Word Over the World: Scene One

I'm currently working on a personal project which involves editing/reworking my story, Seeking Life Along The Way, a three-part narrative I first wrote in 2008.

In refining the narrative I am dividing each Part into Scenes. Following is the first scene of Part 2.

(To read the reworked Part 1, click here: Why Would Anyone Join a Cult?)

~*~

Word Over the World
Scene One

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."

Victor Paul 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 he was the Son of God.

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

I was nineteen years old.

~*~

Click here for Scene Two.