That brass polishing was constant and ridiculous, imo. Whoever thought putting that high of maintenance stuff in there must not have had to maintain it to TWIt standards.
Speaking of maintenance and cleaning monotony.......some claim that the corps chalet is far worse. The colorado logs were never meant for the ohio humidity, insects and stuff.
Yet another TWI thing gone bad... You can lay this one squarely at LCM's feet. Sorry they did that to you.
The idea for the auditorium was a long time coming, many years before it was built. Don't hate me, but I helped design & build it.
The last big thing that Vp did with the last years of his health was oversee building Way Productions. He always felt that quality production was an invaluable aid in presenting the word to people. Through the mid 70's to mid 80's Way productions had grown to where we had many world class performers, in just about every aspect of production and we'd outgrown The Way Cultural Center ( a church building TWI bough in New Bremen).
Vp pushed the performers and us technicians and everyone involved to settle for nothing less than top quality stuff. TWI put together "all star" bands that covered the gamut of music. He felt during the late 70's that the US was turning toward country music as the "main" big music thing and replaced "Joyful Noise" as the ministry flagship band with "Branded." The also did a world wide contest for the best male quartet-type singers & came up with "The Victors," We had "New Horizons;" a group of Afro-American males doing R&B with "Temptations-type" choreography, The Way International Orchestra and TAKIT, doing rock & roll type stuff. Skip Mesquite and Dean Ellenwood were from Joyful Noise, Skip, Danny Hoefer and David Garabaldi Were part of Tower of Power, probably THE most respected funk band of their time. These guys were pros, all of whom were VERY good.
VP had begun a PR campaign of his own, sans the big TWI machine and was orchestrating inviting local government and corporate officials to the "Saturday Night Doo" each week at the WCC in New Bremen. They began coming, as the facility was in NB and more & more of them began a buzz around the area at how good the productions were and nobody tried to "convert" them. This started a true, "come and see evangelism" approach for TWI. It was successful. Vp had been writing his "By The Way" articles, a weekly column in the St Marys Evening Leader. Each Article was tagged with "You are Welcome at The Way." More & more locals were coming in for the weekend tours of the grounds and more & more were showing up for the Doo's. Sometimes so many locals would come that there was little to no room for us believers to see the productions. Which were quite good, I worked on more than a few of them myself.
We also had The Way Dance Company and did our flagship production "High Country Caravan" 13 week television variety show, a sort of cross between "Hee Haw" and the "Sonny & Cher," "Carol Burnett Show" or other variety show format shows that were popular on TV then. HCC was sucessful too, We wound up doing at least two seasons as I remember. It was distributed nationally on some cable stations, we played the shows in Hospitals, nursing homes, & other places wherever people would want it. It got good reviews and blessed a lot of people.
The auditorium was a natural next step from that success. We need a showcase spot to showcase the talent of the ministry for outreach, with the spoken word of God being at the center of it all. Given the success of the "come and see" stuff, part of the vision for the auditorium was to provide a first class venue for traveling Broadway shows and other regional theatre events, concerts, and any type of event that needed a theatre to put on their show. We talked about allowing the local high schools to put on their school plays there, giving them a chance to perform in a world class "house."
There were plans to approach Broadway production companies and have then put our auditorium on their tour schedules. The concept was to expand our approximately 50 week Saturday Night Doo schedule to include the largest variety of top quality shows we could get. I had spoken up in staff meeting about how valid that concept was because I had "been THERE, done THAT" same thing in HIGH School!
My HS in western PA was famous locally for having the coolest proms in the area. We would call around to venues in Pittsburgh & ask them what big name stars would be performing around the general time of our prom. We'd then call the management of the star & ask them if it would be worth their while if we paid them about 1/2 of their one day performance fee to show up at our prom and do a few songs on their off day.
One half of a payday, for an off day? All you have to do is show up, we'd provide the audio, do all the set up, all they had to do is give some high school kids the thrill of their lives! Get PAID when the'd otherwise be trying to figure out what to do? We got the STYLISTICS one year, and my senior year we ALMOST got the Temptations. The declined cause they were too old, said they needed their rest more than the payday. We got the band that opened for them though.
The auditorium plan was to bring talent to the area that they would otherwise have to travel between 60 to 300 miles to see otherwise. We did figure that over a WEEKEND 250 miles was not too far to come to see a world class show... on a SATURDAY.... Leave Sat AM. do the 'Doo' that night, get some sleep eat Sunday Dinner as our guests @ HQ leave after the service & be home by midnite. That was comfortable & WORTH it IF the show was good enough.
There are lots of very sophisticated locals who live with a 30 mile radius of HQ that regularly travel to Chigago, Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnatti, Lexington; even as far away as Pittsburgh, Louisville and Atlanta for "entertainment purposes only." I've done it, gone to Cincy, Cleveburg, and home to the Pitt to see my brother perform when his shows were nearby. The plan was to bring the quality to New Knoxville.
That auditorium was designed as an outreach tool. AOS wasn't the first show produced there. We had done a number of Doo's, local people were impressed with the facility, the performance and the people, quite a few would regularly get saved and even sigh up for PFAL and we'd refer them to local leadership for fellowships, etc. We were SO excited about the auditorium because "it was working" even before it was built, while it was being built.
I gave regular tours of the building to groups of believer and local and share the vision for the "new center of outreach for The Way International." "Right across the street is our Outreach Services Center, where we house the majority of offices that support our move of God's Word over the world. We currently have Outreach offices, here, at the root of the root where we research God's word and teach it to the best of our ability. From here we reach out to four other rool locations around the country, Rome City Indiana and Emporia Ks are our leadership training centers. We have our vacation spot, Camp Gunnison, The Way Family Ranch; 28 miles from some of the best skiing in the US. There is the LEAD Outdoor Academy, in Tinnie, NM, where our program focuses on teaching believers the "I CAN do - ALL things through Christ" attitude.
We have state offices in all 50 US states, Canada, Mexico, another, as we call it, a Trunk location, in Gartmore, and about 78 other countries thoughout Europe, South America, Australia, the middle east and Africa. Gods word will be taught every Sunday from this exact spot where I'm standing and emanate around the whole world from right here in New Knoxville, Ohio. We call that concept, Word Over the World...."
That was my part of my presentation. I gave may a tour of first the space in the midst of the trees, then the clearing in the woods where the foundation was staked out, to the hole in the ground, to the enclosed building, to the dusty spaces, "This wall will be here, the piano will go there." To "this is the spot. "Way Builders Architects consulted with some of the finest auditorium designers in the country to give this room the acoustical quality so that a person standing right here need not use a microphone when they speak. Just speaking a little above a normal level, the acoustics will carry the sound to the furthest seat up there in the balcony."
Not a bad seat in the house, up there in the back behind those windows we can have people simultaneously translating up to seven different languages. People can get wireless headphones so they are not limited as to where they sit and will hear the service translated into their language by members of our translations staff.
Though that door & down the hall is our fullsized rehearsal room with the same dimensions as the stage. We can fully rehease another show while one is set up on stage or ust the rehearsal room for more intimate meetings, classes, parties, or whatever. The floor ni that room is designed to flex, so that performers chances of injury are minimized during the hours andhours of rehearsals. This is our full sized 24 track recording studio allowing us to bring our studio time here to HQ. We no longer need to schedule our recording time around available studio times, or travel arcoss the state to record, This part of the facility gives us the space, etc. to produce a television show like most any you seel on TV on a daily basis.
That auditorium was designed to be the finest facility of its type between New York and Chicago and to rival most any in the country. At least that is what it was supposed to be...
AS VP's health weigned LCM took more and more control of Way Productions. The place is dark because as far as I know that never got all of the house lighting they planned. I remember LCM ssaying during some meetin, that there were "features" that would be added later that hadn't happened by the time they wanted to open the building. They're probably limping along without.
When atheletes meetings, auditions & rehersals started, LCM completely took over the seat VPw had w/ Way Prod. The folks w/ real talent & oversight went buck wild & started putting together some really foot kickin' shows. The excitement creshendoed with this show called "PFAL, Our Life-Style." It played two (I think) shows to standing O's; people LOVED it. HQ & the region was buzzing w/ it, then it got CANCELED, snuffed out like a candle.
LCM & co. said it did too much to exault the performers over the message. That, to me, was one of the major signs that something was "really wrong in Denmark." That show was the first Saturday Night Doo in years that people who saw it said "You GOTTA see this...." When they demanded that it not only not be seen again but they wouldn't allow anybody to see the video from it. It was like, It's REALLY become BAD around here.
Time now allows us all to look back & know that LCM was f#cking some of the cute dancer-type hardbodies in Atheletes. He was so overblown with ego, he was so determined to be his OWN version of MOG he could not see how much he was screwing up everything else.
I don't know that all of the grandiose stuff would have actually happened, Hey, it didn't. All I really know is what I saw of what happened, what I did, & why. I saw TWI grow in to the point where I thought we were about to to do some really great stuff.
It turns out that that auditorium was more like the beginning of the end.
Yes. Inside the Corps Chalet... Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
Rough hewn logs for walls with grout. Impossible to clean even though they coated them with some polyurethane stuff. The logs were thick enough that each one from floor to ceiling would get dusty. Somebody had to figure out some way to brush & vacuum them.
Yeah HCW......vpw and way productions (1981-1984). Lots of people, lots of talent.
Being on staff at that time, I too saw the things you described. To me, these were the zenith years of twi.....Living Victoriously, Ambassador One flights, High Country Caravan productions, orchestra recordings and vpw wanted "his people" to perform at The Grand Ole Opry.
At corps week 1984, lcm and vpw and townsend were sitting up front. These men were seated and sharing the things of the ministry. After about 30 minutes, lcm started off on his tangent of the athletes of the spirit production, the costumes, the lighting, the dance choreography, the symbolism, etc.......and vp slightly shook his head and the mic picked it up when he said, "This dance symbolism will never carry the greatness of the word."
In short order, lcm moved onto another subject......but he didn't grasp what vpw had just said. Seemingly, the arrogance on stage was so thick it could have been cut with a knife.
In May of 1985, Athletes of the Spirit premiered. In May of 1986, the pompous paper was read in the auditorium by Cgeer.....and read at corps week. How quickly everything changed!!!
i was {or so i thought}so blessed to be invited on ambassador 1 to fly to hq and see the opening nite of aos.
the building was butiful the production sucked. thats when i first knew martindale was an egotistica pompus full of himself foot hole . to bad his penis got in the way of what could have been a wonderful dream.
Damn guys, you talk as if it was a bad thing that WayWorld's errors were made so obvious under LoyBoy's reign.
Personally I'm overjoyed that LCM made it so frightfully plain what a crock of she-it WayWorld was. Even with the "wonderful" Way Productions (i.e. Bible-flavored Lawrence Welk, country/western-flavored Lawrence Welk, or even soul-flavored Lawrence Welk) I think we were all on a starvation diet culturally, emotionally, and socially.
Thank God (who?) somebody pointed out (even inadvertantly) what a pathetic pile of crap we were tied up with.
To me, the complexities of my past involvement with that group are layered at many levels. Clearly, had I seen back then WHAT I SEE NOW, my posting would be non-existent. But in simple terms, the dichotomy of twi is at opposite ends of the spectrum:
1) the good people who loved God with high-road motives
2) the manipulators, the system, the legalism
In my opinion, the zenith of activity around headquarters was around 1981-1984. After The Grand Ole Opry production (January 1984).....vpw's goal had been achieved.
Martindale had his own arrogant goals.....and yes, it was obvious!!
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Belle
Was there also some silly process by which they vacuum, rake and re-vacuumed the carpet two or three times a day in there?
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skyrider
Speaking of maintenance and cleaning monotony.......some claim that the corps chalet is far worse. The colorado logs were never meant for the ohio humidity, insects and stuff.
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HCW
Yet another TWI thing gone bad... You can lay this one squarely at LCM's feet. Sorry they did that to you.
The idea for the auditorium was a long time coming, many years before it was built. Don't hate me, but I helped design & build it.
The last big thing that Vp did with the last years of his health was oversee building Way Productions. He always felt that quality production was an invaluable aid in presenting the word to people. Through the mid 70's to mid 80's Way productions had grown to where we had many world class performers, in just about every aspect of production and we'd outgrown The Way Cultural Center ( a church building TWI bough in New Bremen).
Vp pushed the performers and us technicians and everyone involved to settle for nothing less than top quality stuff. TWI put together "all star" bands that covered the gamut of music. He felt during the late 70's that the US was turning toward country music as the "main" big music thing and replaced "Joyful Noise" as the ministry flagship band with "Branded." The also did a world wide contest for the best male quartet-type singers & came up with "The Victors," We had "New Horizons;" a group of Afro-American males doing R&B with "Temptations-type" choreography, The Way International Orchestra and TAKIT, doing rock & roll type stuff. Skip Mesquite and Dean Ellenwood were from Joyful Noise, Skip, Danny Hoefer and David Garabaldi Were part of Tower of Power, probably THE most respected funk band of their time. These guys were pros, all of whom were VERY good.
VP had begun a PR campaign of his own, sans the big TWI machine and was orchestrating inviting local government and corporate officials to the "Saturday Night Doo" each week at the WCC in New Bremen. They began coming, as the facility was in NB and more & more of them began a buzz around the area at how good the productions were and nobody tried to "convert" them. This started a true, "come and see evangelism" approach for TWI. It was successful. Vp had been writing his "By The Way" articles, a weekly column in the St Marys Evening Leader. Each Article was tagged with "You are Welcome at The Way." More & more locals were coming in for the weekend tours of the grounds and more & more were showing up for the Doo's. Sometimes so many locals would come that there was little to no room for us believers to see the productions. Which were quite good, I worked on more than a few of them myself.
We also had The Way Dance Company and did our flagship production "High Country Caravan" 13 week television variety show, a sort of cross between "Hee Haw" and the "Sonny & Cher," "Carol Burnett Show" or other variety show format shows that were popular on TV then. HCC was sucessful too, We wound up doing at least two seasons as I remember. It was distributed nationally on some cable stations, we played the shows in Hospitals, nursing homes, & other places wherever people would want it. It got good reviews and blessed a lot of people.
The auditorium was a natural next step from that success. We need a showcase spot to showcase the talent of the ministry for outreach, with the spoken word of God being at the center of it all. Given the success of the "come and see" stuff, part of the vision for the auditorium was to provide a first class venue for traveling Broadway shows and other regional theatre events, concerts, and any type of event that needed a theatre to put on their show. We talked about allowing the local high schools to put on their school plays there, giving them a chance to perform in a world class "house."
There were plans to approach Broadway production companies and have then put our auditorium on their tour schedules. The concept was to expand our approximately 50 week Saturday Night Doo schedule to include the largest variety of top quality shows we could get. I had spoken up in staff meeting about how valid that concept was because I had "been THERE, done THAT" same thing in HIGH School!
My HS in western PA was famous locally for having the coolest proms in the area. We would call around to venues in Pittsburgh & ask them what big name stars would be performing around the general time of our prom. We'd then call the management of the star & ask them if it would be worth their while if we paid them about 1/2 of their one day performance fee to show up at our prom and do a few songs on their off day.
One half of a payday, for an off day? All you have to do is show up, we'd provide the audio, do all the set up, all they had to do is give some high school kids the thrill of their lives! Get PAID when the'd otherwise be trying to figure out what to do? We got the STYLISTICS one year, and my senior year we ALMOST got the Temptations. The declined cause they were too old, said they needed their rest more than the payday. We got the band that opened for them though.
The auditorium plan was to bring talent to the area that they would otherwise have to travel between 60 to 300 miles to see otherwise. We did figure that over a WEEKEND 250 miles was not too far to come to see a world class show... on a SATURDAY.... Leave Sat AM. do the 'Doo' that night, get some sleep eat Sunday Dinner as our guests @ HQ leave after the service & be home by midnite. That was comfortable & WORTH it IF the show was good enough.
There are lots of very sophisticated locals who live with a 30 mile radius of HQ that regularly travel to Chigago, Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnatti, Lexington; even as far away as Pittsburgh, Louisville and Atlanta for "entertainment purposes only." I've done it, gone to Cincy, Cleveburg, and home to the Pitt to see my brother perform when his shows were nearby. The plan was to bring the quality to New Knoxville.
That auditorium was designed as an outreach tool. AOS wasn't the first show produced there. We had done a number of Doo's, local people were impressed with the facility, the performance and the people, quite a few would regularly get saved and even sigh up for PFAL and we'd refer them to local leadership for fellowships, etc. We were SO excited about the auditorium because "it was working" even before it was built, while it was being built.
I gave regular tours of the building to groups of believer and local and share the vision for the "new center of outreach for The Way International." "Right across the street is our Outreach Services Center, where we house the majority of offices that support our move of God's Word over the world. We currently have Outreach offices, here, at the root of the root where we research God's word and teach it to the best of our ability. From here we reach out to four other rool locations around the country, Rome City Indiana and Emporia Ks are our leadership training centers. We have our vacation spot, Camp Gunnison, The Way Family Ranch; 28 miles from some of the best skiing in the US. There is the LEAD Outdoor Academy, in Tinnie, NM, where our program focuses on teaching believers the "I CAN do - ALL things through Christ" attitude.
We have state offices in all 50 US states, Canada, Mexico, another, as we call it, a Trunk location, in Gartmore, and about 78 other countries thoughout Europe, South America, Australia, the middle east and Africa. Gods word will be taught every Sunday from this exact spot where I'm standing and emanate around the whole world from right here in New Knoxville, Ohio. We call that concept, Word Over the World...."
That was my part of my presentation. I gave may a tour of first the space in the midst of the trees, then the clearing in the woods where the foundation was staked out, to the hole in the ground, to the enclosed building, to the dusty spaces, "This wall will be here, the piano will go there." To "this is the spot. "Way Builders Architects consulted with some of the finest auditorium designers in the country to give this room the acoustical quality so that a person standing right here need not use a microphone when they speak. Just speaking a little above a normal level, the acoustics will carry the sound to the furthest seat up there in the balcony."
Not a bad seat in the house, up there in the back behind those windows we can have people simultaneously translating up to seven different languages. People can get wireless headphones so they are not limited as to where they sit and will hear the service translated into their language by members of our translations staff.
Though that door & down the hall is our fullsized rehearsal room with the same dimensions as the stage. We can fully rehease another show while one is set up on stage or ust the rehearsal room for more intimate meetings, classes, parties, or whatever. The floor ni that room is designed to flex, so that performers chances of injury are minimized during the hours andhours of rehearsals. This is our full sized 24 track recording studio allowing us to bring our studio time here to HQ. We no longer need to schedule our recording time around available studio times, or travel arcoss the state to record, This part of the facility gives us the space, etc. to produce a television show like most any you seel on TV on a daily basis.
That auditorium was designed to be the finest facility of its type between New York and Chicago and to rival most any in the country. At least that is what it was supposed to be...
AS VP's health weigned LCM took more and more control of Way Productions. The place is dark because as far as I know that never got all of the house lighting they planned. I remember LCM ssaying during some meetin, that there were "features" that would be added later that hadn't happened by the time they wanted to open the building. They're probably limping along without.
When atheletes meetings, auditions & rehersals started, LCM completely took over the seat VPw had w/ Way Prod. The folks w/ real talent & oversight went buck wild & started putting together some really foot kickin' shows. The excitement creshendoed with this show called "PFAL, Our Life-Style." It played two (I think) shows to standing O's; people LOVED it. HQ & the region was buzzing w/ it, then it got CANCELED, snuffed out like a candle.
LCM & co. said it did too much to exault the performers over the message. That, to me, was one of the major signs that something was "really wrong in Denmark." That show was the first Saturday Night Doo in years that people who saw it said "You GOTTA see this...." When they demanded that it not only not be seen again but they wouldn't allow anybody to see the video from it. It was like, It's REALLY become BAD around here.
Time now allows us all to look back & know that LCM was f#cking some of the cute dancer-type hardbodies in Atheletes. He was so overblown with ego, he was so determined to be his OWN version of MOG he could not see how much he was screwing up everything else.
I don't know that all of the grandiose stuff would have actually happened, Hey, it didn't. All I really know is what I saw of what happened, what I did, & why. I saw TWI grow in to the point where I thought we were about to to do some really great stuff.
It turns out that that auditorium was more like the beginning of the end.
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HCW
Yes. Inside the Corps Chalet... Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
Rough hewn logs for walls with grout. Impossible to clean even though they coated them with some polyurethane stuff. The logs were thick enough that each one from floor to ceiling would get dusty. Somebody had to figure out some way to brush & vacuum them.
Glad it wsan't me.
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skyrider
Yeah HCW......vpw and way productions (1981-1984). Lots of people, lots of talent.
Being on staff at that time, I too saw the things you described. To me, these were the zenith years of twi.....Living Victoriously, Ambassador One flights, High Country Caravan productions, orchestra recordings and vpw wanted "his people" to perform at The Grand Ole Opry.
At corps week 1984, lcm and vpw and townsend were sitting up front. These men were seated and sharing the things of the ministry. After about 30 minutes, lcm started off on his tangent of the athletes of the spirit production, the costumes, the lighting, the dance choreography, the symbolism, etc.......and vp slightly shook his head and the mic picked it up when he said, "This dance symbolism will never carry the greatness of the word."
In short order, lcm moved onto another subject......but he didn't grasp what vpw had just said. Seemingly, the arrogance on stage was so thick it could have been cut with a knife.
In May of 1985, Athletes of the Spirit premiered. In May of 1986, the pompous paper was read in the auditorium by Cgeer.....and read at corps week. How quickly everything changed!!!
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coolchef1248 @adelphia.net
i was {or so i thought}so blessed to be invited on ambassador 1 to fly to hq and see the opening nite of aos.
the building was butiful the production sucked. thats when i first knew martindale was an egotistica pompus full of himself foot hole . to bad his penis got in the way of what could have been a wonderful dream.
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George Aar
Damn guys, you talk as if it was a bad thing that WayWorld's errors were made so obvious under LoyBoy's reign.
Personally I'm overjoyed that LCM made it so frightfully plain what a crock of she-it WayWorld was. Even with the "wonderful" Way Productions (i.e. Bible-flavored Lawrence Welk, country/western-flavored Lawrence Welk, or even soul-flavored Lawrence Welk) I think we were all on a starvation diet culturally, emotionally, and socially.
Thank God (who?) somebody pointed out (even inadvertantly) what a pathetic pile of crap we were tied up with.
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skyrider
George.....point taken.
To me, the complexities of my past involvement with that group are layered at many levels. Clearly, had I seen back then WHAT I SEE NOW, my posting would be non-existent. But in simple terms, the dichotomy of twi is at opposite ends of the spectrum:
1) the good people who loved God with high-road motives
2) the manipulators, the system, the legalism
In my opinion, the zenith of activity around headquarters was around 1981-1984. After The Grand Ole Opry production (January 1984).....vpw's goal had been achieved.
Martindale had his own arrogant goals.....and yes, it was obvious!!
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