I just thought that the question box of the November KM was strange the way it was worded. I tried to scan it but could not get it to come up so I will type it out.
("Who should fill out coupons and Internet requests?
Our publications often contain coupons that can be filled out and sent to the branch office to request literature or a visit from Jehovah's Witnesses. In addition, our Web site www.watchtower.org can be used to request a Bible study. These provisions are helping many to learn the truth. However, problems have resulted when publisher have used these tools to make arrangements for their relatives or others to receive spiritual assistance.
Some who have been sent unsolicited literature from the branch office have complained, feeling that our organization is harassing them and has them on some sort of mailing list. Publisher who have received a notice to call on someone who did not personally request a visit have found themselves in an awkward position when the individual expressed irritation. Therefore, request made on our Web site or by means of coupons should come from interested ones themselves and not from publishers in behalf or others. When such requests are indentified as being sent in behalf of someone else, they are generally not processed.
How, then can we assist a relative or an acquaintance spiritually? If you would like him to receive literature, why not send it directly to him as a gift? If he has expressed interest and wishers to be visited by Witnesses but you do not know how to contact the elders in the local congregation you should submit a Please Follow Up (S-43) form to your congregation secretary, who will review it and forward it to the branch office. However, if the interested one is confined to a prison, a jail, a substance-abuse facility, or a state hospital, you should not contact the branch office in his behalf. Rather, you should encourage him to contact the brothers who visit the facility or to write personally to the branch office.")
What really bothered me was when they said that 'some who have been sent unsolicited literature have felt that our organization is harassing them and that those who have been called on were irritated and that put the person calling on them in an awkward position.' REALLY!
Are they for real? What about us the rank and file going to doors unsolicited every day of the week especially Saturdays, what about us getting yelled at by irritated householders for waking them up, interrupting their family time to tell them that they have to become JW's or God will kill them, well maybe we are not that direct but that is truly what we mean and the householders know that. I have been told that to my face at door that they feel I am rude calling on them asking them to accept a Bible studywhen they have their own religion. Are we not demanded in almost every WT and meeting to do more and more and more. To go out in service no matter what even if you are blind have no legs, no arms, confined to a wheel chair, sick with the flu, etc we should still do more. There is no excuse for the rank and file, anyway I could go on and on.
I thought this was a life saving work, why should the branch get upset with the publishers wanting their families to get saved? None of this is making any sense.
I think that the technology age is killing them. I bet more people are getting upset with magazines stuffed in their doors and getting woke up in the mornings by the JW and they are getting on the internet finding the number or address to Bethel and demanding to be left alone. The branch is pushing it off on us making us feel bad yet again.
LITS