Seeking Life Along The Way [Part 2]

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1978 - 1983: Word Over the World
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Early 1978 through July 1978. 

After dropping out of college in December 1977, I moved back to Hickory, North Carolina, my hometown, where I had just finished my first Power for Abundant Living class. Also called "PFAL" and "The Class."

I, my friend Janet who had taken The Class for her first time along with me, and Belinda who was serving her apprentice year for the ninth Way Corps moved in together to form a "Way Home." We would do our part helping to "move the Word over the world" by running Way classes and home fellowships (called Twigs), witnessing to unbelievers, daily praying together, reading the Bible and Way publications, memorizing scripture verses, and having "believers meetings." That's what you did in a Way Home.

A "believers meeting" is a gathering of at least three "fully-instructed" believers to "hear from God." To be "fully instructed" means that a believer knows how to properly operate the "inspiration manifestations of speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophecy." One Way believer leads the meeting and calls on three or four believers, one at a time, to bring forth a message from God via tongues with interpretation or prophecy. The Way draws its instructions from various scriptures in I Corinthians 14.

By January, I'd landed a job at a local hospital in the laundry department folding human wraps, hot and staticky fresh out of the large industrial driers. Linens, blankets, gowns, towels, washcloths. One of my fellow folders, Michael, was my first Way recruit. Michael was a year or so older than I.

I spoke the Word everywhere I went, talking the Bible and The Class, inviting people to Twig, sometimes going "door-to-door witnessing" solo. One of my Twig leaders, when introducing me to Way state leadership, said "Carol witnesses to everything that moves."

I was 18 years old.

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I first met Victor Paul Wierwille in February 1978, at a large Way gathering called a Heartbeat Festival held at the Omni Hotel in Virginia Beach.

[Wierwille was The Way's founder and first president. He received his Bachelor of Theology degree in 1940 from Mission House College and Seminary (now Lakeland University) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He received his Masters of Theology in 1941 from Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. That same year he was ordained into the Evangelical and Reformed Church, which he continued with until 1957. In 1948, he received his Doctorate of Theology through correspondence work from Pikes Peak Seminary (now defunct) in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Pikes Peak Seminary was located in a 4500 square-foot house, had no resident instruction, no list of faculty and no accreditation. The legitimacy of Wierwille's doctorate is questionable. But, at the time, that didn't matter to me. Jesus had few, if any, worldly credentials. And Jesus was the Son of God.]

At that Omni Hotel in 1978, I waited alone, sitting in an upholstered chair in a dimly lit alcove outside a conference room where Wierwille was meeting with the Word Over the World Ambassadors. At midnight, he walked out of the room. I stood up, walked over to him, introduced myself, and said, "I want to go WOW this year." (WOW, an acronym for Word Over the World, was The Way's main lay outreach program, volunteers serving for one year, from August to August, wherever assigned by The Way.)

The next morning, I sat on the front row in the large meeting of hundreds, if not a thousand or more, people. At the end of his teaching from the stage, Doctor pointed at me and said, "You're going WOW next year; aren't you honey?" I nodded my head yes. And then he asked, "Have you signed up yet?" I shook my head no. He responded with a bellow, "Well come on up here!" He motioned his arm for me to join him on the elevated stage, which I did, and he personally signed me up to go WOW.

As I stood with him on the stage in front of the sea of onlookers, he again enthusiastically bellowed, this time to the whole audience, "Who else wants to go W.O.W!?!" As people came up to the stage I helped hand out the blue WOW sign-up cards.

Little eighteen-year-old me, on stage with the "man of God of the world," our "father in the Word." "Doctor," as followers affectionately referred to him. I felt large and small at the same time. Privileged. Awed. Humbled. I was doing God's will for my life.

It was intoxicating, but not in a scary or uncontrollable way. I was high on the "love of God." I thought there was nowhere else on earth where one could experience this unique oneness, unity of purpose, synchronicity. I later came to call it "the chewy, caramel center of God's heart." It was almost tangible and was a feeling that would be duplicated at Way functions multiple times in the following decades.

Before going WOW in August, I jumped on board with The Way's statewide summer outreach program, WONC - Word Over North Carolina. I was assigned with three other young ladies to Fayetteville, North Carolina, the home of Fort Bragg Military Base. We witnessed to a lot of soldiers and ran one Power For Abundant Living Foundational class. I got a job driving a taxicab. My second Way recruit was one of my passengers, Velton, a teenager about a year younger than I.

Sometime between February and May, I had made the commitment to enter The Way's leadership program, The Way Corps. My upcoming WOW year would serve as my first year of Corps training known as the apprenticeship year. WOW was a one-year commitment; Way Corps was a lifetime commitment. (Ministry years ran from August to August.)

I was now nineteen years old.

~*~

August 1978 through September 1979

I was commissioned, with around a thousand others, as a WOW Ambassador at the Way's yearly festival, the Rock of Ages, held at Headquarters in New Knoxville, Ohio.  (In 1995, after twenty-five years since the Rock of Ages' inception, it was discontinued.)

I was sent to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was designated a WOW Family Coordinator. There were four WOWs in my family, all of us barely adults - myself, another young woman, and two young men. Along with overseeing the WOW family, I oversaw our Twig Fellowship. Our WOW family was assigned with six other WOW families to Milwaukee and made up a WOW Branch, which was overseen by an 8th Way Corps trainee on his interim year assignment.

The Way was structured like a tree known as The Way Tree. The roots of the tree represented the research of God's Word stemming from Dr. Wierwille and the research department at Headquarters. Research is what "fed the tree." Later The Way purchased other training locations, which were collectively called "root locales." The Trunk represented a geographical country, such as the Trunk of the USA or the Trunk of Canada. Limbs were states, such as the Limb of New York. Branches were areas within a state and were typically composed of about seven Twigs. Twigs were the household fellowships held in Way believers' homes. An individual believer was sometimes referred to as a Leaf. The Twig is where believers spent most of their time as far as Way meetings. A common phrase at that time was, "Life is in the Twig." In the mid-1990's, the term "Twig" was replaced with "Household Fellowship." Two geographical terms not related to parts of a tree were a Region which was composed of several states and an Area which was smaller than a Branch. (Click here and open all the songs to access and listen to the song, I Am A Leaf, by one of the popular Way bands of the 1970s.)

My WOW family lived in a small, run-down apartment on the East Side near Lake Michigan and the University of Wisconsin. We spent a lot of time witnessing on the university campus. Through the year I worked part-time jobs as an office assistant, a bus girl at a restaurant, and an ice cream cart driver selling frozen treats on the East Side.

One of my WOW brothers was my boyfriend. We had met at the end of Summer Outreach in North Carolina and had sat together through the teachings and the WOW commission at the Rock, never imagining that we would be assigned to the same WOW family. We were both stunned when we opened our assignment envelopes. He was kind of pissed because, since he was the man, he thought he should be the Family Coordinator. I was concerned because we both had raging teenage hormones. He was 18. I was 19.

Shortly after opening our assignment envelopes, our WOW Branch gathered so we could all meet one another. At that time, I privately told our Branch Leader that my WOW brother and I couldn't be together; we were in love. There was no way we could concentrate on our commitment to God if we lived together in the same house. Our Branch Leader took my request up the Way Tree to higher leadership. The verdict came back - we were to stay together. The assignments were inspired by God.

I got pregnant within a couple months and got an abortion. I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, where our Limb Leaders lived, to get the abortion. My mom paid for it. I stayed in the Limb Home for a few days after the procedure. The Limb Leaders were kind, but to my recollection, we didn't discuss the abortion. I recall feeling very alone, crying alone, and bleeding a lot. Other than my boyfriend and my Branch Leader back in Milwaukee, no one else in the Branch knew, at least that I was aware of. I returned to my WOW family like nothing had happened and went back to "moving the Word." At that time in The Way, abortion was pretty much treated like getting a splinter removed.

Within two months after the abortion, my WOW brother was moved to a different WOW family in the Branch. But we continued as lovers, growing fonder of one other as the year went on. (Click here to access a two-part series about my WOW commission and abortion.)

In September 1979, after the end of my 1978-'79 WOW year, I entered in-residence training with the 10th Way Corps at The Way College of Emporia in Kansas.

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Word Over the World Ambassador Program

(Click here for a deeper dive into the structure of The Way and the WOW program.)

The WOW Ambassador and other outreach programs with The Way were on a volunteer basis with participants supporting themselves financially while doing the work of the Ministry; there was no monetary compensation from The Way. Volunteers were expected to continue to tithe from income received through their part-time secular jobs during their full-time volunteer service with The Way. As WOWs, we were to work our secular jobs twenty to thirty hours per week and do the work of the Ministry forty hours per week. (Click here & scroll down to view pages from one of my WOW Handbooks.)

Way Corps Program

(Click here for a deeper dive into The Way Corps.)

When I was in Corps training, the program consisted of a first-year apprenticeship when a trainee served closely with Way Corps, a second year in-residence at Way root locales, a third year as an interim or practicum year when the trainee served wherever assigned by The Way, and a fourth year back in-residence at Way root locales. The in-residence years were work/study programs and were financed via funds solicited by the Way Corps trainee. Those who funded the trainee were called "Spiritual Partners" and agreed to a monthly or other non-tax-deductible financial donation. The Way Corps trainee was to pray for and to write to each Spiritual Partner once a month during that in-residence year.

The Way Corps training program was not an outreach program, per se, though outreach and teaching were some of the final goals as part of the "lifetime commitment to Christian service." A Way Corps trainee could be assigned to an outreach program during the apprentice or interim years or after graduation.

The in-residence years included an outreach exercise called Lightbearers. Trainees would live on the field with Way believers for two weeks and help recruit enough people for the area to be able to run The Way's Foundational Class. As another outreach exercise, Corps trainees would sometimes have "witnessing" days in their local root locale communities.

The Corps program also included hitchhiking requirements where trainees were to witness to those who gave them rides and were to "believe God" to arrive at assigned destinations within given time frames. I hitchhiked over four thousand miles while in The Way Corps. On one of my hitchhiking assignments, from Kansas to New Mexico, my partner and I did not arrive at our destination in the allotted time frame. We had missed it by four minutes. We had to turn right around and hitchhike back to Kansas from New Mexico. (Click here to read a transcript from my 13th Way Corps personal journal detailing that excursion.)

Through my Corps years I spent time at three of The Way's root locales in Kansas, Indiana, and Ohio. I spent a couple weeks in New Mexico at The Way's L.E.A.D. Outdoor Academy. L.E.A.D. stood for Leadership, Education, Adventure, Direction and was The Way's wilderness, rock climbing program, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I did not spend any Corps time at The Way's root locale in Gunnison, Colorado. (The Way sold its Kansas and Indiana properties in the 1990s after losing followers in mass. At some point, The Way also sold the L.E.A.D. property in New Mexico. The Way kept its Headquarters in Ohio and The Way Family Ranch in Colorado.)

Though I spent over four years in Way Corps training I never graduated. I left the program, not once, but twice, both times in my interim/practicum year of training.

Yet, for the most part, I loved my in-residence years at the "school of the prophets" and was successful through that part of the training. In-residence our lives were scheduled for us. We seldom had "free time." I believed that I was in the center of God's will and heart. I felt I was in a cocoon where I was learning how to do things right in order to better serve God's people. I believed, and still believe, that is why most followers went into The Way Corps - to serve.

The proving years (interim/practicum) were my death of confidence. The pressure of overseeing people's spiritual lives, of receiving revelation from God, and of bearing good spiritual fruit overwhelmed me. Externally I appeared capable and confident. But internally, I felt an incredible urge to flee. I sought escape from an internal dissonance which was brought on by trying to run in shoes not designed to carry me, but that I believed were my duty to make fit. Or perhaps, I was trying to run from manipulation that I didn't recognize as such.

Not only did I break my Corps commitment, but I did so in an AWOL fashion which only added to the shame of my broken integrity. I think one reason I chose an AWOL approach was because I felt that if I counseled with leadership and then disobeyed, in my confused perception, that was a more direct act of disobedience than if I just disappeared. Plus, I felt any counsel would try to talk me into staying.

For decades after breaking my Corps commitment, a dark shadow of shame followed me. I would try to understand the whys of my betrayal.

Immaturity? Insecurity? Low self-image? Lack of confidence? Unrelenting standards? Fear of failure or perhaps success? Devil spirits? Character flaws?

It took me until 2017, over eleven years after leaving The Way, to realize that by fleeing the Way Corps I didn't break my integrity. I was probably trying to keep my integrity by trying to be true to my core, to my self. But I didn't know how. Still, I wish I hadn't left in an AWOL fashion.

To me, The Way Corps was a huge commitment.

To break one's Corps commitment was akin to a Judas betrayal.

And I broke that commitment twice.

The ensuing shadow-of-shame haunted me for decades.

Yet, all that while as I was treading the waters of life trying to keep my head above my shame, unknown to me and other followers, top Way leaders were abusing their authority engaging in covert and rampant illicit sex with followers.

~*~

August 1980 through August 1981

I'd been living in northern Connecticut since mid-August right after the 1980 Rock of Ages festival. At the Rock I had been commissioned for my 10th Way Corps interim-year assignment - a volunteer Word Over the World Ambassador Team Coordinator overseeing two WOW families. I had landed a job working part time for a Way-believer dentist one town over, ten miles away. I didn't have a car, so I'd often hitchhike to and from work.

It was a clear crisp day in early October, around the time of The Way's yearly anniversary celebration. My mind was reeling, as it had done other times.

How can I ever fulfill the Way Corps calling? I'm not good enough. I don't have the believing. I'm a sorry excuse for Way Corps. I can't live up to "It Is Written." My WOW team would do better without me. Maybe I shouldn't even be with The Way. Is this really what I want to be doing with my life?

I felt spiritually small. I short circuited. With my mind racing and fearful (of what I am not sure), I hitchhiked alone from Connecticut to my parent's home in North Carolina.

In the aftermath I was overcome with shame.
I had broken my word, a despicable act.
I had let down my WOW team.
I had let down The Way Corps.
I had let down my Spiritual Partners.
I had let down God.
I had let down the Ministry.
I had let down myself.

After I arrived in North Carolina I was filled with remorse and confusion. I wrote letters of apology to Dr. Wierwille, the founder and still president of The Way; to L. Craig Martindale, the Corps director who later became the second president of The Way; and to the Connecticut leadership where I had abandoned my post. At some point, I wrote my Spiritual Partners. As far as I remember, I received kind and encouraging responses from everyone I wrote.

Over the following few months, Martindale and I communicated via letters back and forth multiple times. I felt it was my duty to fulfill my Way Corps training and commitment. I wanted to finish what I had begun, but every fiber within me did not want to start over. I asked Martindale three different times to please let me begin anew at my interim year. But each time his answer was, "No." I was denied the option of picking up where I had left off probably because I dropped my assignment in an AWOL fashion.

I was required to start the program over. So be it.

In December 1980, I moved into a Way Home to move the Word and run Way Classes. That's what you did in a "Way Home." For income, I worked selling Encyclopedia Britannica for my mom and worked as a waitress at a pub.

I had to wait about nine months to begin The Corps process anew. During that time, I plummeted into self-destructive behavior with alcohol and secret promiscuity. Though I had been sexually active from an early age, I had never before engaged in promiscuity.

I have no doubt that this self-numbing behavior was a response to my deep shame and self-loathing which I continued to bury, part of which was a result from my broken 1980 Way Corps and WOW commitments, from the abortion I received during my first WOW year in 1978, from the recent broken relationship with the father who was still in Way Corps training in the 11th Corps, and from feeling unable to live up to the "It Is Written" standard of Corps.

Yet throughout those months of illicit activities, I helped run Fellowships and Classes, possibly as an endeavor to prove my worth to myself.

~*~

September 1981 through September 1983

I moved into a different Way Home with five other believers in Cleveland, Ohio, to begin my apprenticeship year for the 13th Way Corps, embarking upon my second attempt. I had been invited to Cleveland by my 1978-'79 WOW Branch Coordinator who had recently graduated from the 8th Way Corps. He was like a brother to me. Surely, he could help me succeed with my Corps calling.

Mom hooked me up with Britannica in Cleveland, and I tried selling books for about six weeks. I also tried selling Cutco knives. Then I got jobs through a temporary agency as a deburrer in a steel mill and later as a billing clerk for a wallpaper company. I oversaw the Way bookstore for northern Ohio, carting it around in my Toyota Corolla to various meetings, but that was volunteer work, not paid.

I gave up alcohol (for the most part) and put an end to the undisclosed promiscuity. But still, every fiber in my being continued silently screaming in rebellion against starting the Corps process over. I interpreted my internal turmoil as temptation to not perform my duty of carrying out my calling. I expressed this in counsel with Way leadership who confirmed that it was my duty to "pay my vows" of my Corps pledge regardless of my internal misgivings. At that time, I believed that to disobey leadership was to disobey God. And I had to obey God.

Within one month of that counsel and my decision to obey, I became physically ill. At age twenty-two, for the first time in my life, I suffered with asthma and symptoms of an over-responsive immune system. I had buried, and continued to bury, what I deemed as inappropriate emotions and thoughts. I now know that that emotional tomb gave rise to physical illness.

The asthma and other symptoms worsened through the year culminating in a weeklong hospitalization in July 1982. Yet, I had a successful apprenticeship year and entered in-residence training with the 13th Way Corps in September 1982.

But thirteen months later, again I broke my Way Corps commitment.

It was like a horrid deja vu.

[Click here to access a transcript of my personal journal from when I was in the 13th Way Corps.]

~*~

October 1983 through December 1983

Deja vu.

Except, I was in the 13th Corps, not the 10th.
Except, it was 1983, not 1980.
Except, I was on staff at Ohio Way Headquarters, instead of being on the field.
Except, I had the added weight of the chronic physical illnesses, which had worsened through the year.
Except, I escaped in my car, instead of hitchhiking.

But all else was reminiscent of my 1980 broken commitment when I was in the 10th Corps.

Again, my mind reeled back and forth, side to side.
Again, I left in early October around the time of The Way's anniversary celebration.
Again, I abandoned my commitment in my interim year.
Again, I felt spiritually small.
Again, I short circuited.
Again, I left in an AWOL fashion.

I called and left a message at HQ Food Services (my interim year Way Corps assignment) that I would be in late. I never showed. Instead, I left a note on my bunk in the dorm, packed a few items in my old Toyota Corolla, and drove from Ohio to my parent's home in North Carolina.

Surely this wasn't real.
It was just a bad dream.

But it wasn't a bad dream.
I had again failed my calling.

I was physically and emotionally ill and drained.
I was overcome with shame.

I was 24 years old.
My integrity was compromised.
At my core, I felt defective.

In addition to my confusion and anxiety regarding my sold-out Corps commitment, three months prior in July 1983, my father had been in a head-on automobile collision, leaving him to live his remaining twelve-and-a-half years as a quadriplegic. Though his accident was not the reason I dropped (the second time) from The Way Corps, it was the reason I moved back home - to help care for Dad. While in high school, I had worked as a nursing assistant in a nursing home. I had experience as a caregiver.

When I arrived home, Dad was still in the hospital going through rehab learning to live life as a quad. Mom and I received training on how to care for Dad. I lived at home until September 1984 and helped with Dad's daily care. My brother lived about twenty minutes away and also helped. My sister lived seven hours away and helped when she was able to visit. It was an overwhelming time for the family.

The last time I had seen Dad with body and limbs intact was around May 1983. He had come to The Way College of Emporia in Kansas to visit me on a Parent's Weekend. He stayed on grounds in the Uncle Harry Dorm. He and I went dancing one night at a local pub. During his visit, he signed up for The Way's Power For Abundant Living Foundational Class. (Mom had taken the Foundational and Intermediate Classes back in 1978. Neither Mom nor Dad regularly attended Way Fellowships.)

Dad's Class was to run in July back in our hometown in North Carolina. He didn't make it to that Class, but did listen to it later at home, on cassette tapes as he lay in bed on his back. I was believing for Dad to be healed; he never was. (Click here to read about my first receiving the news of Dad's wreck. Click here to access more memoir posts about Dad and life with quadriplegia.)

Within a month or so of returning home, I got a job as a glazer for a local pottery artist. A few months later, I got a job as a shipping clerk and secretary at a manufacturer of buffing compound.

I did not immediately go to the local Way Fellowship when I arrived home in October 1983. I waited about one month and only went back after meeting a man who was "hungry for the Word." The only place I knew that had "the truth" was The Way, so I accompanied him to Twig Fellowship. When I returned to Fellowship, the local Corps leadership welcomed me with open arms and forgiveness. The man I took to Twig ended up in The Way Corps a few years later.

Though I didn't immediately return to Way Fellowship after returning home, I did immediately write Martindale, who was the Way Corps director and now the second president of The Way. He responded with, what appeared to me, compassion. In hindsight, perhaps his compassionate tone was due to Dad's quadriplegia. He encouraged me to stay faithful in the Household and to put my Corps training to good use; there were "too few of us for any to sit on the sidelines."

[After leaving The Way in 2005, I learned that in 1983 after I AWOLed from the 13th Corps, one of the Corps Coordinators (not Martindale, who was the director) announced at mealtime to The Way Corps at HQ that I was not worth the cost of a dime for a phone call. That was not Martindale's tone to me at all.]

I heeded Martindale's charge within the following month and then stayed faithful to The Way for the following twenty-two years.

But my Corps years were over. And I paid consequences for decades - physically with chronic health issues; and mentally, battling feelings of deep shame and reproach for breaking my commitment and never fulfilling my Way Corps calling.

Meanwhile, as I lived battling my shame, unknown to me and other followers, top Way leaders continued abusing their power engaging in rampant illicit sex with followers. That abuse continued for the next seventeen years.

(Last revised June, 2018)

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Click Part 3 below to continue.

• Seeking Life Along The Way: Part 1
• Seeking Life Along The Way: Part 2
• Seeking Life Along The Way: Part 3
• Seeking Life Along The Way: Addendum