PRAYERS that you have endured.....

by nomoreguilt 10 Replies latest jw friends

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  nomoreguilt

  In the course of our wasted time in the org we have all expierenced/ suffered through the ten minute closing prayers at assemblies/conventions. So many times there have been others that just couldn't escape our attention. Humble wanna be's, Pious glorified one's, and just out and out condemnatory oratories to the flock. The following is just, well , you decide...

  It was a Sunday morning at the local cong. The chosen MS, a rather how shall I describe him, absent minded at times, distracted brother, is opening the public talk after the song with prayer. " Heavenly father, yada, yada. Goes through his attempt, (not knocking him mind you), at his prayer. So, without skipping a beat, he goes right into introducing the speaker with out the AMEN. While doing this he happens to look up, seeing that we all still have our heads bowed, some of us were looking up at him thinking WTF are you doing. Upon realizing what he had just done, says " OOOOPS"!!! With that he says, " AMEN" , and steps off the platform.

  HMMMM.....needless to say, after the meeting I observed the PO having a word with him in the back. True story. A few years later, don't know why, he and his wife were divorced, and he left the state. He had a number of other problems in his life, but that is not for me to comment on.

  NMG
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  WTWizard

  They are all sterile. Any time anyone prays for something personal, Brother Hounder makes sure that the person is told that it is not appropriate. Still, they do manage to ramble on about those in lands where the need is greater, the Value Destroyer Training "School(??)" (and that Jehovah Baghead keep anyone that is presently qualified from ever finding a wife so they could still qualify; even in not in so many words), where storms and persecution are problems, blessing the work, that we all find ways to give up our lives to make room for more field circus, etc. And that's just congregation prayers.

  At the a$$emblies, it is usually the sheer length. It is proper for private prayers to be long (even if they are a total waste of time). But at least they do not repeatedly give the audience false hope for the end of the program. When they recap the whole program during the prayer, and basically pray that everyone is going to give up their lives and do more field circus, I feel like praying to Satan that the person delivering the prayer collapse and bust the microphone. Or that Satan impede, successfully, the whole field misery. I would like nothing more than to see the whole crowd go out that night and buy the CD 50 Cent The Massacre, along with a portable CD player, and listen to that during the program the next day instead of the program.
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  Dismembered

  In our final days of those torturous meetings, I used to drive my wife nuts by timing different long winded ones who prolonged the agony with their oratory prowess. One guy would spend a minimus of 3 1/2 mins up there everytime! I used to cringe when they called on him to end the meeting.

  Of the "I sure don't miss that crap" class

  Dismembered
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  Lo-ru-hamah

  There was one elder that would pray and end his prayer so funny. I laughed everytime. It is really hard to type out how he said it but he would say Jesus real long, Jeeeeesus, then he would same "name" a little less long and then amen real clipped. There were those stinking long prayers and we would time them. My brother in law would constantly say, Father this and that, Father, Father. He would say it probably ten to twenty times in a prayer. It drove me crazy.

  sheri
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  nomoreguilt

  We had another black brother at an assembly that you could just tell that it was scripted. He was reading it word for word, you could even discern the gaps between the sentences. Had punctuation here and there, very tacky.......he must have writtten it from his HEART the night before.
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  Shawn10538

  Actually, doctrinally speaking, the prayer giver does not have to say Amen. When I first went to Bethel it was semi-common to hear a prayer where the speaker, usually higher-up ones and old-timers, did not say amen. It is thelisteners that need to agree or disagree with the prayer. If the speaker didn't agree with what he prayed about he wouldn't have said it in the first place, so no need to say amen.
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  Hortensia

  Bro Knorr, Pasadena, can't remember which year. Huge crowd, all standing their with our stuff in our arms as he went on and on and on and on. Followed by a record breaking traffic jam.
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  exwitless

  We used to have an MS in our cong. who always had lots of change in his pocket. And during those long-winded prayers, he would stand in the back and absent-mindedly jingle the change in his pocket the entire time. It was very annoying.

  There were some elders who always said the same things every time. You could practically mouth the words along with them they were so scripted.

  The change-jingling MS was THE MOST LONG-WINDED prayer-sayer ever. And it was just random crap he'd pray about just to have something to say. He was also one of those who would say FATHER about 50 million times: "And FATHER we thank you for..." "and FATHER please..." "FATHER we pray"...

  Oh, to never have to endure one of those endless meaningless prayers again. Pure bliss.

  Did anyone else ever hear the catch phrase "Jehovah, we send you our love..." near the end of public prayers? This was very commonplace in our cong. until there was a Special Needs Talk about that. They said it was inappropriate to say that in a public prayer. I can't remember the reasoning. Anyone remember that?
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  memario

  Can you remember needing to go to the bathroom just as the prayer began? phew! almost didn't make it!

  mem
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  ramtrucker

  As a youngster, my parents started taking me and my siblings to the meetings in the late 1940s. I continued going as a young adult, then gradually faded, although I went to circuit assemblies and district assemblies, even attended the assembly in New York City in 1958.
  
  In the younger days, the prayer at least at the congregations I attended, was ended with "Amen". spoken by the person giving the prayer.
  
  No one in the audience followed suit.
  
  So at some point, when I occasionally attended a meeting in the late 1980s and into the present, I was surprised that everyone was uttering the word Amen at the end of the prayer.
  
  When My 2nd wife and I married and I've gone to her Nazarine church gatherings occasionally, I realized everyone there says Amen at the end of the prayer.
  
  So I was led to wonder if Jehovah's Witnesses adopted that habit because they came into the "truth" from other religions that did say Amen at the end of their prayers.