by Tenacious 61 Replies latest watchtower scandals
The building is built. paid for and owned by the "friends" so the out of pocket expenses are minimal. The balance is made up by the fact that the building is then RENTED back to the people who built, paid for but somehow now no longer own it.
As a property owner the concept of owning and paying rent for the same building is lunatic.
Last year the deficit here (a UK circuit) was so high an elder told me the CO wrote to the congs citing some nonsense in the Organized to do Jehovah's will book and strong armed the cash that way.
Here it is:
P130
"Ideally, each assembly is to pay the expenses it incurs, with surplus funds being deposited in the circuit account. ...
Blah blah
However, if there are insufficient funds in the circuit account to pay expenses for the last assembly or to meet initial expenses for the next assembly, such as a deposit to secure the use of a facility, the circuit overseer may direct that congregations be advised of the privilege to contribute.
blah blah
... elders will discuss the matter and determine what contribution thir congregation would be able to make to the circuit fund ... then handle this in their congregation by means of a resolution. "
...
This is in a paid for assembly hall!
My personal view is it's not only the JW's who are waking up, it's also the rest of the western world. We on a whole are not satisfied to take something as is and believe it anymore, the information age can really be a powerful tool provided it is legit. Most of us either have a smart phone, Tablet, Laptop, PC, etc and we can access anything in seconds.
The watchtowers major foe is the world wide web, in their words it belongs to Satan, although they are now promoting jw.borg on the very medium that is supposedly run by Satan! What did they do when first launching their site? pray over it in the hope Satan didn't attack it with porn! Well that didn't work because it's full of fear porn!
All the congregations using that hall have probably already sent in $5 per publisher as a congregation resolution anyway.
These demands are on top of that.
i do not know how they do the trick, but i cannot recall there ever have been a surplus. See it: every assembly / convention they report lack of funds.
Some methods were mentioned here: putting not only real numbers into balances; adding artificial 'rent' etc.
I suspect they report 'n-1' number - they report amount collected before the convention started during the afternoon part, what was collected during the lunch is not counted there. And as in the morning crowds are running for good seats, perhaps not so many are contributing before the program starts.
