THERE WILL BE HUGE PUSHBACK ON THIS. take it from someone who used to run a literature depot.
cbb:
from here in mid mo...it's 122 miles to the st louis convention center...(that i was there when it was built)....there are alot of congregations around here that makes it even further.
CBB...you guys were "Pallet A" if I recall from my days there...LOL.... about 6 or 7 congos in that group.
blondie:
How close is St. Louis?
Jehovahs Witness Assembly Hall 953 Laredo Avenue St Louis Missouri 63138
I was the literature depot servant there, with a couple of gaps, for over 15 years. We only had literature coming through there. Magazines were talked about, but there was huge pushback from the congregations. Some congregations were coming from 3-4 hours (as far SW as Springfield, MO and as far SE as Metropolis, IL and as far west as where CBB is....and as far north as Urbana, IL.
As you can imagine, some brothers (and sisters) resented this, others seen it as a chance to get out of going out in service.... until we reduced the hours hours to Saturday afternoon or Friday morning only (I got tired of spending 8 hours there only to have hardly anyone show until after 12noon)....so the brothers could go out in service first.... Interestingly, if it was a young MS and his pioneer GF...there was no field service.... they would come with a 3rd person (so as to be chaperoned)...or another young couple, and they would come to St. Louis from the boonies and make a day trip of it to sightsee and shop...they would show up in jeans and tennis shoes and be real casual and you couldnt tell them apart from a so-called "worldly" person...
Before Romeoville opened (up by Chicago), we had congregations from where Troubled Mind was talking about come down once a month. What usually happened was a group of congregation (as an example "Pallet J -- Springfield IL" group, I think it was 12 congregations...5 in Springfield, and 7 surrounding congregations) would get together, one PO would coordinate who would get it each month... so the burden was only once a month.
Other congregations it was just too far...I was in Carlyle briefly...that was 75 miles each way.... they hated making that trip...they were too far north off the beaten path from the group that was just south of them....too far south from the group north apparently... eventually (esp after I left from my 4 month tenure there), they asked the Society to ship to them since it was outside the 50 mile radius.
Some congregations were bad about sending someone and their literature would sit until the next month....others would beg the assembly hall overseer (Tom Quinn at the time, retired to Cape Gireaudeau, MO recently I heard).... to let them get it outside of depot hours....
I can tell you that sorting literature used to be a huge undertaking...during the early days of the arrangement we would get a WT owned truck and 15 pallets of literature and other things (convention sound equipment, returning bethelite personal belongings, etc).... that was over 1500 boxes of literature...it would take 4 of us 6 hours to sort that out,,,,and that was after I had finished updating the sort list. There were times I had to it by myself....and it would take me 6 hours (it was easier to do it myself than work with some of the volunteers).
Before I left, they were down to less than 100 congregations (down from 150)..and maybe 2-3 pallets a month.... 200-300 boxes of literature...huge reductions in people ordering special orders, bound volumes especially.... people just used the WT CD....at the end it was local LTL (less than load) commercial carriers dropping off the pallets ....
I am so glad I am out of all of that...it used to take up tons of my time, both on the literature depot end...and on the literature servant end. I met some decent people during that time....and some as$holes.
Snakes (Rich )