Jehovah's CheapA$$ Organization

metatron

When I was twenty or so years younger, I should have
gotten a clue as to how cheap this organization is,
when a member of the Governing Body told us that our
prune pits should be sucked clean and we should only use one
paper towel to dry our hands. Keep in mind, this was well
before all of the belt tightening REALLY started.

Old Nathan H. Knorr hated the thought of paperback books,
but what the heck, he's dead and pennies have to be saved
per unit.

No food at assemblies, no more subscriptions - Show me a
religion that is too broke to offer subscriptions to
their own magazines!

While other religions offer MORE services to their flock,
the Watchtower shrinks what pathetically little they
can do for their weary zombies. They call it "simplification"
and say it was motivated by "unity with other branches"
(Translation: downsizing - and the other branches are
losing revenue , too).

Is this is a message from God or what?

"This is what Jehovah has said
the Maker of heaven and earth,
"By myself I do swear,
that I'm freakin' tired of funding
this pack of half-senile, uncaring,
stiff-necked Pharisees and I'm gonna
cut off their cash little by little
until the idiots wake up!"
Revelation 23:1

Being a former Accounts Servant, I'm interested to see how
greatly contributions to the Society have fallen. Many
congregations that used to send in a thousand bucks a month
now get by with 4-500 dollars for the "WorldWide Work".
Now that should make ANY religion sit up and ask about God's
favor - but not these guys!

Too bad for them, without God behind them, they'll have to
keep begging:

"Today the worldwide work of Jehovah's people keeps expanding,
requiring ever-increasing financial support. It is appropriate
that we too 'set something aside' regularily to help fill the need."
January 2002 Kingdom Ministry

I wonder how they'll eventually 'spin' defunding Gilead or the
Awake magazine. Maybe some words about how the local brothers
in foreign nations are doing SO WELL - or how people need to
concentrate on studying the Watchtower, so we stopped printing
the Awake.

Nickled and dimed to death, how tragic!

metatron

ballistic

How to cut your off your own head:

Teach your membership not to pursue a carrer or education or to use the internet,

Then wait until your money runs out and ask them for more.

TR

ballistic,

No wonder the WTS isn't bitchin' so much about college anymore.

TR

I'm gonna make mince meat outta that Osama!

ballistic

No, they seem to have played down the idea of not having children as well - maybe that is all that is keeping the numbers up.

Of course, any thing which wastes money, such as a pet or a nice car is still frowned upon.

You guys in the States sometimes forget that in central Europe and England the numbers are actually dropping. The areas of biggest gains are in poor, developing countries. Ouch.

patio34

And how about the oft-touted 'equalizing' of funds, so the more developed countries should give more to offset the deficiencies of the poorer countries?

How does that compare with the fact magazines are still charged for in poorer countries?

Pat

Amazing

Hi Metatron: I always enjoy your posts, and love thge topic of money vs the Watch Tower. One of my pet peives with the Catholic Church was their endless wealth. I do not resent wealth in itself, but the Church was supposed to be an institution of charity, but they managed to build gold-plated Cathederals.

My attraction to the JWs was their useful, but simple Kingdom Halls, and most importantly their promise as stated by C.T. Russell himself in the Divine Purpose book, that they would "never" beg for funds, but would understand that when funds ran out, that God was finished with his purpose for the Watchtower.

Oddly enough: The Society is not technically "begging" for money, but they are rather at their old tricks of manipulation through guilt and Scriptural twisting.

Curious: I find it a strange contradiction that they are at a time in their history with such great wealth in equipment, buildings, real estate, funds and assets from Wills, Trusts, Estates, Bonds, Interest on Kingdom Hall loans, and even Stocks, as well as large sums of liquid cash --- yet they are tightening their belts, cutting costs, and prodding the JWs for more and more money. They take steps in other ways by setting up their own labs and clinics, getting their own in-house legal staff, self-insuring, etc. Not that these measures are bad in themselves, but that they have little debt, enourmous reserves in cash and assets, while incurring little costs.

It is fascinating ... and simply amazes me. - Amazing

ElijahTheThird

,,, and to think that they actually thought that if they didnt support the Anointed they would not suffer the retributions of the Father? ROFLMAO Here I thought it was written that the collections were for the Saints FIRST, then the other needs as they arose?,, hmmm guess I just can't read a bible,,, lol.

metatron

Only a few know the whole story but I strongly
suspect they are in the same bind as many non profit
organizations. They have lots of assets but cash flow
is a problem. It costs money to heat and repair buildings.
There's a lot of fixed costs to worry about - it's a real
Achilles heel for them - and I don't think they'd be making
these changes unless the pain was real.

The Cheapest-ass thing they do is insist on selling
out dated "192 page books" door to door. Does this
scream "we are a publishing house, not a religion"?
Good Grief! Then these idiots complain they don't have
enough Bible Studies - while pushing old irrelevant
crap into the hands of the public. How many studies
is anyone going to start out of the Revelation
Climax book?

They just gotta get every dollar squeezed out of the
'pulp fiction' they printed.

metatron

Martini

Hi Metatron,

Is it that they are cheap or so poor at making estimates in costs and budgetting that they find themselves in constant need of $;)?
For example several times, while projecting to build Assembly halls in our area they estimated the local publ to pledge $x of dollars at the start ONLY to request more $$$, twice over before completion.
Really pissed me and others off!

POINT is they have a 'cash cow' and they know it... their wish is our command, so WHY NOT play with our minds and pockets too, at will!

Martini

Scully

When I still lived at home with my parents, my father was a Ministerial Servant for the congregation and was in charge of the congregation's accounts.

On occasion, he asked me to type reports for him, and when I asked him to show me how to balance my cheque-book, when I first had one, he used the congregation's account to show me how it was done.

The income wasn't that great from the congregation's contribution boxes, it wasn't even enough to cover the expenses, much less send a contribution to the Branch Office.

I was curious as to how the situation rectified itself, as it seemed that whenever the Accounts Report was read to the congregation, there always seemed to be enough. My father swore me to secrecy, especially to my mother, and then confided to me that when the contributions were low, he would make a loan/donation to the congregation to make up the difference. Since my dad handled all the family's finances, my mother had no idea that he was doing it.

I suspect that over the course of the years, he bailed the congregation out like this many, many times. Not that we were affluent and could afford to bail out the congregation, quite to the contrary! But he was more concerned with the congregation looking solvent on paper than he was with making sure his children weren't wearing hand-me-down clothes and shoes.

Did this happen anywhere else??

Love, Scully

It is not persecution for an informed person to expose a certain religion as being false. - WT 11/15/63

Jehovah's CheapA$$ Organization

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