I have finally sat down and read this letter. I won't recreate the letter here, but if someone wants to share the link here, please do.
ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS
FEBRUARY 2025
FOR ELDERS
2. Special Talk: “encourage all elders” to “consider” whether “their circumstances” “to serve as auxiliary pioneers (30 or 50 hours/month) during March or April. “Invite family members (obviously non-jws), Bible (WT books) students, return visits, and “other acquaintances”
Other (close) acquaintances, does that mean non-jw family members, bible students, return visits…(not df’d jws?) “A close, warm friendship cannot be cultivated overnight. After all, friends are much more than acquaintances.”
3. How to Attack An Outline, not what you might think this means: but rather that elders put little effort into developing an interesting, well-thought out talk, not doing this because they have “given the talk so many other times before.” How many elders I knew just tried to wing it, not having read let alone studied the study article, even if the WT study overseer or bible study conductor. The old ministry school was developed in 1943 to teach baptized men how to give good public talks. In 1958 women were allowed to participate in showing how to talk to a non-jw person. MS and other men in the congregation look to the elders to show how a good, effective talk is to be given.
4. Hospitality for Visiting Speakers!!!! There used to be a list back on the “information board” for people to sign up for certain speakers, usually good friends or people they wanted to impress. Is that done any more? We had occasions where the original speaker cancelled out and another elder was sent to give the talk. The ones that signed up suddenly had a unforeseen conflict and cancelled and the chairman supposedly was supposed to take the speaker and family out. Or the case where the COBOE had a grudge against the replacement visiting speaker and coerced the one that had signed up for hospitality to cancel at the last minute. The WTS considers showing hospitality a very serious thing (in print anyway) (the WTS says that Lot and Abraham showed hospitality to strangers, even not of their own belief, and ended up having entertained angels).
5. School for Kingdom Evangelizers (new term to me). “The School for Congregation Elders was inaugurated in 2008. Over the next two years, more than 12,000 elders were taught at Patterson and at Brooklyn Bethel. That school is continuing at various other locations, with trained field instructors. In 2010 the Ministerial Training School was renamed the Bible School for Single Brothers, and a new school was formed, the Bible School for Christian Couples. Starting in the 2015 service year, those two schools were combined, forming the School for Kingdom Evangelizers. Those being instructed could be couples or single brothers or sisters.”
6. WORK SAFELY AT KINGDOM HALLS: I knew an elder that volunteered and was sent to Bethel as a temporary worker and safety procedures were not followed and some had no experience in construction, one such inexperienced brother, dropped a 200 pound steel pipe on that elder’s foot and that elder spent the rest of the 2 weeks in the Bethel hospital being treated by a WT doctor that had experience in fingers! That injured brother was not offered any concern except by one older GB brother who visited him every day. In another case, an elder with construction experience but the WTS did not follow safety protocol, and he felt off a flimsy scaffold and died on the spot. WTS did not offer any help paying for the injuries or the loss of income to the dead brother’s family. Yes, the WTS says PLAN (wow) Do you think the elders are doing it? Haha. But the WTS is CYAing legally, putting it on that congregation’s elders.
7. So no more 16 year old MS (but can a baptized male under 18, conduct field service arrangements?) Do the parents or guardians have to approve the appointment of their minor son, or does the body of elders have the final say?
1) What does the WTS mean “always respect parental headship when working with a young ministerial servant?”
2) Another legal CYA “never be alone with a ministerial servant who is younger than 18 years of age. Use discernment (what is the WTS definition of that—legal CYA here) to avoid any conduct that could be misinterpreted by others (who) as morally questionable (any legal definitions of that that conduct might be?)
3) (MS who is younger than 18) should not be given any responsibility that involves overseeing or supervising others. (Does include conducting meetings for field service?)
4) Some…younger than 18…microphone…sound equipment..literature, territory (unbaptized helping?)
(The WTS once again is only making these changes to address many of the legal problems they are having in the courts)