Wise men learn by other mens mistakes, fools by their own. H. G. Bohn
The Watchtowers future has been set and sealed through the actions or reactions related to the pedophile scandal. The leadership and their lawyers have charted a path to lose more members and to seriously minimize the recruitment of new members in developed countries.
In a recent study done at the University of Houston College of Nursing, researchers did a study on what nurses want in their leaders. Some aspects of this sociological study are applicable to other fields and to any organization including religions.
The Watchtower is now made up of four generations, the oldest being the governing body, followed by baby boomers, generation X, and finally generation D. It has been established since the days of Aristotle and Plato down to our time the conflicts that tend to arise between generations. If we look at the geriatric governing body of JWs they are very much out of touch with the modern group dynamics between the active three generations. In the past the leadership could exert more control over the baby boomers born between 1946 and 1962 due to the prevailing value system. In my own experience as a baby boomer, I bought in part into the Watchtower theology due to having a similar value system as the one below. Current baby boomers want from their leaders in this order the following traits:
Honesty
High integrity
Good people skills
Receptive to people
Good communicators
Positive
Fair
Empowering
Supportive
Approachable
I must admit that back in the 70s the Watchtower was an organization made up of gentler and kinder people. In these pre-internet years negative information about the Watchtower was minimal and hard to come by, to make an educated decision about joining. I believed the congregation microcosm was a model of the leadership. This was the transition era of Knor and Franz when the organization appeared to have more of the values above. Baby boomers the most loyal generation to the governing body and the most brain washed are the last generation to follow directives without questioning them. In this decade the baby boomers will have to fill in the void left by the dying leadership, but the question is how are they now going to be managing these three generations? An interesting point is that generation x does not want to be managed but rather led. This creates a paradox that the Watchtower will have a hard time doing. Generation X has more education, more creativity, more Internet knowledge, and less loyalty to any leaders in comparison to their parents. They have the following expectations of their leaders in this order:
Honesty
Motivators
Receptive to people
Positive
Good communicators
Team players
Good people skills
Approachable
Knowledgeable
Supportive
Today with a stroke of a key they can access so much information on the net, that they can loose their shaky faith in one day. Although there may be some exceptions among generation X JWs in relation to non JWs, make no mistake they are more loyal to themselves and less likely to tolerate as much dishonesty from the Watchtower as their parents. One conclusion from this study is that generation Xers want nurturing from their leaders. If you look at the list above, 8 out of the top ten traits are related to nurturing. Will the new Baby boomer leaders provide this? My prediction is very unlikely; they are simply parroting what the late governing body and legal department programmed into them. Generation X and D will continue the exodus as they educate themselves on the dishonesty and tyranny of all the Watchtower leaders.
Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists I his error. Cicero
Victor Escalante
Edited by - Victor_E on 6 October 2002 17:29:13