by yknot 87 Replies latest jw friends
For those of us still 'in'....
I urge you to print out a copy and post it on your information board!
Here is a landscape of the brochure for a two sided printout
((( again all credit goes to 'ANONYMOUS BROTHER' for this 'theocratic goodie' )))
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dgqe7n
OK, now I see, Mad Sweeney. So Russell & company was generational slide version 1.0...
BTW, how was this distributed? Did they just send it to people invited to the funeral itself?
Did anyone see the chart on the platform in one of the pictures? Anyone remember those? They were big congregation "time slips" with the cong's activity for each month pasted in. I used to help my congregation servant daddy paste the numbers in the boxes when I was little. Fun times... :)
Drew,
You were lucky to have a liberal brother do the funeral talk. When my father passed a couple of years ago, the brother (supposedly a very close friend of the family) agreed to read a ten paragraph eulogy that I wrote about my father. The first paragraph was a basic newspaper bio. Very brief - birth, death, married to, number of children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. Then I wrote: "That's how the local newspaper will probably describe [name]'s life of 91 years. Just statistics and a few names. But his life was far more interesting than that..."
The next ten very short paragraphs briefly described his teenaged years during the Great Depression, his brief Army service at the end of WW2 that he hated, his conversion to the JWs and his faithful service to them for over 55 years. I mentioned that he loved playing catch with his boys, how much he enjoyed his time with his grandkids, and that he spent most of his life as a mechanic, both as an occupation and as a hobby. I mentioned a couple of his favorite little quips and his self-deprecating sense of humor.
When my brother and I attended the funeral at the KH, the brother who gave the funeral talk, the very one that promised to read my brief eulogy and was supposedly close to the family did read what I wrote - BUT ONLY THE FIRST PARAGRAPH - the paragraph that was intended to show how little the newspaper would say about this man we all loved. That's all he read. He then went into his standard JW Watchtower outlined funeral speech.
I was shocked and disappointed. My brother looked at me like, "WTF was that?" It's a good thing I wasn't armed. There would have likely been blood splattered all over that stage. That guy not only lied to us, he stuck it right up our nose, probably because he knew we were both ex JWs.
After the funeral speech, one of the sisters and her husband came up to greet us. When she said, "Wasn't that a beautiful talk by Brother X?" - I said, "Maybe for you it was, but for us it was the absolute worst!" No one else came near us after that.
I was so glad to get out of the KH that day. I was physically sick over the whole thing. As it turned out, my father's newspaper bio was more extensive and better than his funeral talk.
I've heard that, years ago, congregations maintained such charts on the information board--perhaps even including the statistics for each publisher
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Congregations in my area had a large (4 x 6 foot) posterboard on an easel to the right of the stage with the congregation numbers. I never saw individual numbers posted. Congregations were very competitive, with the rank and file discussing who was doing better.
That was back in the day of 10 hour monthly quotas for each publisher, 12 magazines, 6 back-calls (not rvs yet), and 1 bible study.
I can remember the days too when the school servant graded your written review, and then they had you pass it to the person next to you to grade it. There was no handing out of the questions beforehand either.
Blondie, all that chart stuff by the stage and written tests at the school are completely unfamiliar to me - did this stuff happen after I left in 1979?
Thanks for posting this yknot and thanks to "anonymous brother" for providing the info. Like others, I have seen this sort of thing done at JW furernal's before.
As for using donated funds to print out the brochure, I seriously doubt a) any JW would care and b) it cost more than $50 total. Remember, it's a publishing company. Someone likely put this thing together in like an hour using photos they already had. I can't see why this would be that big of a deal.
If you think about, it's not really a eulogy of Jaracz the man as much as it is a review of what Jaracz did for the WTS. Other than mentioning where he was born and when he got married, everything else seems to be related to his service to the WTS. So, even for the most influencial member of the GB, it's once again more about the organization than it is about the person. Same with most rank & file funerals although I've attended some that were very light on the recruitment and heavy on eulogy (my grandmother's being one of them - the speaker even cried).
Honestly, I've seen more personal rememberance in retirement announcements than is in Jaracz's brochure. It's sad in way that a person would have a close working relationship having been in Bethel what almost 40 years and all they can muster is that he'll be "missed". The general consensus is that he wasn't a very pleasant man, so maybe that's the most positive thing they could say about him.
It will be interesting to see when they decide to move to increase the number of GB members. 8 seems like a low number.
The charts must have been 50s, no later than early 60s... I don't remember them...
Serenity and Drew Sagan, I've had the opposite experience. When my grandfather passed a few years back, the talk was the typical recruitment talk. Anything about my grandfather that was said was about how he faithfully served throughout the years as an elder, raising a family and so forth. Most of the other funerals I've been too were pretty much the same.
It pissed me off, but I was relieved at least at the burial, we had a more informal and non-JW recruitment crap being spewed.
I agree with JWoods, this is distasteful, it shows that there is a line in the sand that is drawn between "GB" status and "R&F" status. However, I am grateful to see these "truths" and thank your anonymous friend Yknot.
Blondie,
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Assistant Congregation Servant would get up during the first Service Meeting of each month and read off the KH financial report. At that time, he would also announce:
"There was an average attendance at the Watchower Study of XX. There was an average attendance of XX at the TMS and Service Meetings. There were XX publishers reporting time in service. There were XXXX number of field service hours reported. There were XX personal Bible studies reported. There were xxx magazines and xx books reported as being placed during the month. The congregation received $XXX in contributions and $XXX for literature orders. Our expenses were $XXX for utilities, $XXX for insurance, $XXX for maintenance and materials, $XXX for literature, etc. The KH deposited $XXX in reserves and sent $XXX to the Watchtower Society's general funds. Our available balance is $XXX and our reserve balance is now $XXX."
That was a pretty complete report. Everyone knew where we stood financially. If the bank account and reserves account were too low, the Congregation Servant would then come up and announce that each family should contribute more, if they could. He would also remind us that we would be covering some of the CO and DO expenses and would also have to send in certain amounts to cover the local circuit assembly funds.
He would also mention the average number of hours reported per publisher and encourage us to go out at least one more morning or evening per week to increase those hours and to make the our KH rank better. However, he would never tell us how we performed in comparison to other KHs in the circuit.
