by No Apologies 13 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
Reading the thread about declining attendance got me thinking. What happened to Theocratic News? You remember, that little box in the KM with exciting stats about countries most dubs could not find on a map. At one time it was a monthly item, now it seems to have disappeared. Last year I went looking and had to go back to a 1997 km to find it. Has it been seen since? I guess its only news when the numbers are going up???
I am referring to the US edition, don't know about others.
My guess would be the same as yours ... it's hard to 'encourage' the US population by marching statistics about 3rd world countries when the JWs can look around them and see that there are 1/2 the people missing from the Thurs night brainwashing session meeting. Best to drop the matter and try and pretend that growth <> "'hovah's approval". Now they're playing the "love of the greater # cooling off" card.
Yes, Theocratic News was in the Kingdom Manifesto every 3 months through February 1997; then it abruptly stopped without any explanation. I can remember the brothers handling that part having young ones read in a monotone without any enthusiasm.
Kingdom Manifesto - blondie, that IS funny!
Ah yes, one of the wonderful parts where someone would get on stage and read stuff from some book/mag/etc that we could simply read ourselves in 1/10th the time. Yet we had to listen to Mr Monotone read the crap out loud. Then we 'commented' on it by re-reading it into the microphone. Yes, truely blessed are JWs in their rich education, no need for college w/ study programs like that!
And hearing about the lastest changes to the Thurs night lineups, man oh man, are they dumbing this crap down. You don't even need to create a 30 sec intro/conclusion to the bible reading!? No doubt the mentally insane and retarded JWs will appretiate the new "blessings from Jehovah". The ones with even 2 brains cells to rub together will be futher driven to insanity and retardation. Or get out.
"latest changes to the Thurs. nite..."
Could you be more specific?
Dia, I think he was referring to the changes in the Theocractic Ministry School which was announced at the district convention in 2001. There is a new book that replaces the old TMS book. I anticipate a large problem for both the brother handling the school and the participants. It is been on autopilot for so long.
Blondie
Yea, they changed the talk lineup. I don't recall all the details, but the ones that stuck in my mind were 1) no more intro/conclusion to bible readings. You just get up, read the verses and sit down. No commentary. 2) Replacing the bible reading (once a month?) every so often with reading the Watchtower. That one really grabbed me, I can't beleive they have the gall to replace the bible reading with a 'WT reading'. 3) somethign to do with the instruction talk, can't recall, but I think the Q&A part was removed. There were others, but that's all that I recall. In general, a real dumbing down of the 'school'. Oh and in a similar note, I heard the written review is no longer done anymore, just some 'review' part someone readds from the stage? No more preparing for it, no more Q&A after it.
TMS School Changes
5 min talk on counsel point
10 min (?) Instruction Talk (still from WT articles)
12 min (?) Bible Highlights (really telling brothers to make practical application to congregation which they rarely do. Questions will be asked of the audience.
Bible Reading--The WT reading is ostensibly to make brothers qualify as readers for the book study and WT study
Talks 3 and 4, every other week will just have a theme but no specific material assigned. The person will have to do their own research, haha.
Oral review rather than written, but the questions will be provided in advance in a Kingdom Manifesto (KM) insert.
No negative counsel from the platform only privately.
The elders will be getting private counsel supposedly from the school overseer.
Part of the Theocratic news in Canada consisted of listing the new congregations formed.
I remember quite clearly that everyone would applaud when the list was read. Then they just stopped printing it.
I guess it got a little hard to swallow when they would list the new congregations, but in our area, congregations were being shut down regularly, and not a peep was uttered.
