Is the Door to Door Preaching Obsolete?

by lepermessiah 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  lepermessiah

  I wanted to get some opinions on this.

  The last few years I was active as a JW, I thought that the door-to-door preaching work was the biggest waste of time. You rarely got anyone home, those you did get home were rarely interested, and it seemed like a huge waste of resources.

  In line with that thought, I was speaking with a gentleman at work the other day - he is a very active pastor in the community, and him and I have gotten to be pretty good friends - we have had a ton of interesting conversations.He recently moved his church to a bigger location due to past and expected future growth.

  He was telling me that one of his big concerns was the fall-off of church attendance in our area. He had a company actually come in and do a study for him with census information, demographics, etc. This company also gave recommendations for how people are contacted. Guess which method of "recruitment" were the least effective? Yep - the "door to door" method of contact.

  He told me over 85% of the people asked objected to that method. They preferred mailers, email, telephone, you name it......

  In fact, the pastor told me when he started the church, he tried to door-to-door method for a couple of days and gave up - it was totally fruitless.

  I mentioned this a JW friend and she freaked out - I could tell it bothered her that I said it.

  She said "well, Jesus told us to go from door to door"

  I said, "thats because when he was alive, that was the only way to contact people!"

  If Jesus was alive in the 1800's and said "go from Pony Express point to Pony Express point" would the JW's still use horses to preach?

  What do you think?
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  dozy

  " She said "well, Jesus told us to go from door to door "

  Actually Jesus said exactly the opposite - "do not be transferring from house to house." There seems to be some debate on whether or not the apostles went door - to - door but they also went to market places and synagogues and preached openly to a crowd , which is very rarely done by JWs today.

  I agree that the door -to -door is a big waste of resources , but the key is that the big waste is of the publishers resources ( time , fuel etc) - it doesn't cost the WTBTS anything other than the cost of materials , which is paid for up front by the publisher (and occasionally a donation is made.)
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  alanv

  Dozy is right. There is no evidence that Jesus went from door to door, and the scriptures in Acts that the society uses, shows that Paul and the other disciples taught people in their homes rather than going from door to door all over the area. The societies book the Interlinea version of the bible shows the scriptures are more correctly translated 'in peoples homes' not 'door to door'. In Ray Franz books he showed how his uncle, Fred Franz new this but chose not to make it clear to the rest of the governing body.
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  drew sagan

  It can be a rather pointless venture. I think it remains for two reasons:

  1. Tradition

  2. Busywork

  One should not over look the power of tradition imo. To overturn a long held practice, one that has been used to prove how 'spiritual' and unique the JWs are, would cause many problems. Continuing doesn't costs the Watchtower anything financially per se, although there are indirect costs. If they can find a way to continue the practice, despite its ineffectiveness, they probably will do so.

  One thing is for sure, door-to-door work is not about being effective.
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  sacolton

  It's ineffective and risky. Really, this day and age, who doesn't know about Jesus? I honestly believe that people come to God in their own time - or they don't. Why on earth would I trust some stranger at my door to teach me about God? There's practically a church on every corner where I live. There is no shortage of churches anywhere. If someone wants to know about God - let them investigate on their own, but also let them ask the big questions if they have doubts about theocracy and doctrines.
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  teel

  I try hard to remember, but I can't recall anyone baptized in the last 10 years because of the door-to-door service. It happened before, but these days they're all either children of JWs or close friends, relatives of JWs.

  As pointed out several times in this forum, if you ask complete outsiders what's the message the JWs want to share with people, they hardly know it. These things are in line with that study. Door to door is obsolete and ineffective.

  Yet it will never go away, a cult needs to keep members busy.
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  slimboyfat

  Is the Door to Door Preaching Obsolete?

  It perhaps depends on what you reckon the purpose of JWs going door to door is.

  Some social scientists have suggested that the main function of door to door witnessing among JWs is to strengthen belief in the Witness's own mind rather than convert other people.

  Even Witnesses themselves allow for the fact that preaching door to door might not be successful in terms of converts, but that it is nevertheless important as part of them giving a message of warning from Jehovah to wayward mankind.
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  Olin Moyles Ghost

  I agree that door-to-door is one of the least (if not the least) efficient way of attracting new members. But attracting new members is really only an ancillary goal of the door-to-door work. As others point out, the primary purposes of the work are (1) keeping the Witnesses occupied, (2) reinforcing the exclusivity of the JW movement ("we're the only ones preaching worldwide, thus we must be the true religion"), and (3) providing a distribution channel for the WT Corporation's literature.

  And, as others point out, there is little evidence that the First Century Christians preached door-to-door. Perhaps some did, but it is not clear from the New Testament. There is not one single example in the NT of any Christian preaching door-to-door. There are lots of examples of Christians speaking in public places (Sermon on the Mount, Paul's speech at Mars Hill) and informally (Phillip to the Ethiopian, Jesus to the woman at the well and many others).

  But the only examples the WT can find are two statements the book of Acts that mention disciples preaching in homes. (And one of those, Acts 20:20, is simply Paul recalling having spoken to certain ones in their homes in the past.) Whether or not these two verses refer to a house-to-house preaching work is unclear. But what is clear is that there are no recorded examples of house-to-house preaching in the Scriptures. If it was so critical, then why did God not see fit to include any examples of it? Why must we rely on two ambiguous verses in Acts?
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  Mary

  She said "well, Jesus told us to go from door to door"

  I said, "thats because when he was alive, that was the only way to contact people!"

  Actually, no he did not. I did a bit of an critique of a WT study article that made this very claim and I exposed where they took phrases out of context and applied them to the door to door ministry. If you're interested, you can read it here:
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  shopaholic

  Its a bible study jackpot if you're in a less developed country.