So did you as a witness ever notice this? Perhaps if you were being looked at for an elder appointment. Did other elders view you as potential competition? Or did they not like the fact tha you just gave better talks then them and that made them look back? Did they even try to hold you back from being elder perhaps by citing some bogus reason? How widespread is this?
If you're a really good speaker, did you ever notice others who were jealous?
by toto555 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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hoser
I try to dumb down my speaking abilities just to stop the harassment.
When they hear a good talk they try to con you into being an elder or ministerial servant
some elders just don't seem to understand that no means NO
hoser
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wasblind
LOL
Jehovah's Witnesses are supposed to have " love " among themselves, By thier " fruits " you shall know them
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Phizzy
I cannot say I noticed any jealousy, all they had to do was work at it a bit like I did. I viewed it like preparing a meal for invited friends. I always tried to give them something different, which meant going way outside the WT publications.
In addition I would never deliver a talk unless I was enthusiastic about the subject, hence I refused loads of the grey, boring WT talk outlines. (They all were a bit that way, but you could get your teeth in to some subjects).
The P.O (now the title is COBOE I believe ? snappy a ?) of the time was a bit non-plussed when I glanced at outline after outline and said:
"I can't talk on that stuff !"
He must have had a hint then that I was going Apo.
When I think how many speakers just regurgitated the shite that was in the outline, no wonder many of the JW's used to give the P.T a miss.
Some of those that only caught the last 20% of my talk often used to quiz me about it afterward, because what they had heard interested them.
Eventually I refused to give P.T's anymore, dropped out of the TMS too. Within a short time I was gone for good.
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Phizzy
As to the being held back from being an Elder, I would love to hear what they made of me, I did nothing much wrong, and a lot right from a WT point of view, but I was never quiet about the WT's idiocy, and I was never a brown-nose, I never feared or even very much respected C.O's etc
I think they could always find a little something so as not to appoint me, mainly that I expressed the desire never to be an Elder, I was happy to serve as a M.S and do the Car Park duty or whatever, but Elder ? Nah, that was for the "politically correct" JW little grey Society men.
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Ucantnome
in almost 40 years i only remember one brother who could give a really good talk and keep your attention. The others you prayed Armageddon would come like a thief in the middle of his boring talk.
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Julia Orwell
Nope, cause I'm a woman. But I did get counseled once for using a big word...someone felt threatened by my vocabulary.
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StAnn
I used to write my elder-husband's talks and he got raves over them. Then he'd be mad at me because I wrote better talks than he could write.
I'm a good speaker but I do tend to talk a little bit fast. Never noticed any real jealousy.
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MrFreeze
I was a good speaker. I didn't notice any jealousy. I think the bad speakers weren't jealous because they really didn't want to be giving talks in the first place. Some of my talks were pretty lousy, I will admit, if only because the source material was so horrible.