A Stroll Down Memory Lane! (page 3)

JayDubyaDotOrg

I remember the written review being like an exam in school.. heads down, the silence, the tension.

Except you didn't get a useful qualification at the end of it.

Atlantis

JayDubyaDotOrg:

You mean like being in the Haunted Mansion at Disney? Make a wrong move and an elder sends you to the back room!

Petra!

You've found materials from my neck of the woods. I can try to track down that address for you. I believe this would likely be the home or location of the District Convention overseer or the Rooming overseer.

Back then we had our District assemblies at Laurel Race Course (Laurel Maryland) so this would explain why the rooming address would be in Laurel. There were only a few rare exceptions to Laurel back in the late 60s, when the org held a few assemblies in Baltimore at Memorial Stadium. One of them was quite famous as it's the one where Fred Franz gave his infamous speech about 1975.

St George of England

When the written review was instigated, 1959 I think, you filled in the answers and after 30 minutes handed your paper in to the TMS Servant. He marked the paper and returned it the following week. Each of the 25 questions were worth a maximum of 4 points so you ended up with a percentage. I noted on the example you provided someone had faintly entered "4" in the answer part.

the TMS Servant would announce the average percentage and the maximum grade (no names of course) and review a few of the questions that caused the most problems.

Exchanging your paper with someone else or marking your own paper came much later.

A role call was made at the start of the meeting but only for those who were in the Ministry School.

JW's would have a fit if they had to do that today!

George

dropoffyourkeylee

We attended a convention in Laurel MD in about ‘’69 or so.

truth_b_known

Back in the day when "District Assemblies" were just advertisements for new Watchtower publications. Those flyers remind me of ads in old Mad Magazine (New Super Whoopy Cushion! Only 50c! Cheap!)

incognito2014

I loved the written review. That was the best bit of the meetings for me. I had forgotten all about those.

smiddy3

One other thing I recall now after reading all these experiences was the board at the front of the hall with all the stats on how your congregation was doing compared to the national average.

Example : how many hours ,bible studies ,back calls,mag.placements,etc,etc.

The idea I suppose was to encourage you to do better than the average.

Typo error on the first post : should have been ,SFA

lancelink

Back in 1980 we built a brand new hall , and someone from bethel came to give several talks, ( we had a type of weekend celebration for this).

The person who came to our hall was Ulysses Glass, I don't remember if he was part of the governing body or not.

He was a very nice man, completely opposite of the wt leaders of today.

Anyway, the narrator from the 1st film sounds exactly like he did.

LongHairGal

ATLANTIS:

(Petra)

They were doing written reviews when I came into the JW religion in the late 1970s.

Being raised Catholic I thought it was a little strange but it appeared to be harmless from what I could see. Then at some point they stopped doing that. BTW, when I came in there was a brief intermission between the two Thursday night meetings. They did away with that also.

As far as being in the Theocratic Ministry School: I had to be pushed to join..In the second congregation I was associated with, I ended up taking myself off the school because it was a burden to get together with other sisters (who I didn’t care for) to do these ‘skits’..I hated it.

The whole Witness religion was such a burden for many reasons and I’m glad I left.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane!