I heard of an interesting sheparding call where two elders stopped by a brothers house (on a Saturday morning...hmmm, I wonder, did they stop counting their time...but I digress)...anyhoo, they came to this brothers house to "encourage" him.
It seems he had been missing a lot of meetings and his service time was way down.
Now, knowing that this brother's wife suffered from depression and that there was some marital strife, they still sought to "encourage" him by putting pressure on him to "do more", as if this would solve all his problems.
I know the two elders and before everyone gets a bad picture of them, they're actually okay guys...its just that they're unqualified to act as marriage counselors or to give advice in the mental health field. So, in true WT fashion, they resort to attributing this brother's lack of meeting attendance and service time as part of the problem.
A lot of JWs would fold under this pressure and give in to the guilt or fear and promise to be at the next meeting and make arrangements to share in the ministry the next week. We've been there. We've felt the guilt. Our initial reaction is that we've let Jehovah down and we've go to do better.
But once you've gotten away from that WTthink you realize its all BS. We even wonder later how dumb were we to let them control us so.
This brother must be starting to think on his own and without help from outside information or sources. His response was more gutsy than anything that I would have ever said while I was still in. I can only paraphrase but it went something like this after being asked if he would like to schedule time to work with the elders in field service:
"Not really. I'm going to be honest here. I hate field service. I hate wasting my Saturdays knocking on people's doors. I don't like people that much. I don't care enough about them to tell them that they need to study the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses if they want to live forever. I'd rather spend it with my own family and work on our own problems."
I was not told the ramifications of that response. I would guess it does not bode well for him in the congregation but I think it's a start down the path to freedom from WT opression. I see this brother from time to time and I hope to drop some hints of things that can get him thinking for himself even more.