So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XVII

World Over the World Ambassadors (aka WOW Ambassadors or simply "WOWs") had been sent out every year since 1971 from the annual "Rock of Ages" (ROA) and returned a year later to the following year's ROA. In 1980 the 10th "wave" of WOWs was being sent out, or commissioned. A record number had signed up, well over 3,000. A large number were being sent to what were called Outreach Cities. These Outreach Cities would receive whole "branches", i.e. 10 or more "teams" of two WOW "families", which usually included four WOWs. Teams were usually overseen by a Way Corps person who was on their "interim" year. (At the time Way Corps training included a "Apprentice" year in their home town, the second year and fourth "in-residence" at a Way location, with the year between the in-residence years on some kind of "field" assignment. There were also WOW families sent to isolated cities or towns. I was sent to one of those: Sidney, Nebraska, a city of around 5,000.

Before my WOW family and I were sent to Nebraska, most Way Twig fellowships were clustered in Lincoln and Omaha, plus a few small groups founded by the previous year's WOWs in Fremont, North Platte and Beatrice. My group of WOWs included families in Sidney, Scotts Bluff, Nebraska City, McCook and Grand Island. 

 In 1980 the ROA lasted for seven days. We spent a few hours each day in training and on the sixth night, we were "commissioned", i.e. received our assignments in a sealed envelope to be opened at a big ceremony in the big top tent where evening teachings were conducted. All of us Queens WOWs sat together for the ceremony. Most of my friends were sent to Outreach Cities, including my girlfriend Lori, who was sent to Chicago. In addition to my Nebraska assignment, only one other person from our circle was sent somewhere other than an Outreach City, Kevin F to North Dakota. We were to spend the seventh and last day of the ROA meeting our new WOW family and making travel arrangements. Our family consisted of Steve, an interim 10th Corps man from Texas, who would be our coordinator/leader; Gail, a veteran of a previous WOW year from Philadelphia; and Rosemarie, a relatively new PFAL grad from California. Because there were only two cars, one of them a two-seater, between the two western Nebraska families, Rosemarie and I rode on a bus with some Way people from Grand Island, Gail, who owned one of the cars, who take Steve and two Scotts Bluff WOWs in her car, while the other two Scotts Bluffs WOWs would carry all our luggage in their pickup. The bus broke down in the middle of Iowa. 

Even though, in retrospect, this was another one of those recurring red flags, I saw it as a bit of an adventure. While the bus was being repaired several of us went to work for the repair shop and lived in tents behind the gas station. Eventually, after the bus was repaired we made it to Sidney, Nebraska a week late and set about the task of finding jobs and housing. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XVIII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/09/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xviii.html

So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XVI

The King James Version of the Bible lists nine components of "the manifestation of the spirit", The Way referred to them as the Manifestations of the spirit; most denominations called the "gifts of the spirit". They are:

• Speaking in Tongues
• Interpretation of Tongues
• Prophesy
• Word of Knowledge
• Word of Wisdom
• Discerning of Spirits
• Faith
• Miracles
• Gifts of Healing

In The Way's foundational class we learned about, and engaged in (or possibly "performed") the first three. They were important parts of Way meetings and our spiritual life. It was during the Advanced Class where we were supposed to learn about the other six. Word of Knowledge, Word of Wisdom and Discerning of Spirits were referred to as "revelation" manifestations, i.e. God giving you information. The final three, called the "power manifestations", were supposedly more action oriented. Miracles and Gifts of Healing are pretty much what the names suggest. "Faith" was one that I never heard an explanation that made sense. For those of us who were not Advanced Class grads, that class seemed like the ticket to real spiritual street cred. It was the Advanced Class grads who were in the pipeline to become Way leaders, the real movers and shakers. And you go to wear the Advanced Class name tag. Let me digress a moment to talk about Way name tag culture. 

By the time I got involved in The Way, every class, every program, had its own standardized plastic name tag. If you were at a Way event you could tell at a glance where someone was in the Way caste system by their name tag. If they had on a paper tag in a cheap plastic sleeve, with the name written in Sharpie, they were at the bottom. Advanced Class grads had a green name tag with white lettering; WOW Ambassadors wore white name tags with blue lettering and the "wave" in the corner. (The first wave of WOWS went out in 1971, 1980, when I went, was the tenth wave) Students at the Way College of Emporia had red tags with white lettering. Way Corps participants had a name tag that was a slightly different shape than the others with alternating graduating classes tags in either white letters on green or green letters on white, with their Corps number in the corner. (There were others, but you get the idea) Anyone who rated one of these special nametags made sure that they displayed them. There was a fashion for a while to create "name tag ties" where every tag that was earned was displayed on a necktie. 

In June of 1980 I would be travelling to Rome City Indiana to take the Advanced Class. I had committed myself to participate in the WOW ambassador program starting that August, so it would be a busy time my last few months in New York. At the time I owned a car, but it was in storage and I'd shortly sell it to my sister to help pay for my Advanced Class fee and my WOW Ambassador move. None of my Way friends were going, so I thought it would be cool to hitch hike from Queens to Indiana. In retrospect, not the smartest idea, but I was never accused of making smart decisions back then! I had Lori, my girlfriend at the time, drive me to the other side of the George Washington bridge in New Jersey so that I wouldn't have to hitch through New York City. Amazingly, I arrived in one piece and started the class. 

One of the hallmarks of Way culture was to promote everything as the greatest, the first, the most effective, the most "accurate" teaching of the Bible since the First Century. Classes and seminars were described in glowing terms by those who had taken them before, and new people were likewise expected to react similarly with effusive praise. Anyone who didn't was suspected as having not "got it", and were pressured to see "the truth". These people usually drifted away. Let's take another detour and talk about "brainwashing". 

Anti-cult activists and families of people who joined cults are often convinced that cult members have been subjected to mind control techniques, informally known as brainwashing and that people who got involved were somehow forced to do so. My experience in The Way does not support this view. Those who stuck around after their initial contact with The Way were typically people who were those who wanted to believe. In the earlier installments I went into to detail about why I got hooked; various people had different reasons, but the important thing to note was that no one was forced to stay, in fact Way leadership was glad to get rid of the skeptics or those who asked uncomfortable questions. Over the years I saw many people leave voluntarily, with no real attempt to bring them back into the fold. My own cousin, whose involvement predated mine, left with nary a ripple. The people who signed up for the Advanced Class, or to serve as WOW Ambassadors, were a self-selected group that was very likely to buy in to whatever The Way was selling. They were also predisposed to keep their doubts and skepticism to themselves.

I arrived at the Rome City Indiana campus primed to learn. I was ready to learn how to receive revelation from God, discern the presence of devil spirits, and perform miracles and heal people. In Part XV I talked about how we saw a lot of apparent miraculous healing during my final year as a Twig Coordinator in New York. As much as I was convinced at the time that it was all real, I was excited to be able to "kick it up a notch" and become just like the Apostles in the Book of Acts. Boy, was I in for a surprise. The reason that I was surprised and disappointed was that the operation of Speaking in Tongues, Interpretation and Prophecy in the PFAL Foundational Class was something that was taught practically as well as shown from the Biblical text and was practiced in groups and coached by the leaders. We didn't just read about it, we did it and worked out our spiritual muscles. The Advanced Class was all theory, with no practice. We read Biblical passages, we listened to theories about devil possession, we heard anecdotes about miracles and healings, but we didn't do anything. I was disappointed, but I kept it to myself. 

Even though it was natural and logical to expect more from the Advanced Class than what we got, anyone who expressed their disappointment and criticized the lack of practical application was "reproved". It was suggested that those people just didn't understand "Doctor" Wierwille's wisdom in how he presented the class - did they think they were smarter and more spiritual than he was? There was a lot of peer pressure to not only keep one's doubts to oneself, but to act publicly as if it all made sense and was, in fact, God's Word as it hadn't been taught since the First Century. 

I went back to New York with warring impulses fighting for attention: the part of me who saw this as a red flag and the part of me who couldn't admit that I had been involved in something that was less than what it purported to be. I didn't want to be one of the people who drifted away, admitting that I had been duped, I wanted to be one of those hot shot Advanced Class grads who knew more than everyone else. 

And besides, I was leaving for a year as a WOW Ambassador in a few weeks.

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XVII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/07/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xvii.html

Havelock Burger King & Supply & Demand

For any business to run properly, make a profit, provide good customer service and also provide a good work experience for the employees there must be mutual respect among management, owners, employees and customers. For a long times employers have had the upper hand. The ever-popular "If you don't like it, find another job" has finally become a reality, with the power pendulum swinging in employees' favor due to variety of conditions.

The capitalist ethos teaches us that the business owner gets to call all the shots, because they provided the capital and took the risks necessary to start the business. But this mindset ignores the concurrent reality that for all but the smallest business, the business owner could not continue as a business operator without employees. In the businesses that I have been in, those with specialized skills or education have, to a certain extent, been able to set the conditions of their employment, while those employees considered "unskilled" were viewed as expendable and easily replaceable. The reasons for this are related to the principle of supply and demand. A job seeker whose knowledge or ability is in short supply may find that the demand for her skill set exceeds the supply, so the salary is bid upwards and there is competition for her services. Owners and managers are forced to pay a decent wage and to allow flexibility and a sought-after work-life balance, as well as comfortable working conditions. In job classifications where the supply of job seekers exceeds the demand for them, the opposite takes place: the wage trends downward, working and conditions and work-life balance are as bad as management can legally get away with. There is no market-based incentive to do any better.

What we are seeing in many service sectors of the economy is that the low-wage workers have woken up to the reality well ahead of their managers and the owners of the businesses where they work. Suddenly, as the economy has opened up after the worst of the Covid pandemic, workers realize that they have choices, if they don't like it, they can "go find another job"...and they do it. Business owners are slower to make the connection. One thing that some businesses are figuring out is that in order to keep staffing levels up they need to increase wages to attract applicants. What they haven't figured out yet is that it's not just about the money. Employees don't want to live to work, they don't want to endure abuse from bosses or customers. They want to be able to stay home if they are sick or there is a family emergency. In short, they want to be treated with respect, not as a dispensable cog in the wheel.

Of course a business has to turn a profit in order to remain operational. There are many expenses involved in running a business. Unfortunately one of the first areas that gets cut when revenue goes down is payroll. In a retail store, labor cost budgets are usually tied to sales. If sales go down, then the money that can be spent on staffing goes down. What the corporate bean counters often fail to realize is that usually a certain minimum of work has to be done, no matter what the revenue looks like. So what happens is that hours get cut, positions get eliminated, and the remaining workers have to work harder to achieve the same tasks. Things don't get done, or don't get done right. Customers get angry, which causes resentment among the workers. Top management continues to cut labor while running sales and special events, which the reduced staff is ill-equipped to execute.

What used to happen was that employees would just complain, maybe fight back by stealing, or slowing down, or coming to work high, because they didn't want to risk having no job. Now, they know there are plenty of other jobs available, so they just quit.

At some point business owners will have to figure this out.

 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XV

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He was so proud of his titles and the associated ability to lord it over people. But now, he had been stripped of almost all of his titles. He still held the position of Way Home Coordinator, which was supposed to mean that he was the leader of the little group who lived in our house on Metropolitan Avenue, yet this was in tension with my position as the Twig Fellowship Coordinator based at the same house. There was no way that there wouldn't be fireworks. 

There were two parallel paths that I would take through the rest of the Way year. One was paved with red flags that in hindsight I should have heeded and got the hell out, the other path was crowded with what at the time looked like what the Bible calls signs, miracles and wonders. The problem was that I didn't see the red flags as red flags. We had been indoctrinated with the view that when bad things happened it was "the Adversary" (i.e. The Devil) was attacking us due to our "stand on The Word of God". So both side-by-side paths were convincing me that I was on the right path. 

When I was still living at the first Way Home I had re-enrolled in college. I had dropped out during my sophomore year, and, due to some bad grades I had been put on academic probation. When I re-enrolled I was still on probation, which meant that I could not fail any classes and had to maintain at least a "C" average. I had also taken a job in Manhattan working for the stock brokerage firm, E.F. Hutton. I worked at Hutton during the day and attended classes at night. This meant that it was difficult for me to spend much time on Way activities. Way leadership suggested that, although I was living in a Queens Way Home, it might be better if I attended Twig Fellowship in Manhattan, where I worked and went to college. If this situation had continued, things might have turned out differently, but two things happened to change the course of my life. The first was that I failed a math class. It may have been advanced algebra, or maybe calculus. Even though I had aced every other class, I was still on academic probation, and this one failure meant that I was dismissed from Bernard M. Baruch College. Around the same time I was offered the position of Twig Fellowship Coordinator. I was virtually locked in to a Way trajectory. 

I mentioned the two parallel paths - I want to address the one that was festooned with red flags first. As far as I knew, Eddie wasn't removed from his positions because higher leadership thought he didn't have leadership qualities. His branch responsibilities ended simply because three branches were consolidated into two and the other two branch coordinators had more of the accepted credentials. His twig coordinator position wasn't taken away due to incompetence or ungodliness or lack of leadership, but to allow him to concentrate on the various Spanish language fellowships. But with the 20/20 vision that comes from being 40 years in the future, I can tell you with conviction that Eddie was a sociopathic abuser.

I'm not going to get specific about all of the insanity that Eddie engaged in. I mentioned in Part XIV that he believed that "casting out devil spirits" was the appropriate response to a roommate talking in his sleep. He constantly belittled the people around him, especially women. He drank to excess. We sublet a basement apartment to a woman who he coerced into sex. Several of us complained about him to upper leadership to no avail. The fact that Eddie was put in a position of leadership where he was supposed to care for other Christian believers and lead by example, should have suggested to me that upper leadership didn't know what the heck they were doing. But I somehow rationalized the situation. The "obey leadership" habit was hard to break. There must be some kind of plan that I was unaware of. Part of me thought that I just needed to up my spiritual game and commit myself more fully. More on that after I take you on a stroll down the other parallel path.

When I took over the fellowship on Metropolitan Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens, there were four or five of us. By the time I left New York that August, there were easily thirty people crammed into our living room on Twig Fellowship nights. The main method of increasing membership was to "witness". Like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, the Way engaged in door-to-door witnessing. Since we started out with just a handful, we would have a short meeting and then hit the streets, the bowling alleys, the bars and knocked on doors. We also started seeing people who had been inactive in Way events start showing up. Maybe they didn't like what was going on when Eddie was in charge and wanted to give us a shot. Maybe it was just coincidence, but these formerly inactive people started bringing friends. And the friends started bringing friends.  The house started filling up. 

One of the measures of success of a Way Twig or Branch was running a class. The Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class was for people who wanted to stick around, it was the first level of commitment in Way-World. You needed seven new people to be able to run a PFAL class and typically several Twigs combined their new people into one class. We were able to run one all by ourselves. Then we were able to run another one. And a third - which was unheard of. Way fellowship meetings were beginning to tend toward formal at that time. We went in the opposite direction which seemed to draw in even more people. For some reason that I can't recall I started running meetings and teaching barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the couch. We were told to start running a 10:30 fellowship on Sundays - because Way HQ did. No one told us that it was to be 10:30AM, so, rebels that we were, we met at 10:30PM on Sunday and the living room was as full as any other time.  The biggest thing was that we started to get known as the place to go for miraculous healing.

As an agnostic who these days casts a skeptical eye on the miraculous, I really don't know what to think about this aspect of my time in The Way. We would pray for people and it sure seemed like they were healed of various maladies. There wasn't any eyesight to the blind or healing the lepers, but what we were all sure convinced that healing was taking place. And it wasn't just the hardcore Wayfers, but people who would show up at our house for the first time and swear that their illness, or limp or whatever was gone. To me, this was some bona fide Book of Acts stuff...signs, miracles and wonders. 

It was no wonder that, after the bad example of Eddie caused me to question my own commitment paired with what I was convinced was God working in astounding ways that I made a twofold decision: to enroll in the Advanced Class that was taking place that summer in Rome City, Indiana and after that to sign up for the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program. A decision that would take me from my home of New York City and deposit me in a town of 5000 in the Nebraska Panhandle. 

 Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XVI

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/07/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xvi.html