My wife and I were discussing yesterday the pros and cons of fading vs disfellowshipping. My wife mentioned that it would be extremely difficult to fade because we live so close to everyone and with two small kids it would be difficult to avoid members of the cong or ignore them when they come to our door. So I came up with an idea and I wanted to run it by you first to see if it has been thought of before and if you think it can work.
Here it is. We start our fade. If the situation ever arises that the elders threaten to disfellowship us, we tell them that if they do, we will attend every single meeting from now on, come 10 minutes early and greet evryone that comes in through the doors of the auditorium. Our family (with 2 kids under 5) will sit in the first row right in front of the speaker and we will not leave if they start causing ruckess. I will feed them snacks throughout the entire meeting, maybe even bring the booster for the young one and feed her lunch, and bring toys that are not so quiet(maybe even a toy smurf if I can find one). I put up my hand at every question, then everyone will have to explain to their studies why I am being ignored.
Then at the end of each meeting I will go to the literature counter and ask the attendant in a loud voice,"are there any magazines in my folder? (say name of attendant). What do you mean I don't have a folder?". Then grap a stack of the old magazines on top of the counter that are brought back by those that could not place them. Maybe grap the whole stack. On the way out, again, we wave to everyone and say loudly, "see you at the next meeting".
We also show up for field service groups and we follow a car group to the territory. We start knocking on doors before they get to them and we warn householders what to expect and what they would be getting themselves into should they accept anything from the 2 people that are coming up the street. Maybe knock on the doors of their return visits after they're done and undo all the damage. At the end of the month we turn in a field service report and create a new column called "Converts Annulled".
I now what you're thinking, it sounds like a lot of work. But something tells me they wouldn't allow it to happen, I think they would just allow us to ride into the sunset and leave us alone. Of course they would probably tell everyone that I should be avoided anyway, but I really don't care as long as we can continue talking with our family. Any thoughts??