smoothly. The advance planning was woefully deficient,

and that meant DAMAGE CONTROL at the last minute to cover for it.

That meant a lot of work, and it was the fault of those at the top who failed to plan

sufficiently. What's worse is that this was all predictable- this was for a group whose

primary function is to RUN CLASSES. That they failed to plan these classes correctly

is a serious indictment of people who think they know how to RUN CLASSES.

[quote name='skyrider' date='16 November 2014 - 04:47 PM' timestamp='1416174453' post='563025'Read this paragraph from Geer's writings.....

(snip)

In other words, where was that super-duper believing by geer and vpw?

.....far removed from accessible transportation [sTUPID DECISION]

.....difficult to facilitate business needs [sTUPID DECISION]

.....isolated from any large groups of believers [sTUPID DECISION]

(snip)

It seemed they lacked both sufficient Divine Revelation to avoid making

monumentally-bad decisions, and capped that with poor business experience

and poor decision-making skills. That all caught up to them in spades with

the Gartmore acquisition and attempts to make the location work.

It was a beautiful location, but one very poorly-suited for the tasks for

which it was intended.

[waysider]

It sounds to me like he was hell bent on singing a solo version of "O Woe Is Me".

[skyrider]

Your point was correct, but you made a factual error in your post.

You confused the "primary choice in England"-the supposedly advantageous location-

with "the final Way Corps location" in Scotland- which lacked all the advantages

cited for the "primary choice" and offered a beautiful location.

Yeah.....guess I was into a Sunday football game more

than detailing my point all the way thru. Ooops :)

In other words, the choice that geer/vpw MADE had nothing to do with

"the primary choice of location that they wanted."

You know.....if a lowly corps made this type of blunder on a meeting location,

there'd be a full-court press of castigating the stupidity and lack of believing.

[skyrider]

It seemed they lacked both sufficient Divine Revelation to avoid making

monumentally-bad decisions, and capped that with poor business experience

and poor decision-making skills. That all caught up to them in spades with

the Gartmore acquisition and attempts to make the location work.

It was a beautiful location, but one very poorly-suited for the tasks for

which it was intended.

Same could be said of the Canada Way Corps location in London, Ontario.

That location went belly up when the city got a whiff of twi moving in

and, if I recall, reasserted the zoning ordinances. The corps location

had its fits-and-starts and several European corps had to pack and leave.

[waysider]

You know.....if a lowly corps made this type of blunder on a meeting location,

there'd be a full-court press of castigating the stupidity and lack of believing.

and often there was.

[Twinky]

Geer points out in WW's extracts how difficult it was to get on with things in Scotland. There seems to be a common factor. And that's he himself. His obnoxious style put people off. It was nothing to be with being an American. It was to do with being an obnoxious American.

You folks mostly haven't seen this place. It's in a stunningly beautiful location. Access (for Scotland) wasn't too bad and there is a fast motorway, the M74, going most of the way. It's close to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Falkirk. There are airports nearby (an hour or so away).

The ministry had focussed around the Manchester area. There is a lot of property in the midlands and north of England that might have been suitable, had they chosen to look around. Cheap, in the north of England.

It was a choice to go there. A deliberate decision - there was no need for a last-minute change. Either his ego was suffering badly at not having his own fiefdom (a good word, being as it's Scottish) or he was going to be kicked out of the US ministry anyway. Things between him and LCM were not exactly cordial. That's what prompted the decision. Not that there were no other places available.

And as regards European Corps - nothing anybody else chose would ever have been good enough for him. He demoralised the EC, the believers, trashed the country coordinator ... trashed anybody. You know anything EC might have located (no matter how suitable) would be "defective" because it was all about him!