I know personally a brother who suggested to local elders the idea that food service should end (due to the long hours of toil and the fact that the workers got little from the actual assemblies) and that the attendees bring their own. He was villified by the elders for this suggestion. Then the Society years later went ahead and made the very changes that this brother suggested.
Assembly changes
by d 36 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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d
That is crazy.rocketman Why did they stop doing that?That was the only making the conventions interesting.Even though by the time I started going.They stopped serving hot meals
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Mr. Falcon
they stopped serving food probably because it was cutting into their profit. The raw materials for the food had to be supplied, despite having free labor to prepare/serve it. Now all the free labor can go toward things that require absolutely no raw material support, like cleaning, maintenance & attendance. Hell, even First Aid can't even give out band-aids anymore.
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BluesBrother
They are not so much fun, thats for sure !
My childhood memories are of C/Ass being 2 full days and a Friday night, with plenty of spare time to hang out , make friends,chat up girls ....The volunteer service got us all together washing up or cleaning but just being together. The atmosphere was great. We served food ! I remember makeshift kitchens being installed in hired halls, that would surely never pass modern health and safety regs. - but it worked and the weekend was a real joy.
The programmes were more free and easy with the D/O.seer being able to interpret the outlines as he saw fit. Some were really theatrical and entertaining..
Of course the messge was just as skewed as one hears in the dull soulless lifeless affairs that they have today, but as a kid it was fun......
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d
I agree BluesBrother. When I was a kid in the 90's the assemblies were fun because at that time everything from a child's perspective is simple.only when you get older do you realize that it was not as fun as it seemed.
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willyloman
As blues points out, the gathering could be fun depending on your circumstances.
I think the main reason I became a dub was the atmosphere at the assemblies was so unique. I felt like I had found my "herd." This was because I volunteered to work at the first assembly/convention I ever attended and continued to do so for many years. That made the conventions much more palatable.
I worked in the food service operation and toiled long hours at two or three conventions every summer. I never heard a single talk because of all the work we had to do during the sessions in order to get ready to serve during the breaks. When the WTS dropped that arrangement, I had to sit and listen to four days of talks for the first time in my dub life and could not believe how mind-numbing and uncomfortable it was! Right after that, I got "rescued" when an ex-dircuit overseer moved into our congo and became our PO. At the next convention he appointed me to the News Service desk and I got to sit upstairs in the "Most Holy" (executive suites) as part of his team for the next several years.
I had to pay some attention to the program and could hear and see everything and take notes, but there were a lot of distractions, good coffee, outside food and snacks brought in (supposedly for the visiting Bethel speakers and other heavies, but they always brought enough for everyone). And because I was "working," it was easy to relieve the boredom during a dull talk by filling out reports or creating tasks that were more or less related to my assignment. Occasionally, a reporter or news camera team would show up and I'd have to go downstairs and walk them around, answer questions, and so forth. During the breaks upstairs, you met a lot of interesting people and heard a lot of dub lore.
It was only after a new CO came along and, reacting to complaints from elders around the circuit that our congo was dominating the convention assignments and speaking parts, that a new chairman was appointed and other elders began getting those privileges. So for me it was back to the main auditorium where I learned that Karma is, indeed, a bitch.
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MrMonroe
Off topic, I suppose, but on my first DC as a newly converted, newly baptised brother, I was dispatched to the news service department because I worked for a newspaper. I spent lunchtimes strolling around Lang Park, Brisbane, looking for anyone from outside Brisbane, who would be photographed as a happy, smiling family. I took down their names and congregation. The rest of the sessions were spent writing up those details as captions to go out to their local papers, along with a unique rewrite of a DC press release on some of the main points, skewing it to their local area.
In the end I reckoned I wrote out that press release about 50 or 60 different ways on their crappy portable typewriter. At the end of it people, knowing I was a newbie, asked, "So what did you think of the convention. Wasn't it encouraging?" And I'd go, "Yes, it was very encouraging. I got a lot out of it. It was very upbuilding." I reckon I heard about an hour of the whole thing.