A member of the GB spoke in this area recently. I understand one talk was about endurance. No surprise there.
I was informed that he mentioned there has been talk of cutbacks at Bethel. He said there were not cutbacks but because the productivity with faster equipment requiring less workers and also because much of the printing that was being done in other countries, some have left Bethel to go to the MS training school or out to where help was needed in the field. I was told they are still accepting and encouraging applications to come to Bethel.
This didn't make sense to me. However after talking to someone in the know, it seems this is like any large corporation. They are getting rid of the dead weight that costs them and probably recruiting new blood that is trained and up on the latest technology. That makes sense, after all it is nothing but a large corporation where the bottom line is important.
I started thinking about the talk about endurance. I remember going to meetings when the CO was in town, and hearing talks about how the numbers were down in the congregation or maybe the circuit. Got to motivate the troops. Lay on the guilt trip, that always seems to work. But for them to ever admit that there was a slowdown worldwide, or maybe that they really needed to make cutbacks at Bethel, I don't think that will never happen even if it was true. It would be too demoralizing to the troops.