No, they won't push college now -- they never have and they never will. They'll just redouble their efforts to get as many people as possible to pioneer until they think up the next doomsday prophecy.
Nina
Hint of disillusionment among bethelites regarding downsizing?
by watch the tower 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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RunningMan
Well, you could say that straight backwards is a change in direction.
As for where they will go, there are fewer than 5000 COs worldwide, so how many openings can there be? Special pioneers were all but eliminated a few years back - my sister and brother in law were laid off after 20 years of service. In all likelihood, it will be suggested that they take on pioneering at their own expense - so, they exchange one volunteer job for another. Sounds good on the surface, crap underneath.
This is just the typical spin that a corporation uses when it is laying off people - they're not really being fired, just liberated to work somewhere else. -
cruzanheart
I'd hate to be the young Bethelite who was scrubbing floors in New York one day and reassigned to a "foreign Bethel" the next! You can bet the "foreign Bethel" won't be a cushy spot like England!
Nina
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FaithfulDoubter
I think all the talk about going to bethel is a regional thing when you're close to Bethel. I've heard about this downsizing before. Really, it's only a matter of time before it's cheaper to do all the printing in some poor country using Bethelites there, and then NY will consist of only a shipping, writing, and movie making place. They could easily run it with far fewer people.
I don't see that this will have any impact on the push against higher education. Maybe in a publishers mind. But, the push against higher education is being reinforced with tales of 'not many college graduates get good jobs' and so on. They're also emphasizing going into pioneer work, so that's probably what they really want. This downsizing is first and foremost, a business decision.
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sir82
Who was it that said, "either the org. will reform, or it will just get crazier & crazier"?
Here you have 1000+ of the org's best, the cream of the crop, Bethelites, pushed out into the street, with the expectation that they will all pioneer.
If you are a "good JW", your career aspirations are allowed to take one of 2 paths: be a lifetime pioneer or be a Bethelite.
So, there are thousands more "good JW" teens who now have practically no hope of entering Bethel. So, the big push will be to send them off pioneering.
Pioneer, pioneer, pioneer! All at a time when the preaching work has never been more ineffective or inefficient, and the Society resolutely refuses to update its methods from the 1940's.
I wonder if this is the beginning of a wave of disillusion, and an ever steeper decline in numbers?
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Clam
They could trade the chariot in for a motorbike and side car - more practical and a better economy.
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FairMind
I wonder if this is the beginning of a wave of disillusion, and an ever steeper decline in numbers?
That is my thought precisely. I bet quite a few of those who are reassigned will not stick with their new assignments.
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TheListener
In my experience the new assignments for those leaving will stick - but only for a little while. Perhaps a year or less after leaving the pressures of living a "normal" life on the outside will take its toll.
If the ones leaving are married at least one mate will stop pioneering and have to work full-time.
If the ones leaving have been there more than 10 years they have forgotten what it's like on the outside. They were bethel "lifers" used to getting their clothes from the hopper. The congregations will only help support them for so long.
If it's a young new boy that's asked to leave they will just move home, get married and one of the two will pioneer. Until they develop a chronic illness which makes them leave the pioneer ranks.
All just my opinion of course.
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willyloman
This is one more sign that the WTS' ranks are thinning and the work is slowing down.
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bavman
I personally am very happy to hear this as I have a ten year old boy who goes to meetings with his mom. Hopefully now there won't be much calling for him to go to bethel.