Will Generational Teaching Affect Recruitment?

by bemused 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Londo111

  In a cult, there are "insider" teachings and "outsider" teachings. The overlapping two-in-one generation is for those inside. The teachings geers toward indoctrinating outsiders are the less controversial, softball kind. Eventually, during a low and slow indoctrination process, they progress to teachings that the unindoctrinated would balk at. By this time, a person's behavior has been alterted (herding them to lots of meetings, door-to-door, cutting holidays and non-cult friends), and thus there thinking and emotions begin to align with that behavior.

  For instance, Scientologists don't start off talking about Xenu, but self-improvement, and Mormons don't begin talking about their God of flesh and blood who lives on the planet Kolob, but how they follow Jesus and his teachings. They establish common ground and a normal image to the outside world.
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  LostGeneration

  Ditto on what has already been stated. This stuff is hidden way in the back of the closet for the potential recruit. All they get is the love bombing, instant friendships, and promises of fruit platters for all of eternity.

  Once they are sucked in, they get the rest of this over a period of years and years through talks and conventions, along with the Study Watchtower.

  No one in their right mind would agree that the word generation means "two groups of people overlapping 150 years". Its only stuff that a conditioned mind can accept without question.
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  NewYork44M

  The only recruitment going on is good jws making babies. These little tots will be so indoctrinated by the time they reach the age of reason that the crap around this or that or any other generation is irrelevant.

  We will win or lose based upon what happens on Facebook.
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  daringhart13

  The vast majority never study. They couldn't explain their own beliefs if there was a gun to their head. They just go to meetings and occasionally repeat what they heard.

  Understand it? Explain it?

  Nah. Most of them couldn't quote 5 scriptures from memory. They don't even read the Bible.
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  DesirousOfChange

  The vast majority never study. They couldn't explain their own beliefs if there was a gun to their head. They just go to meetings and occasionally repeat what they heard.

  Understand it? Explain it?

  Nah. Most of them couldn't quote 5 scriptures from memory. They don't even read the Bible.

  .

  Wasn't that the best assembly ever!!! Let's all go grab some pizza and (too many) beers!

  Doc
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  Wasanelder Once

  They have a received an invitation to the "play with a panda world" and who cares who's in the generation? It's cleary worse now than any other time in man's history! Sheesh. Unblievers! lol

  Run away!
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  steve2

  The heyday of huge growth in numbers of JWs in so-called "Western" industrialized nations is well over. Gone are the days when kingdom halls teemed with literally new recruits from field service. That's a rarity nowadays. Most "growth" consist of children raised in the religion. This really is the "settling" down of growth for the organization.

  Others observation about the new "understanding" going over the heads of most Witnesses is likely correct. In recent decades it seems as if the rank and file don't give a damn; there is an unattractive complacency among them, not quite a smug outlook but more a "don't bother me with the details" outlook - which is another change that has been observed: Your average JW - if he or she can be bothered - puts up a weak defense of their beliefs. The current crop of Witnesses lacks the ability to argue their case. If they smell a whif of "apostasy" or "independent thinking', they high tail it. I did not necessarily like them more when they would stay and argue their case - but I surely respected them more.

  Ask a Witness to explain from the Bible itself how they arrive at 1914CE and watch the empty, spluttering red-faced space - but this pathetic ignorance does not disturb them because their leaders have got it all worked out for them. Just shove a colorful pamphlet under the whiskered noses of "interested" people and call that "Witnessing". And then get your caffiene fix at McCafe (well, they've got one thing right: McCafe is far, far more welcoming than householders who often are as equally religiously dull-minded as the unfortunate door-knockers).

  Will the generational teaching affect recruitment? No. But it will nicely fill space in an inexorably more vacuous "study" magazine.
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  dozy

  Welcome Bemused...

  As others have said , you have to remember that the average JW neither really understands or is even particularly bothered about the generation teaching changes. A few years ago I had to explain patiently to a JW relative that the generation applied to the anointed - he still believed the previous WTBTS line that it was the wicked. And this relative is a long standing elder.

  The "bait" that JWs use at the door is the promise that people will live forever in paradise playing with lions with their own lake front luxury property and plenty of fruit to eat and the alternative is that they will be annihilated "imminently" if they don't listen as we are living in the "last days". No mention of any controversial doctrine. Even well known Watchtower Society doctrines like no xmas / birthdays / blood transfusions aren't discussed until many months down the line in the study books.

  And anyway - "recruitment" is negligible in most western lands. In my old congregation , other than JW kids going through the "rite of passage" aged 14-16 hardly anybody got baptised in the last 20 years.

  Your relative sounds a decent person. But being "thoughtful" in itself is no barrier to becoming a cult member.
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  bemused

  Thanks for all your replies. You've clarified a lot for me about the initial contact with potential new recruits. Several of you mentioned a lack of recruits in more developed countries, so perhaps in the West at least JWs will go the way of the Catholics where growth has stagnated and regular service attendance has fallen away, while following Catholic doctrine seems to have become optional (divorce, sex before marriage, contraception etc). I don't think JWs are quite there yet though.
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  yadda yadda 2

  My mother, a die-hard JW for nearly 50 years, can see that their eschatalogy is rather f*cked up, but she just rationalizes it away by saying that while they have their time-based prophecies a bit skew-whiff, it doesn't matter because they have all the main doctrines correct. Jesus will correct the relatively minor errors when he returns, she says.

  Many JW's are probably scratching their heads over the 'generation' teaching spin, but they don't really care because that is just a minor thing in their mind. What matters is that JW's uphold the divine name, they are fulfilling Matt 24:14, they reject hellfire, reject the immortal soul, reject the Trinity, etc.

  That's exactly the rationalising tape-recorder that starts in their head when they get doubtful thoughts about crap like the generation teaching. It eliminates most cognitive dissonance.