At Bethel it was at times ordered that you MISS the meetings due to a hot job

by life is to short 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  undercover

  You guys are so silly and critical...

  Don't you know that missing a meeting because there's a deadline looming is because the deadline is from Jehovah? He directs the work through the organization and if they say work overtime, it's the same as Jehovah saying work overtime.

  I think ya'll are just jealous because these brothers were in a position of importance. Important enough that Jehovah allowed them to miss meetings in order to fulfilll a higher callling. Missing meetings because your worldly boss says so is not the same as Jehovah saying so. Overtime wages from your company are not as imporatant as Jehovah having his Bethel buildings completed on time.

  Seriously... I think ya'll need to pray on the matter and look for forgiveness for your bad attitude. Your grumbling and murmuring is most stumbling...
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  life is to short

  Undercover you are right and that was what I was told at Bethel. The problem was we all need to keep drinking the cool aid to keep believing it by not being at the meetings we loose that poison and can start to reason on our own. I bought into having to be at every meeting how stupid of me I know now I was living in poison. Those that missed a lot due to overtime had more time to think clearly and a lot of them left the religion. So by forcing overtime Bethel really shot themselves in the foot in some ways by loosing some really good workers.

  You are probably right I am somewhat jealous because it took me so much longer to finally wake up. How I wish I could go back in years.

  LITS
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  flipper

  LITS- So the WT society works it's laborers to the bone , virtually killing them physically, mentally, spiritually, & emotionally - then the last few years they lay off hundreds of middle aged workers pushing the ejection button and jettisoning them into no-man's land at age 40 to 60 with no appreciable work experience in the world . No retirement, no pensions, nothing. Just handed back to congregations members to handle. Sounds like what happens to war veterans coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan. Crazy, isn't it ? Peace out, Mr. Flipper
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  WTWizard

  I wonder what would have happened if I were to miss a boasting session per year because of a job paying $100 per hour (of 1989 dollars). Brother Hounder would tell me that I need to quit that job so I could be at ALL of the boasting sessions, ALL the time. The same if I was putting in 20 hours a month of field circus when no one was home, and got a new job where I went from $5 an hour to more than $100 an hour but would be down to 12 hours of field circus when people were home. Never mind that, with that kind of money (1989 dollars), I would easily be able to switch supplies every time the hounders decided that the old ones were not good enough.

  Yet, people at Beth Hell are required to work extra at all costs. For sure, working on 90 Sands Street is not "Fever", "Fracture", or "Funeral". If those are the only excuses for missing a boasting session for regular witlesses, and people at Beth Hell are supposed to be exemplary, then why is nothing being done about it? Perhaps it wouldn't take so damn long to build a lousy building (the World Trade Center took about the same construction time) if people weren't always so tired and worn out, and if they were making decent compensation for their time. And if they would actually listen to suggestions--worldly companies are more likely to listen than those slowpokes working at 90 Sands Street.
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  factfinder

  This is all news to me. I was told by bethelites that you cannot miss meetings. If you were sick and had to miss meetings you could not work. You could be asked to leave bethel if your meeting attendance went down. It was top priority. now I'm reading here that some bethelites missed a lot of meetings? I don't know what to believe. I've known a brother for 34 years who has been at bethel that long. He told me you cannot miss meetings. I guess I may need to write to him about this and see what he says. I'm surprised- what some are posting here contradicts what brothers at bethel had been telling me for many years.
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  VM44

  What this shows is that The Watchtower Organization is actually a very materialistic organization!

  The Watchtower is supported by the physical work and financial support of people, not Jehovah, and the Watchtower leaders know it!
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  dozy

  I think we forget that Bethel , for all that it is dressed up to be , is essentially a printing plant spewing out vast numbers of religious tracts & magazines. The people are there to do a job and the atmosphere is quite corporate (albeit in a kind of creepy cultish way). Meetings , ministry etc are all relegated to Bethel duties and long timers ( especially the wives of higher-ups) know how to play the system so that they can duck the meetings as much as possible. I knew a Bethelite who worked on security during the evenings / nights who only ever turned up at his Sunday meeting (if he could be bothered) - he even missed the Bethel family Watchtower on the Monday night. His ministry was negligible. Yet he was regarded as a "strong JW" and was feted like a hero on his annual visits back home.

  The non-Bethelite elders of the local congregation that the brothers attend know the score & don't ask any questions. If they do , they are told in no uncertain terms that "Bethel comes first."
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  Room 215

  I was assigned to work at the Walkill construction project in its earliest phases, and I can confirm that meeting attendance was completely off the agenda. We who came up from Bethel never bothered to take along suits, ties, etc. It was wall-to-wall work, sun-to-sun, seven days a week, unless you were smart enough to catch a ride on the Bethel truck back to Brooklyn Saturday. I remembder how Circuit Overseer Wesley Benner, an accomplished carpenter, and the guy who years later DF'd Ray Franz, was ridiculed in the locker room when he asked for time off to go in service, or to attend a meeting.
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  SnakesInTheTower

  I observed this first hand when I was a temp at Wallkill and Brooklyn back in the 80s and 90s. I thought it was hypocritical but kept my mouth shut. Who was I but a Temp, I am only here 3-4 weeks? .... "Save a Bethelite, Kill a Temp" mentality then. This applied to FS and meetings.

  It was also true for MTS (Ministerial Training School). When I attended MTS back in 2002, we were not expected to show up for the Congregation Book Study at our host or closest congregation, especially if we had a big assignment, talk, finals, etc. Hell, how could we, we had 5 or more hours of reading and assignments to complete? Some UltraSpiritual guys made all the meetings and FS. Blech.

  During MTS, the TMS and SM in our 3 host congregations were moved to Friday night (often to the chagrin of the locals) so the MTS brothers could attend. (As a side note, my home congo was asked to host a Friday night meeting and the locals turned the MTS coordinators down flat, despite the fact that I and 2 other MTS students were being hosted by local families.) We were not to miss Friday night TMS, because we were held up as "special" and were to encourage the locals. Sometimes we did miss if we could if it was our turn for a talk on Saturday morning class (our Public Speaking class).

  At MTS, field service was a joke (even though we had a "Field Service" unit [class]", but we had to get a few hours, because we received enough credit hours as pioneers..... oh, wait, I was the only student of 25 not a regular pioneer, I had come off temporarily... and by god the visiting GB member made sure to mention during graduation that that one student was not pioneering but was starting back in September (this was May)... without asking me first. So I had to make sure I hit national average at least (padded my hours). And yes, I started pioneering that September and it nearly killed me.

  I think it was then, during MTS, that I seen how shallow the whole Organization was. It only took me another 5.5 years to quit FS and another 6 months to quit attending. Ironically, I transferred my publisher card to the congo that I attended during MTS 5 years earlier. Huge congo, easy to get lost in.

  I look back and think ... what a joke it all was. What a Waste of Time. I don't come to JWD nearly as often as I used to, and post even less on JW type topics, but this one hit close to home. But I do not waste my time with regrets now. Now I celebrate the time I have with my new family.

  Snakes (Rich )
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  DaCheech

  I have on avereage for the last 20 years have 6-8 bethellites in my congo.

  they DO miss 1/3 of the meetings.

  I gave Boss man/bethellite a piece of my mind when he wanted to have a "talk" with me about needing their "help"