When selling was preaching ...

by Hecce 45 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  berrygerry

  If you haven't seen this letter of 1923, it has some very interesting language.

  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwV5UvzB3-67UGVUWk1FclhTREk
  
• 

  Hecce

  Thanks berrygerry

  Good stuff
• 

  LisaRose

  The magazines and books always seemed quite inexpensive, so I never dreamed that money was the main reason they emphasized the preaching work so much, but of course I was wrong. When you make things with all volunteer labor, then have free labor to distribute them, there really was very little overhead, and even those small amounts added up. But it was a business model that was doomed to failure.

  They tried to make up for the donation arrangement by trying to make people pay just as much as they used to, then turn in any donations raised, but that was never going to work. There was always going to be those who just didn't bother to pay or were broke, it's impossible to enforce. And how do you tell them to pay more when the costs rise? You couldn't. And requesting donations at the door was a bad idea also. It probably sounded good on paper but didn't take into account basic human nature. Most magazines end up not getting placed anyway and I don't know about others, but I just was not going to ask for donations, it just felt wrong, like I was begging, so awkward.

  But I think they would have been in trouble financially even if they weren't forced to stop charging for the literature. Due to changes in society, more women started working outside the home, so they were not home during the week and then too busy on the weekend to talk. People became more suspicious of strangers knocking at their door, less likely to listen. In many areas territories got overworked, people were sick of being bothered and those that did take the literature figured out it just meant they would come back sooner. I also think most JWs just don't like field service for the most part, so they weren't motivated to do a good job, and soliciting donations door to door is hard, very few are good at it. Most JWs just want to "get their hours" and go home, they didn't really care if anyone listened or not, there really is no urgency to the preaching work anymore, not like back in the sixties and seventies.

  
  
  
• 

  Finkelstein

  The Watchtower Corporation has had a long history of twisting up doctrines to make its publications more attractive.

  Jesus returning,, mankind living in the last days, ,Armageddon soon, these were all devised doctrines with literature proliferation in mind.
  
• 

  Hecce

  Thanks to all of you.

  In third world countries it was easy for pioneers to sustain themselves with the placements. I don't think that was the motivation for their service but it was an end result.

  Take the situation with the magazines, the goal was to place one for every hour in service; if you put 100 hours that was 100 magazines at 4 cents profit each or $40.00 monthly. In most poor countries that was money.
• 

  berrygerry

  I always remember the experiences of trading food, chickens, whatever for literature.

  I remember once when pioneering and a dude said that he had no money to "contribute,"

  I saw a bunch of empty soda bottles (which have a refundable deposit), so I traded the mags for empty bottles.

  What an f***ed up bunch (me included).
  
• 

  Finkelstein

  There are many reasons for the corrupt devious lies the WTS created but mostly it was done so to attract attention to its publications and to fuhrer sustain the on going readership and distribution of that literature.

  Pointing faults to other Christian based faiths and proclaiming that god had exclusively and solemnly chosen the WTS was a another important strategic ploy.
• 

  Island Man

  Excuse if this subject that has been treated before.

  Finkelstein has been doing a good job helping lurkers and everyone know about Watchtower's very commercial beginnings. But your op is still informative, nonetheless.
  
• 

  Finkelstein

  Unfortunately the Watchtower Corporation has made millions of people into victims through its indulgently corrupt commercialization of its printed literature.

  Jehovah would have nothing to do with the WTS. and would never have picked it in 1919 as it was self proclaimed by the President J Rutherford, based from it doctrines of Pyramidology and so forth
  

  Tuning people into its own designed and controlled sales representatives with tainted doctrines in hand to further proliferate the WTS's literature to the public.

  Sure there was up marketing to be seen, perhaps not on a grand scale but nevertheless it was there.

  The real discerning irony is that the WTS conducted itself in direct opposition to how the Gospel was supposed to be preached and self identified the organization as a conniving false prophet by Jesus's own description.
  
• 

  Hecce

  To Finkelstein:

  John 7:46

  “The officers answered, Never man spake like this man.”
  
  King James Version (KJV)