Will the change to the Watchtower be followed by a change to the meetings?

by yaddayadda 27 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  quixote

  Change comes slowly at the WTS. If any radical changes are made it may shock the r&f into conciousness. We wouldn't want to wake them up would we ?

  Q.
• 

  minimus

  If JWs who work on Saturdays, have to tell their employers, they MUST have that time off now, it would create havoc, yet again. Many persons, esp. in retail work on a Saturday. Besides, who would want to dissect the Rev. Book first thing on a Saturday morning?? Having a Sat.AND Sun. meeting is too much for most. Imagine Thursday nights and EVERY weekend forever??
• 

  NeonMadman

  Switching the book study to Saturday morning might have the effect of putting more pressure on everybody to go out in service. However, I suspect that the net result would be that people who didn't want to go out witnessing on Saturday would also skip the book study so as not to get the "evil eye" for failing to go out and preach. Overall, I'm betting attendance at the book study would drop dramatically.
• 

  metatron

  Fewer meetings? I strongly doubt it. It contradicts their efforts at control of the thralls/zombies.

  As for the evolution of Saturday bookstudies, you need to understand how this happened. Many

  congregations had publishers who worked nights OR who were elderly and didn't want to drive at

  night. So, Sat. morning bookstudies allowed 'oldtimers' to get together and ramble on about the

  'good old days' in the "truth". It was a marginal success.

  It's more likely that they will learn from the Catholic church - keep strict rules in place and ignore

  the decay. Also, the 2/3 voting arrangement on the Governing Body almost guarantees a lack of

  change by a body of men who can't agree on much of anything ( see Samuel Herd's surprizing

  comments last summer).

  Changes? whatever cash flow and lawyers say. Other than that, they don't care about the

  friends.

  metatron
• 

  GermanXJW

  What were Samuel Herd's surprizing comments?
• 

  Blueblades

  The Bethelites work half a day on saturday and it's in the morning. Guess what, no bethelites will make the sat. am book study. That leaves it up to the local pool of brothers to take turns conducting and taking the lead. I use to conduct the book study on tuesday afternoons 2pm for the elderly ones who could not make it out at evening times. Then we did a little street work about 3:30pm handing out the invitations to the KIngdom Hall for about one hour. That gave the elderly four easy hours a month to report. By 4:30pm they were home early enough to get ready for their dinner and or medications.

  Blueblades
• 

  sir82

  Actually, the Society has little / no control on when the JWs hold their meetings. I think the new OD book says something about holding them "when it is convenient for most in the community" or something like that.

  They stipulate that there must be 5 meetings, but when they are held is pretty much up to each congregation. Traditionally it is Sunday / Tuesday / Thursday, but it is nowhere written it has to be those days.

  Forcing all congregations to have a Saturday morning bookstudy would be a logistical nightmare. Some Kingdom Halls house 3 or 4 congregations, and each congregation must have at least one a Book study conducted at the KH (so those "unclean DF-ed ones" can show their 'works befitting repentance' by attending).

  Can you imagine 4 or more book study groups shouting over each other trying to be heard in a KH auditorium? Most KHs only have one or 2 "back rooms" where a book study could be held.
• 

  Fleshybirdfodder

  We had a Saturday morning bookstudy and the attendance was abysmal. It meant absolutely no sleeping in at all, since we had our Sunday meetings in the morning as well. Even the "stronger" ones in our group had issues making it on time because most of them worked nights cleaning, and if we were to get a reasonable amount of service time in we had to start at 8:30 am. It pushed others away because it was "expected" that everyone was going out after the study, and our conductor was so gung ho he made those who weren't raise their hand so he could get a count of those who were. I used to like it because it gave me a free weeknight, I'd basically sleep through it (wasn't hard, we were doing the Isaiah book at the time) and didn't care who looked at me high and mightly for not going out in compulsary service. I think it pushed some of the "weaker ones" away because they didn't like the pressure of being expected to go out. I can't see any major GB initiated universal change to the meeting system. We did Saturday morning groups because we either had a shortage of homes to host the BS on weekinights and had to use the B school in the hall, or a shortage of brothers able to take the group on weeknights. My point being that attendance to the BS (consistantly the worst attended meeting in our circuit) definitely did not go up when switched to Saturday mornings.

  FBF
• 

  becca1

  I agree that a change is necessary and called for but I don't see them altering the meetings too much. They've made too big a deal all these years of our "needing" all these meetings, that to cut any on of them out would be like "losing face" We all know the Society doesn't do that.
• 

  sspo

  Many good ideas

  Just put them on paper and send them to the teaching dept.