CHAPTER 1

When the transmission ended, we sat in stunned silence. The document had taken two and a half hours to read. Several minutes passed before anything happened. The first person to move was the organist, who walked out, sat down and began playing what might have been a funeral dirge.

A few minutes later our Corps coordinator, Michael Fort, walked slowly to the front of the room. He stepped up to the lectern, faced us squarely, put his chin up and started talking. The gist of his short statement was that we should "go to the Word" for an understanding of what we had just heard. All activities for the rest of the night were canceled.

We exited the building in surreal silence. Usually we left Corps Night buzzing with talk, but not a soul was talking now. People were barely even looking at each other.

I walked straight to my room and changed into my Corps sweats. In the semi-privacy of the dorm a few people started talking. I didn't want to talk to anybody, I just wanted to be alone.

I walked out to the track, but before running I paced up and down in the parking lot beside it, and I asked myself one question.

Am I in this ministry because of men or because of God?

If it was because of men, then I should leave now, because every living man I looked up to had just been discredited by the man I looked up to most of all.

But if it was because of God, then I should stay, because the failure of men is no discredit to God.

It had to be the latter. It had to be.

I had joined because of men -- not to forget women -- but that was not the reason I was here today. I had internalized what those men and women taught me, which was putting God first. If all three trustees resigned in disgrace tomorrow, it would blacken God's eye not in the least. Men come and go, God abides forever.

I stepped onto the track and started running.

There was another runner on the other side on the track, I couldn't make out who. I didn't want to catch up to him or have to pass him, I just wanted to run alone. As I ran I kept telling myself that I was in this ministry because of God. What I had heard tonight was devastating, but it would not cripple me. I was not sitting in a corner somewhere weeping over the ruins of The Way, I was running around the track in my Corps sweats at my usual pace, my seven-minute mile.

I saw across the track that the other runner had been stopped by a third figure. I ran on, rounding the curve, until I came close enough to see who they were.

The runner was my 14th Corps brother David Scovel, who had been made an Area coordinator, which was the top of the pyramid for in-residence Corps. The other person was Richard Clancy, the assistant Corps coordinator.

Richard signaled for me to stop. I slowed from a run to a jog to a full stop in front of them.

"Now, what were you told to do tonight?" asked Richard, eyes darting back and forth between us.

"Go to the Word," said David.

"Right," said Richard. "Go to the Word. So what are you doing running?"

I looked at Richard with a combination of respectful silence and healthy contempt. Tonight of all nights, he was going to bust us for this?

We had just been told that "basically no one" in the leadership of the Way Corps could be trusted spiritually. Chris Geer had neglected to mention that Richard Clancy happened to be an exception to this rule.

"See, instead of going to the Word, you just want to blow it all out," said Richard. "You just want to blow it all out of your system and go running. You think running can bring you some kind of deliverance that God's Word can't."

Scovel, who didn't get to be an Area coordinator by arguing with Corps coordinators, was quick to acknowledge that we were wrong.

Richard looked to me for a like expression of acquiescence. I just looked down.

"Men, I suggest you go back to your dorms, get your Bibles, open them up and do what you were told to do: go to the Word."

David and I mumbled assent and were dismissed.

I walked back to my dorm. Now, on top of being generally devastated, I was righteously pissed off. Where did Richard get off thinking I couldn't "go to the Word" while I was running? I could "go to the Word" while running, working, eating or staring into space. Maybe Richard needed his Bible open to "go to the Word" -- or maybe all he needed was a late-night stroll to find two senior Corps people to reprove -- but to me, "going to the Word" didn't require opening the Bible. I had the damn thing memorized. What I needed to do was think.

Richard, looking for his own understanding of what we'd just heard, thought the problem was people like David and me who weren't following the letter of our leaders' instructions. The real problem was people like Richard who thought they held the truth and were entitled by God to dictate it to those they outranked. The problem was authoritarian leadership, the only kind The Way had ever known. The problem was rule by decree, devoid of any legitimate authority. The problem was people like Richard Clancy.

© Karl Kahler 1999