Worst/strangest bookstudy group (page 2)

evita

I went to the same bookstudy for years at an elders house. The home was about 800 sq. ft. so you can imagine how small the living room was. In the summer the temp would sometimes reach the high 90's, even into the 100's. We were all crammed in there in our suits and pantyhose with no air conditioning. Ugh!
The only other young people besides my brother and sister were the elders kids. But they had other relatives there and they would all just sit together and laugh at their own private jokes. Occasionally we would see that they had treats for after the meeting but we were never invited to stay.
I pass that little house often on the way to visit my in-laws. It seems like a lifetime ago. I don't think anyone from that group is still in the "truth" except for the elder. His wife passed away and all the kids and relatives are out.

Thegoodgirl

Evita, reminds me of our book study at our house when I was a kid. We didn't have A/C and it would be SO HOT in the summer, I remember the brother who was reading, his shirt was soaking wet with sweat through and through. It was painful to watch. We kept bringing him ice water.

And we had the fans on, set up in the window, but then it just made it so hot, you could hardly hear people give their comments.

geevee

Whilst moving up the ranks, my wife and I were in heaps of different groups in our area. These were all an education.
One conductor would stop half way and get everyone in the group to recite the books of the bible. If anyone got one wrong, then the whole group had to start again from Genesis. It got very tedious very quickly.
Most conductors would drag the thing out the whole hour or more, like they were counting the time for it! may be they were?!
One guy would almost day dream in his analysis of whether he had extracted every once of life out of each paragraph. Loved the sound of his own voice.
Another one would do all this heavy JW research and then ask some obscure question that he , and only he would know the answer to. Talk about it. I got into him a couple of times for going 15-20 minutes overtime, he didn't like it either.
When I finally got the privelege, I found that if I kept it flowing and finished it early, everyone was happy, me especially.
in fact the only benefit of being an elder was that I didnt have to sit through someone elses boring book study.
We had the group in our house, and people used to take advantage of the situation, not respect our property and go anywhere in the house they wanted. One couple even had their kid vomitting in our spa bath! Like it didn't matter, and what the #*^k were they doing down there anyway!!
Oh they joy. So glad to have all my evening free these days.

Inquisitor

I once attended this book study where the conducter was an arrogant SOB. The congregation treated him like Moses though. Admired him for his long-service (it was a young congregation), his secular achievements, and for a superior command of English. Not surprisingly, he got away for his gruff demeanor because we must "bow before gray-headedness" blah blah.
Anyway, in Elder SOB's book study group, he had a habit of picking on people to answer questions. We'd answer the questions that were in the book. Problem is he felt a need to engage us on a higher intellectual level. So SOB would come up with really tough trivia questions or what he would like to think are "thought-provoking questions". And when the group was too timid to play his game (he does embarass you if you got the answer wrong), he'd start pointing at random bros and sisters and get them to answer.

Once, I was in one of those teenage moods with a lot of pent-up hostility, and I had to attend the bookstudy. SOB noticed that I hadn't contributed to the group's ~~humiliation~~ encouragement yet.

So he gleefully pointed at me and said, "Inq, why don't you tell us since you haven't participated yet."

I was secretly delighted that he'd pick on me in my angst. I kept mum, inviting stares from the brothers. Annoyed, SOB barked, "Inq, I'm talking to you."

Then with an icy smile I said, "I'm sorry, but I didn't realize I'd raised my hand"

Some were already shaking their heads...at me, not him.

"I KNOW you didn't raise your hand. I'm CALLING on you to answer the question."
"Oh, I don't know" (I know, I know, kinda anti-climactic huh)

Boy, did I get into trouble with Dad that night.

This practice of picking on the sheep to answer was eventually abandoned when the Watchtower came up with an article on how meetings should be conducted. Even SOB knew his power had its limits lol.

INQ

TresHappy

I started out in a horrible book study and then changed to a great book study...they actually had fun. The horrible one met in an elder's home. It was informal, but my parents went and MY MOM would come over during the meeting and mess with my skirt to make sure I wasn't showing anything (mind you I was in my early 20's by then...) I thought that's it and went to another book study. Not long after the only sweet family that went to the horrible book study were killed in a horrible car accident. The parents died, several of the children. I think one or two kids actually survived the crash and one died later and one did actually make it but had injuries. I asked Mom about that child not too long ago and said she was married now but thankfully has no memory of the crash.

blondie

my favorite was the nut-job conductor who made us "role-play" while reading the Greatest Man book (round 1 -- early 90's). That's right, we were all assigned characters (Jesus, apostles, and a narrator), and were supposed to read whenever our character "spoke".

We had a conductor that did that...actually it was a change for the same old.

I can remember certain things and some others told me:

1) Pretending to go from door to door after the book study with other kids acting as the homeowner...it helped deal with the fear of actually doing it

2) Speaking of bathrooms, at one a young girl turned the water on in the bathroom and left it on. It flooded the house.

The boys that showered the walls in the bathroom and wet toilet tissue and made it stick to the ceiling.

3) The sister that went into the bedrooms and stole jewelry so that the homeowners had to put locks on the bedroom doors.

4) Ever had a conductor ask an extemporaneous question that no one had a clue where he was going with it?

5) The conductor that never pre-studied and had to have someone tell him where it started.

6) The book study that was attended by half the congregation who had not been assigned there because they "liked" the conductor.

7) Book study locations where the meetings for field service had to be at the KH.

8) Book study condcutors who would rather an unbaptized male read than a baptized female.

9) Conductors that would call on people even if their hand weren't raised

10) Conductors that refused to have families attend that had children.

11) Book studies that had to end before Cosby came on or before the mall's closed.

12) Book study conductors that never went out in service with the group.............never.

Blondie

GentlyFeral

silentWatcher remembers:

I think I can one-up you here.
my favorite was the nut-job conductor who made us "role-play" while reading the Greatest Man book (round 1 -- early 90's). That's right, we were all assigned characters (Jesus, apostles, and a narrator), and were supposed to read whenever our character "spoke".

You know, if the material was actually any good, people wouldn't have to resort to such pathetic gimmicks.

gently feral

Woofer

The worst one was in this elders house when I was growing up. He had 9 kids and they had only one working bathroom. There was NEVER any toilet paper, soap or a hand towel to dry your hands on.

The couches smelled like pee and you often had ants running over your toes in the summer time. Oh I forgot to add that there was never any air conditioning either.

daniel-p

Man, you guys had some horrible experiences. Well, other than that one experience of the overtly sexual statement by an elder with a son who was a child molester (which I posted in the worst book study BOOKS thread), there were some akward experiences.
When I was a young MS (like 18-19 yrs), I had to conduct a lot because the conducter was sick much of the time. I ended up conducting about 60% of the time. During the beginging, when I didn't have much experience, I would have everyone in the whole group read scriptures (this was during the Greatest Man book), but I didn't realize that some were really bad readers and were very embarrased when I just assumed they would read a few verses. I did this a couple of times when someone said something and I felt really bad about it.
I always got stuck with the ones who did not comment at all. And then there would be this one girl who had seizures and I'd have to maintain some semblance of order during it all - one time I just told everyone we'd take a 10 minute break until things calmed down again. I actually enjoyed conducting studies in my later years because I was the one who kept it moving and didn't spend time asking the same question 10 different ways. I knew people liked that, because I had spent many a book study with people agonizing over every single dumb sentence the WT said.
I had been disliking it more and more though, as especially in the Isaiah books it was the same thing over and over (literally) week after week.

james_woods

When I was out in western oklahoma where the need was great, I got to be the only servant and acting PO for one summer while we were between special pioneers. This meant I had to do all the meetings myself except for the hour talk - (we had a schedule for visiting speakers for this). We usually had the book study right in the kingdom hall because there were only about as many congregation members as a large book study anyway. Many of these lived in other towns or way out in the boonies and it was a real effort to make 3 trips a week plus service.

So, I finally just cancelled the book study on my own recognizance and we didn't start them again until that late fall when we finally got a replacement special pioneer.

I could see that most of the congregation was kind of pissed when we made them start doing it the society way and have them again - in somebody's house.

James

Worst/strangest bookstudy group

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