Do the brothers have to follow an outline when they give talks?

by Joliette 26 Replies latest jw friends

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  Joliette

  Do the bethel heavies read from an outline?
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  sabastious

  Talks are broken into two main categories:

  • Outline
  • Manuscript

  An outline talk allows the speaker to add in flavor, but they are explicitly instructed not to deviate from the source material.

  A manuscript talk is a script mandated by the Governing Body to be read word for word to any audience recieving it.

  I think there are only very few circumstances, if any, that exist where a non GB/Writing department brother in the Society creates a talk from scratch. Maybe CO/DO's in "local needs" situations or something similar. The bottom line is that the information control within the society is about as heavy as it gets.

  -Sab
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  therevealer

  @Joliette - I would think so. However they can break every rule taught by/through the theocratic school and not be counseled. It used to bug me that public speakers were basically untouchables as far as being given counsel. Some were just so bad and broke so many of the "counsel" points that any young man enrolled in the theocratic school would receive a W for. If a MS or even some elders were not of a high enough standard they were deemed suitable for a talk in the local congregation but not for sending out to other congos. But this was not that well followed and congos were forced to endure some terrible speakers.
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  ShirleyW

  After all, witnesses like my wife, take pride in the fact that the witnesses all over the world are being taught the same thing on a particular Sunday

  Gary

  My mother used to say the same thing in her cult induced spiel to get people interested in attending the special talks. . . .uugggghhhh.
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  therevealer

  @sabastious - dead on, except for the "non GB/Writing department brother" should include "or sister who basically thru their research and compiling the material all but wrote the talk". LOL
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  Adiva

  I remember hearing my dad say that for talks given at the DC, there was a manuscript the speaker had to read from and there was someone offstage who made sure that the speaker did not deviate from what was written.
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  sabastious

  @sabastious - dead on, except for the "non GB/Writing department brother" should include "or sister who basically thru their research and compiling the material all but wrote the talk". LOL

  I was at my mother in law's house the other night and she was nervous about giving a "talk." I felt like telling her that women don't give talks in the Organization they merely perform amusing skits, but I held my tongue and I believe rightly so.

  One of the main reasons for having women do these skits is because they are able to be set up facing each other. This is convenient becase it is against Witness theocratic law for a woman to face the audience as if in a position of instruction (1 Tim 2:12). It is an outrageous form of hypocrisy, as well as destructive sexism, to have such a policy while at the same time have talks given by men, but written by women. They are not even able to be consistent in their sexisms.

  -Sab
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  therevealer

  And add to what has been said, the numerous elders who had very poor skills in doing parts in the service meeting, allowing or being forced to allow, LOL, the wives to basically develop the talk or part and the elder husband delivering. And yes I am absolutely certain that this happened and I assume continues to happen.
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  BroMac

  i know of 3 MS who's wives prepare all of their talks. i dont think they have been given a Public Talk™ yet. none of the wives are part of TMS
• 

  wobble

  I gave my first PT at the tender age of 21 in 1971, it was supposed to be a 55 minute talk, I ran out of material early on, so got an audience discussion going, that went well, so did the fact that I finished almost 10 minutes short. It was from a Soc. outline.

  Very soon I started writing my own outlines, I continued the audience discussion thing, and I always went way under time, when they were reduced to 45 minutes I never gave one that lasted more than 35.

  I was never counseled for being too brief.

  Eventually we were told not to ask audience questions, just to waffle.

  A couple of C.O's mentioned to the B.O.E that the Soc. did not approve of bros. doing their own outlines, but the B.O.E told me I did such a good job to carry on. This came to an end when a letter actually banning personal outlines came from the WT.

  I have heard of Congo's where a Bro. would sit there and vet how close the speaker stuck to the Soc's drivil,but I still used to knock the crap out of the outline, dropping whole sections sometimes, I had several Elders in other Congo's where I was visiting speaker say that they had given that talk, but did not recognise it when I gave it, apart from the title.

  Yay , compliment ! That was because I never included a thought I could not back up by scripture, eventually I was finding it more and more difficult to choose an outline I could work with at all, so I stopped giving P.T's

  I still got requests from other Congo's to go and speak there, these were passed on to me by the P.O and he wanted me to still go, even though I was not doing home talks, I refused the "privilege", because by this time I felt the P.T's were an anachronism that bored everyone s***less.

  Even only 30 minutes of boredom was 30 minutes too long. (If I had ever given one of those it would have been about 23 minutes of course)

  In 58 years as a JW I only ever heard a handful of talks I would rate as really good, and when you think that the C.O's have honed theirs for weeks before you hear it, that says a lot about the quality of P.T's in the Org. at least in my neck of the woods