As stated in Part 1 the latter part of the 1980’s and 1990’s were very good for my wife and I. We are doing well spiritually and both had good jobs. Our increasing income allowed us to move at a relatively young age to a nice area. We wanted to stay in our old congregation but I was told as an appointed man I should support the congregation in my new territory.
This new congregation had a completely different feel about it to our old one. There seemed to be groups of people forming cliques. There were a couple of very wealthy brothers who seemed to be at every event and there were definitely some elders who appeared to be more equal than others as George Orwell would say. There were also some well established extended families that obviously had some influence. The family connections went up to the body of Elders and one in particular who would by 2008 be the congregation COBE, I’ll call him Bro Lying Slimeball (you can guess he was instrumental in my decision to leave).
Over time it became obvious to me that favouritism was a real issue in the congregation. We were invited to a few “get togethers” early on, but soon seemed to be excluded from these social events, probably because we didn’t really fit in – we didn’t drive beemers or own yachts and we had no family connections in the congregation.
These things never really concerned us, we knew that all congregations were different and we would just get on with what we had to do, and fit in as best we could. This was one of the first things I put to the back of mind.
Within our first couple of months in the new congregation we were invited to a wedding of one the congregation royalty. When we arrived at the reception, held in a beautiful parkland setting, none of the ushers seemed to know who we were. Did we misunderstand? Were we just expected at the Kingdom Hall ceremony? Eventually someone did find our names - we were on a hand written list “c” just to fill numbers. God we felt special! So we didn’t stay and went to the local coffee shop for Tea and Cake instead.
We did eventually find our place in the congregation, more by geographic necessity rather than choice. We live in a rural part of the territory and our group is like a “mini” congregation. We had our own territory about 10 maps, this isolated from the rest of the congregation by geography. The group comprised of about 30 people some of which became our close friends. Our group leader for many years was dear old brother and his wife. They had been in since the early in 1950’s, I’ll call them Roy and Polly. Over the years they had developed many calls in our territory were always happy to give calls to others so every had a large magazine route thanks to their efforts. Roy and Polly’s Son (Mike) lived in about a mile from us, married with at the time 2 teenage kids. Mike is quite wealthy but is a lovely guy with no pretensions. There was the Smith family, fairly new in the “Truth” had a daughter, who got married just after we moved in and two teenage boys. There were a few single sisters, including one who become a good friend of my wife and a self centred froglike creature who spends her whole life planning where her next lift to the meeting was going to come from. Also in our group was Mark Neilson and his wife, he was officially the group assistant and he took his responsibilities very seriously indeed.
It was events around people in my group, the body of Elders in the congregation as well as what happened to my best friend from my childhood congregation that would seriously undermine my faith in the organisation. But It was a doctrinal issue that would eventually make me realise this not the “Truth”.
Doubt No.1 Appointment By Holy Spirit?
I had never, before met someone quite like Bro Nielson. He might as well have worn a badge that read “I wanna be an Elder”. He was highly ambitious. He had been a Pioneer and was the congregation “golden boy”. He also showed no respect, whatsoever for Roy (who at this time was n his late 70’s). He would criticise Roy openly, during meetings for field service and during the Group. He made it clear to me that although I was an MS I did not have any responsibilities in the Group.
At the time Mike (Roy’s son) was working full time, he missed quite a few meetings and because of this he was no longer an appointed man, but he was when he younger and used to be a circuit speaker. Brother Nielson (who was in his mid 20’s) treated Mike like he didn’t exist. This was a one proud, arrogant ambitious SOB. Of course someone like that would not be appointed as an Elder, since appointments were made Holy Spirit. WRONG!!!!! Despite his attitude his wish was granted, the Holy Spirit could obviously detect qualities that no one else could see. His appointment meant that our large group could be divided and a second group was formed. Guess who’s group we ended up in? It was in our home and which was nice but Nielson tried his best to make it as unpleasant as possible.
He made it clear to me that he felt I shouldn’t be an MS and that I wasn’t a spiritual person. He was pedantic over silly things and more hard work of everything for example when it was our turn to clean the KH he would make us stack all the chairs and move them before we could vacuum the carpet. Everyone else just vacuumed between the chair legs.
When he appointed an Elder there was a reshuffle of the Elders and he was given the Service Overseer role, a role that no one ever seemed to want, and as I was later to find out, always ended up on the new boys lap. The Neilson’s were renting a small room in a country cottage it was on short term lease and we knew they would probably move closer to his dad at the end of the lease so we weren’t too concerned we saw his leadership as a short term inconvenience.
Sure enough within 18 months he moved, but was still Service Overseer. I maybe reading too much into this but what he did next, indicated to me that he was trying to get rid of me and nugget. A neighbouring congregation, hat had a number of pioneers needed more territory and our congregation covered a very large geographic area. So the boundaries were redrawn, I find it strange to this day that our house was included in territory given to the other congregation. It would mean an extra six miles travelling to the KH and all their rest of their territory was in a completely different town. So we refused to move on the grounds of inconvenience.
I have subsequently been told that whenever my name came up for appointment to Elder during that period he raised this fact, among other things, as a reason for me not qualifying, I didn’t follow theocratic direction!!
By this time Mike was attending meetings regularly, had excellent Field Service and was obviously “”reaching out for appointment. His father Roy said that his appointment was constantly block because of Bro Nielsons protestations. In the end Mike was appointed, after a CO stayed with him and basically told the BOE that his name was going to be out forward to the Branch office.
In 2003 Bro. Nielson Stepped down, apparently because he didn’t agree with the rest of the Body Elders on some Key issues, never found out what they were, but coincidently Mike and I were both appointed Elders.
So my first issue was, If the appointments are made by Holy Spirit, why does it get wrong so very often? How can 1 person effectively block the HS direction? Why does Jehovah use such a stupidly flawed system for appointing those who are entrusted with the care of his precious sheep?
Part 3 will cover what I consider the next doubt that led to my Path of Apostacy.