by juni 10 Replies latest jw friends
I had to get your attention somehow.....
In the congregation you attended/or attend, for new ones that come, did/do the members address them as "brother so and so" / "sister so and so" ??
Or do new ones have to wait for a period of time to prove their "worthiness" of being addressed in that way?
Juni ~~~~
Boy are you rusty sister Juni. Even visiting ones get called bro and sis as long as they have a nice suit on.
Brother Gumby
But, they can only be called brother or sister if they are baptized. In my congregation, when a non-baptized person was called on to answer a question, they were always addressed by their first name.
In my old kh you had to wait to get baptized to be called that when i was growing up. Then once i was baptized they started calling people who were just studying bro and sis. I think it depended on how much they answered up, as the dubs just didnt wanna be rude to the new ones by just using their first name.
That's what I thought.......d*** liberal Californians get to party and do all sorts of fun stuff.
I'm in the Midwest (conservative for the most part in the cong.) We were told you CAs were very loose in your "ways". LOL I speak the truth....
Very interesting answers here....... this is new to me and I was in for 21 years.
Thanks!
Juni
As I recall (over 20 years ago) the formal address (as in a meeting) was always "brother or sister + surname" right after baptism, never before. A non-baptised would be called "Mr., Mrs. or Ms" -- but in informal situations people would generally call each other by their first names, baptised or unbaptised.
Another French feature is that you had to use the informal (or more intimate) you-address ("tu") instead of the more formal one ("vous") between baptised JWs, regardless of age or social relationship. Which was a bit strange to non-JW onlookers. I remember the case of a JW woman in her 40s, married to a non-JW man, both very high-class. They would use the formal "vous" when addressing to each other (it's unusual, but it happens), but I (in my early 20s back then) would use the informal "tu" when addressing her, in her husband's presence, which was weird.
In Portuguese congregations I sometimes heard people calling elderly women by combining the equivalents of "sister" and "lady" (irmâ dona X), because "sister" was deemed disrespectful.
Hey Juni,
I had to wait until I proved myself out in the door to door work. Think I had to do it for a solid month.....then I also got my first KM. My brother was an elder and NEVER called me Brother Bronzefist even though I was his actual brother....go figure.
brzfst
I feel honored Nark that you posted here. How are you doing?
I took 7 years of French so am familiar w/the "tu" and "vous". Very interesting.
What a bunch of snobbery....
Juni ~~
In my cong. we were called "brothers" and "sisters" from the moment we officially became publishers. We did not have to wait a month or wait till after babtism.
Then it was "sister + surname" or "sister + firstname surname" if there were more than one sister with the same surname.
For non-publishers it was either "firstname" (mainly kids) or "full name" (grownups).
Here in Norway titles like Mr./Ms./Mrs. is not used at all. Perhaps only when calling upon really old and/or upper class people, not that there are many of them left.
kifoy
I was called "sister" by some and Linda by others when I became an unbaptised publisher. Once I was baptised, everyone called me sister
