What was the Real Motivation behind the Conventions?
What was the Real Motivation behind the Conventions?
As to the WTS motivation in HAVING them, who knows? (but the reasons already mentioned sound reasonable)
As to GOING to them -- well, if you were a single witness above the age of 13, I believe the main motivation was meeting the opposite sex :-) I mean, how were we EVER supposed to get married if we didn't have these large "mixers" so we could find a JW partner who lived on the other side of the country and then marry them the day we turned 18...
Without conventions, I'm thinking there would have been a great many more marriages "out of the organization".
So, keeping the young ones corralled to breed with "their own" maybe?
NanaR