OK..that is cool.... I saved it to my computer... I like the sharks.... we could add the Brooklyn skyline or the WT logo (bible and tower)...
Snakes ()
Congregation politics are so bitter precisely because the stakes are so low
by Olin Moyles Ghost 17 Replies latest jw friends
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Virgochik
I grew up on stories about the servants, as they called them when I was a kid in the 60's and 70's. We usually had a long drive home from meetings on school nites, so I'd curl up in the back seat burrowed into my coat to sleep. This was because my dad would storm off with our publisher cards to a Hall in a nearby town because he'd got into it with the clique and moved us to another congregation. (It usually wasn't much better.)
Then, it began. My dad would rant all the way home to my mom about the latest backstabbing and snarky comments the brothers made in the library. Competition was fierce to be PO or just to be powerful in the congregation, and there was more campaigning than in election year!
Even as a child it bothered me. How could those brothers be so mean to my daddy? If my daddy was always angry and upset and planning revenge against his latest rival, was something wrong at the Hall? I sensed something very wrong with the picture and knew hypocrisy when I saw it. There was always a rush to butter up the new CO and DO even if it meant badmouthing some other brother. Dad said he could tell he'd been slandered prior to meeting them, by the way they acted funny towards him. He'd find out the CO had been invited to dinner at Brother Backstabber's home the night before and he'd been talked about.
Then there were the wives who ran their own gossip rings and never included my mom, because of their husbands feuding. Some of the sisters would swoop past me with a smirk, because mom wasn't in the clique, and I was only a child!
All the way home, they talked about different ones and even had nicknames for people. It was really ugly and nasty and to this day, I remember those rides home after the meetings. And they wonder why I left "the truth" when I became an adult. Lately, they're wondering why I don't want to come back! My dad was treated very malicious and shabby, but he dished out plenty too.
It's all bogus- no way Jesus would ever have treated anybody this way and I want no part of it!
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donny
I hated the politics too. As a ministerial servant I got to see a lot of the bickering that went on from the publisher level on up. One of the elders in our congregation did not like the presiding overseers son (who was also an elder) and confinded in me once that he was trying to find something that would result in his deletion as an elder.
Although that never happened, I heard from my kids that about a year after I left, the predising overseers sons wife filed for divorce and moved back to whereever she had come from. I could just see the smile on my former confidants face when that happened. I could write a book on the politics that occured in my congregation. Bush and Obama would be humbled.
Don
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willyloman
"I could write a book about congregation politics."
Me, too!
There was a congo that had grown from about 25 to 150, in about a decade. After renting space for a few years, they built a small hall after they got to around 80 publishers. At 150, it was crowded and on Sunday, if you didn't get there at least 15 minutes early, you'd find the front hall and the "second school" full and you would sit in the library with no view of the platform.
The elders met to discuss options. Should they build a new hall? Split the congo in two? They opted to put it to a vote so it was announced there would be a vote and the "friends" were asked to prayerfully consider whether they wanted to split or build a new, larger hall and keep the congo intact.
Overwhelmingly, the vote was to remain one congo and build a larger hall. Donations came in from the publishers and they moved forward. The new "quick build" had 225 seats. After they moved, attendance spiked up to around 180. Apparently some people had just not been coming on Sunday because of the crowding at the former hall, so the decision to build a bigger one appeared to be confirmed. Two months later the CO arrived and he saw it differently. "You've got to split," he insisted. "You've got nearly too many people here on Sundays. When I get back here in six months, I want to see a plan."
The elders could have resisted the CO's recommendation. Some congregations have. But there were about 13 elders at the time. As you know, there are only five permanent "positions" in each congo. Two congos would mean 10 "spots" to fill. The jockeying for position began.
Not long after, the PO called an elder's meeting. When they all got there, he called on two elders to lead the discussion on a split. They got up and, using charts and graphs and hand-outs (!), showed exactly how it would be accomplished, who went where, which elders were assigned to which congo and what position they'd occupy, and so forth.
These two guys, along with the PO who clearly knew about it, had obviously sat down and hammered out a detailed plan. And had apparently decided it was better to spring it on the others by surprise rather than "risk" a lot of advance discussion. Several of the elders were stunned.
One elder who pointed out that the congregation had voted to remain one and to put up a lot of money and obtain a loan to build a larger hall, said, "If we were going to split, why didn't we just stay in the old hall since it was paid for?"
The two elders had carved up the PO and other positions among themselves, split the congregation territory down some geographic line and then arbitrarily moved whole families back and forth across the line to achieve what they called "balance." If you looked closely, the populations of the proposed new congregations were clearly recognizable as "A" and "B" teams. In other words, all the whack jobs and walking wounded were in one congo, and all the "superstars" where in the other.
These guys had not only done their homework on the split - they had done their advance solicitation work, too. Despite protests from some, there were just enough votes to authorize the split (and the plan). Later, when the congregation became two, it became obvious what had happened. One congo wound up with a much larger number of pubs, most of the pioneers, and all the elders who were experienced and well liked. The other had fewer pubs, not many pioneers, most of the "problems," and all the inexperienced elders - except for the mastermind behind the split, who appointed himself PO. Over time, the disproportionate numbers grew worse.
A year or two later, the "A" team had attracted the vast majority of the move-ins from other cities and twice as many pubs as the "B" team which was down to three pioneers and had lost some families to the other congo (they just got tired of belonging to the "crap" congregation, as one of them said, and moved over). Efforts over several years to get a series of COs to realign or shuffle the makeup of the congos to balance things went nowhere for more than a dozen years. Friendships were destroyed over this and a number of idealists became suspicious and cynical.
All this because two ambitious and politically savvy elders got together months before the above events and determined they could maneuver things so there would be a brand new hall built and then they could broker a split that would give them each the position they coveted. What's more, they found fertile ground in which to plant their scheme.
In the years since then, I have heard many stories like this one. Church politics is alive and well in dubdom.
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donny
all the whack jobs and walking wounded were in one congo, and all the "superstars" where in the other.
I can identify with this. The congregation I was a part of (Farmers Branch) split from the Walnut Hill congregation and virtually all of the superstart JW's went with Farmers Branch. Many folks in the circuit noted that Farmers Branch elders had a large part of the assemblies and conventions that was our of poportion to the other congregations. Jarded Hardie was the man who ran the district conventions in Dallas-Ft. Worth (and still does to this day and was also featured on the JW documentary "Knocking"). Roy McWhorter was over all of the sound. Jack Addington ran the banking and donation portions. Poor Walnut Hill was left with the rejects and rebels. Many of the younger brothers had long hair and beards which eventually led to folks calling it the Flower Child congregation. I found it amazing that two groups sharing the same hall could be so different.
Don
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willyloman
Don:
Same situation. Prior to the split, the original congo took great pride in the fact that it ran the circuit assemblies and district convention held in the big city. The congo was a rural outpost in an urban circuit, so this was a big feather in its cap. The program at the circ ass was a parade of elders from this one congo, with an occasional outsider thrown in. At the dist conv, the "Most Holy" luxury boxes upstairs (chairman's office) was filled with elders and hangers-on from this congo.
After the split, it was more of the same for the "A" team. But the "B" congo was shut out of the program, administration, parts and privileges - except for PO from "B" who had helped engineer the split. The result was that for years after the split, every meeting, every social function, every convention and assembly served as a powerful reminder that politics plays a huge role in congregation affairs.
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Virgochik
We had a similar split at my last hall before I moved out from my parents. The "MC" congregation got all the popular people and the best meeting times. The "TC" congregation had to meet on Sunday afternoons or early evenings. It sucked. The joke was, "Oh, no, you got assigned to TC!" The publishers were the weak ones, and attendance was lower in the Sunday evening meetings. It was no accident, it was a popularity contest. So many things I saw proved beyond any doubt that this religion wasn't anything guided by Jesus.
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Confucious
Hey All...
I remember when I was an up-and-coming MS.
There was an elder who just got removed.
We were all playing football at the park.
And low-and-behold... the elder who just got removed, he went for a walk around the field.
And my Bible study at the time, turned to me and says, "Look at him. He looks like an Ex-President.
The Congregational Politics is about power - precieved, fake or real.
The whole joke of what's going on, is that the Witnesses keep saying what Jesus said... "He who is the greatest amongst you must be your least."
(sorry if it's misquoted)
The truth is? That's not what goes on.
In JDub world, power and greatness is rising in the ranks.
And that includes keeping those down who have more natural greatness and talent than you.
I might have the phrase wrong... but there is something called the "dumbo explosion" or something like that.
It's documented in businesses where if you get your employees to promote other employees - that eventually your whole staff will be dumbed down.
That is because the ones in power will never hire someone they percieve to be of greater talent than him - unless they own the business and can really benefit.
So these middle management employees... rather than promote someone of greater talent - they promote people of lesser.
So I think that is what is happening...
Confucious