``Quality Time'' in Field Service: Fact or Fiction

Room 215

Hi all,
Based on comments in various threads, it seems that many of you are acquainted with the various ``dodges'' JWs use to strech out their field service time: foot-dragging, driving around on return visits from one far-flung end of the territory to the other, the skilful avoidance of contact with housholders, coffee breaks, etc. etc.
Do you have any impression of how pervasive these time-wasting such practices are, and what proportion of the time reported by JWs is actually bogus and not spent productively? Or, put another way, how rare is is to encounter who just loves to go out and who uses his/her time efficiently from beginning to end?
My impression is that such publishers/pioneers are few and far between, and that for the vast majority, going out in field service is no more than a ``feel good' exercise, an instalment payment on their New World home. Most, I think, despise it and wish it would go away, but would never dare to say so
What do you think?

drahcir yarrum

I always disliked door to door work. It was embarrassing to have to go to the doors of grade school, middle school and high school students I knew. When I got out of school and pioneered I spent 70% of my field service time by myself going through the motions. I'd meet for service and make up some excuse that I had a bible study out in the sticks or some other bogus reason to get away from the crowd. I'd then knock on a door to start my time, grab a paper and have coffee somewhere where I'd never be seen. Needless to say, I don't miss it.

Hmmm

When I started pioneering, I started working with people from other congregations. At first I worried that they might be the "gung ho" type, who would want to be efficient in their time. Without saying a word, they used the same time-wasting tactics that I and my friends used. After a short time, whenever I visited a new congregation, I didn't worry at all that I might actually have to use my time effectively.

Then I went to Pioneer School and found Unit 24: How to count time without actually preaching in the appendix. And here I thought I'd been inventing ways to waste time, when Pioneers had been learning them all along!

Hmmm

Teirce

I'll freely admit that I came to enjoy field service for the chance to get out and see nature, the land, the sky, the water. (rural central PA, mountians and rivers, but have worked in central WV. I became pagan because of seeing so much natural beauty in field service.) It was also a perfect excuse to get some distance/up close onto other people's property to see their architecture, home decor, interesting possessions, landscaping and scenery. The long drives in rural areas afforded excellent music opportunities with my other fellow young-male pioneers, those who had some taste in music. You had fair reason to go to various restaurants in out of the way places. I would often meet and go by myself on a bible study that I knew had good odds of not being there. I also insisted on driving because I knew how to drive more than abundantly slow and provide the most pleasant, unurgent ride.

I've only known of one sister who used a stopwatch to count time. It may have been as close as she could get to how deathly conscious the bros were of their precious platform time.

Farkel

Room 215,

I'm bringing this to the top because I think it is worth more comments and consideration.

My slant is the expression "Joyous Service" coined by the WTS. I vacation pioneered for many summers and pioneered for years. I also "took the lead" in many field service excusions. I rarely saw "Joyous Service." What I did see occassionally were "joyous dubs" who placed several dozen magazines, but "joyous service?" Nope.

The term "pioneer shuffle" was used thirty years ago, and it is and was pejorative. I have seen dubs over the years working various neighborhoods and they STILL shuffle.

There must have been such a different attitude in the early 1930's when the depression was in full force and people needed some "hope." I suspect that dubs back then had real enthusiasm back then. After all, only THEY had the solution for ALL of man's problems and man had a bunch of problems back then. But even in the years before 1975 that energy was not there. At least in what I observed. People were just "putting in" their time in order to gain salvation.

I've been to field service meetings at the Kingdom Hall with only 15 or 20 people there and from the time the meeting dismissed until the time the "car groups" actually got on the road, we formed, funded, and deployed the first Atomic Bomb through the Manhattan Project. Ok, so I exaggerate. We only formed, funded and BUILT the first atomic bomb in the time it took to get the car groups on the road.

I knew pioneers who did street work at four in the morning on streets that were virtually empty in order to "get in their time."

I had a Christian conscience, though, because I started my street work at five-thirty in the morning when two or three cars per hour would drive by and wonder what kind of an idiot was standing on a corner like a mannequin holding out magazines when there were no pedestrians.

You should write me, Room 215. We have much to share with each other. I've never betrayed a confidence.

Farkel

"When in doubt, duck!"

VeniceIT

OHHHH MAN the things we did to get our time in. I ALWAYS had a rural territory!!!! And we lvoed an excuse to go WAY out of our territory. We used to take the kids to the river or park for breaks. Actually I did have a lot of fun in service. I became more free with my time. I thought Jehovah would rather we be joyful then overly concernd with how we counted it. I'm SOOOO GLAD I felt that way.

With all of our driving ALL DAY, ALL OVER I wonder how much of the air pollution is due to the JW's preaching work??? I wonder if we could get the environmentalists after them .

Ven

"WE will make NO distinction between those who commit the act of Pedophilia and those who harbor them!!!"

Mommie Dark

The only person I ever knew who genuinely liked service was an old gent who frankly had no other activity to fill his time. He was entirely oblivious to the attitude or opinion of householders, and was deaf as a post to boot, and hardly anyone would work with him because he would go on nattering about the Kingdom even in the face of outright hostility and threat. He worked alone most all the time, and the service overseer would have to forcibly take away his favorite territories and replace them, because he would hit the same streets over and over for weeks on end.

Last week we were in a parking lot on a busy corner and saw four Jdubs in service go walking past. They were in a business district with stores and churches mostly, very few homes scattered in between. They were all doing that 'pioneer shuffle' R-E-A-L slow up the block and through the intersection. The men were walking together and were even slower than the women.

I pointed them out to Little Dark and told him what they were doing. When I told him that their slow deliberate pace was called 'the pioneer shuffle' he cracked up and started singing a fave Dr. Demento tune, "The Thorazine Shuffle". He got their attention, too...one of the old gents gave us a look that would melt paint. This made Little go off into more gales of giggles.

How can anyone take them seriously when they look so hangdog and unhappy doing what they do? My ten-year-old can see it for pete's sake!

larc

Memories, Memories,

I remember two people that enjoyed field service. One was Ulga Wilfong. She was very extraverted and just loved to talk to people and time any where. The other was John Richards an old time truely annointed, if you know what I mean. He was a driven man. He was my theorcratic ministry school servant and he was very good at it. I learned a lot from that man, and I had the great love and admiration for him.

As for as efficienty goes, I remember one time we were out in country territory. It dawned on me that it would be very efficient if I dropped everyone off down the road, then circled back and picked up the first one I dropped off. Well, we were moving along pretty well. I was driving and everyone else was working. For some reason they took a dim view of my strategy.

For me, the door to door work was a chore. For my mother, it was almost traumatic. She was a shy woman, and she was always nervous at the door. I felt sorry for her.

Englishman

Memories! Many's the time that I have been out "preaching" without so much as even speaking to a "prospect". Country villages were my favourite. Drive out for maybe 45 minutes or so - Blagdon, Cheddar or Priddy were favourites after shoving out-of-date mag through door to start time, stop in village and unload sisters to canvass area, suggest to another bro that we maybe should walk up to the farms to preach to the farm workers. After 30 minutes walking, spy sheep dog on landscape and suggest that it could be ferocious, maybe we should turn back. Drive sisters home, go for a pint at lunch time, leave leaflet on bar, Bingo! 4 hours solid preaching!

Englishman.

..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.

Pathofthorns

I think especially recently a real apathy among the JWs has set in toward the preaching work. Most make an appearance to "keep the elders off their backs" and that is all.

I see less and less JWs actually on the streets as in past years, and more in cars and coffee shops. I can't really blame them. There is nothing new and exciting and the message is getting stale and vague.

Path

``Quality Time'' in Field Service: Fact or Fiction

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