"The first time you disfellowshiped someone was there regret? sadness? or a sense of justice?"
The first time I was young, as I started serving as an elder in my mid-20s, and I think it was probably a sense of justice tinged with a bit of sadness.
"Did you have doubts as to your qualifications to be making this decision?"
I was fairly confident of my own qualifications, but from early on in serving as an elder I saw so many outrageous things being done by other elders, even long-term elders, that I often questioned their qualifications. As time went on it became more and more obvious to me that the JC arrangement was a VERY uneven one, in part due to the tremendous difference in the quality of the brothers serving as elders. Some brothers seem to glory in this, with kind of a warped view that they are soldiers "keeping the organization clean and protecting the congregation." They seem to love that power and control. They often can be total pricks in a jc hearing.
"Were you nervous, was there any doubt in your mind at all that this was the right decision?"
Not really nervous, and few doubts, at first.
"When it was over did you feel like God's Spirit had helped in the decision making?"
In the early years, yes. Experience helped me to see that holy spirit had nothing to do with it.
As far as Skally's question" "As a "disfellowshipping elder", did you EVER once utter to the disfellowshippee that 'jehovah will no longer hear your prayers or cries for help. Only Satan can now'?"
That sounds like the sort of thing a few idiot elders I knew might say. I never said it or anything like it and had absolutely no belief in the idea to begin with. I think that answers both your questions, Skally.
One final note. I was the chair of an appeal committee that was sent to Ogdensburg, NY to review 8 disfellowshippings made there by a special committee. This was in the 1980's. Everything in that congregation seemed a mess, and especially the actions of the special committee. There were no real scriptural grounds for dfing most of the folks that they had, and they'd failed to follow the WTS's procedures. It seemed essentially a case where there was a huge mess in the congregation and the special committee's response was to just df the worst of the lot - most of whom were simply demoralized from the actions of a rogue body of elders.
We talked with Bethel about this while we were dealing with it, and were counseled to take each case and consider it individuallly, and of course to pray about it and depend on the holy spirit. We did just that, and in 7 of the 8 appeal hearings it became obvious that there was simply no basis for the dfing action.
We wrote a 28 page report to the WTS, providing five reasons in each of the 7 cases why the dfing was not proper. Being upset with a body of screw-up elders is not grounds for dfing - and the WTS had already removed all of those elders as not qualifying, which in my mind tended to verify the truthfulness of the friends' concerns.
BUT - the WTS upheld every single one of the dfings. I knew then that they had done exactly what the brothers in the service dept had told us not to do - they'd simply lumped the group together and dfed the whole bunch.
That case deeply disturbed me, as it proved to me that without a doubt the holy spirit had nothing to do with these decisions - even when they were coming from Bethel. And if Bethel didn't have holy spirit, what hope was there for the rest of us?
A few months later I ran into one of the brothers who had been on the special committee. He said that one of the dfed friends, a former elder I think, was turning against the WTS. He said this was proof that dfing had been the right thing to do. I didn't respond, but I thought at the time that the way that poor ex-brother had been handled by the elders was a pretty damn good reason to turn on the WTS. I would have been shocked if he hadn't. He saw the WTS at its very worst.
Good thread, Xena, and nice to talk with you.
S4
