Lets hear what your local needs was about this week (page 2)

berrygerry

Yes he was quoting a watchtower from a few years ago

Could anyone provide a reference?

Late Bloomer

He then used an illustration about fisherman fishing at night cause thats when the fish bite.

Ugh. That gives me flashbacks to the evening witnessing I was forced to do as a kid. Do they still do that? Screwed my whole day up. I preferred Saturday mornings where we got out and got it done and over with.

Has anyone ever been converted due to phone witnessing or letter writing? My mom searches the newspaper obits for addresses of the deceased to send JW junk mail and she's done this for years, maybe decades by now. To my knowledge she has never started a bible study this way. Why are preaching methods that are clearly ineffective still being encouraged? The cynical part of me thinks it's less about making converts and more about numbers and phone/letter witnessing are easy ways to rack up lots of time.

Lieu

Statistics

stuckinarut2

Local Needs?

More Fear, Obligation, and Guilt!

smiddy

They only cover their territory once a year ? GEEEEzus , I`d be ashamed to admit that .

In a congregation I was in 25 years ago we covered our territory about once every 5 months ,admittedly it was saturated with publishers 20 miles north of Brisbane ,Aust.

I dreaded going back over the same territory with the current offer when only last week we covered it with the magazines.

No wonder my hours dropped off to about 5 or 6 a month.

smiddy

hillfy333

To my knowledge she has never started a bible study this way. Why are preaching methods that are clearly ineffective still being encouraged? Personally i don't think conversion is the priority. I think the witness mind is obsessed with spreading the seed, and God will take care of the rest. So whether they are effective or not, the most important thing is to get the message out there. Sadly for them their message is false.

Driving Force

Actually, keeping the publishers busy is the important thing for the leadership. If they are busy pursuing ineffective dumb tasks, there is less time for searching the internet and perhaps learning the ttatt. That is what cults do, it is all part of the mind control.

punkofnice

when I was an elder, the directive of the BOE was to somehow crowbar 'ministry(tm)' into bl@@dy everything.

Juan Viejo2

Covering territories once a year? Something is just not right...

In the 1950s and 1960s, Southern California congregations were covering most populated areas at least once every 3-4 months. Our congregation had about 110 members, plus another 15-20 children under 15 who went door to door more or less by themselves.

Our total territory was fairly large, about 8-10 miles in each direction from our Kingdom Hall. My father was the Territory Servant for a few months - and like most things at the time - he delegated the actual clerical work of his position to me. I was still in my mid-teens.

I can't remember the exact way we managed everything (far too many years ago), but basically we would get three or four new maps from the Automobile Club that covered our city. We then outlined our Kingdom Hall territory boundaries. We used some kind of colored pens or crayons and marked all of the major streets with heavy lines and smaller thoroughfares with somewhat lighter lines.

Then the congregation servant, assistant congregation servant, the territory servant (my father), the Ministry School Servant, and each of the Tuesday night Book Study Conductors would have a meeting and reconsider the entire map and territories.

There were many considerations involved. First was locations of remote Tuesday Night Bookstudies. In those days, we often went out in service for 45 minutes before the 8:00 PM Book Study began (late spring <---> early autumn). So those territories around the remote meeting locations were selected and marked with thin colored pencil lines. Most were about six city blocks square, with an adjacent major street or boulevard. The idea was that we could walk or all hop in a single car and just go hit a few streets nearby for 30-40 minutes before the Book Study started. Doing that alone enabled some of us to get 2 to 4 service hours each month toward our goal of 10-15.

The next group of territories were the more remote and less populated areas best served by small groups or single publishers. We outlined them in one color of ink or crayon.

More populated areas were usually limited to about 6 city blocks in each direction, more or less square. We tried to avoid having to cross wide or heavily trafficked boulevards or feeder streets. Tuesday Book Study locations were marked and larger areas around them were blocked off. The Kingdom Hall area was divided into four or five medium segments so that multiple groups could meet at the Kingdom Hall on Saturday and Sunday mornings and be able to walk to assigned territories.

I can only remember about a half dozen regular pioneers serving in our congregation at any one time, but each of them would be given a small cutout map on a cardboard card and an assigned territory for a minimum of 30-days. They would exchange them each month for another territory - unless they admitted to having not covered the territory completely. An estimate of the number of residences was marked on the back of the card.

For a brief time our Territory Servant would make note of addresses reported as having vicious dogs or threatening residents. However, one of the Circuit Servants told us not to do that anymore "because situations change and we can not avoid delivering the good news" to anyone just because they had a mean dog or threatened to kill us.

When I "vacation pioneered" during my summer school break, I was given my own territory card to work. I was a dedicated VP so made sure to cover the territory completely. When I was done, I would go to the Territory Servant and ask for an exchange. Just working by myself and riding to the territory on my bicycle, I could usually cover a complete territory in less than two weeks. And I faithfully hit every living unit in the territory, even going back to "not at homes" and other "go-backs" several times to make sure that I had contacted everyone in the territory. I think one summer I must have covered 20-25% of the territories in one quadrant during my summer vacation - and that did not count Saturday and Sunday mornings when I went out with my family.

Why would I do such a thing? Very simply because I was a true believer. I was afraid that Jehovah would judge me harshly if I did not go to every door and put forth every effort to place magazines - or at least leave a public talk invitation - within my assigned territories.

I imagined being called before Jehovah on "Judgement Day" and being denied eternal life because "YOU FAILED TO KNOCK ON EVERY DOOR WHEN YOU WERE VACATION PIONEERING IN 1959 ON 4TH STREET. SOMEONE ON THAT STREET DIED OF NATURAL CAUSES BEFORE HE LEARNED OF GOD'S TRUTH AND YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE." I really believed that even though I knocked on 50 doors one day, but bypassed a few houses for whatever excuses I might have had might result in being incinerated during Armageddon. The risk was too great - so I hit every doorstep.

Now I look out my office window and see JWs working in our neighborhood bypass our house and others - often hitting only a few homes on each side of the street. One day a car pulled up in front of my house and a well-dressed couple got out. Both were carrying "book bags" when they finally got out of their car - after sitting there for nearly 20 minutes. Even though they were parked in front of my home, they did not knock on my door or the two across the street from me. But I did see them slowly walk up the street and hit about three or four others briefly before returning to their car and then driving away. I have no idea why they would park their car and then walka ways to visit other homes. I figured they were on my street a total of 45 minutes, with at least 15-20 being spent inside their car.

I would have had sleepless nights when I was a teenaged Pioneer - wondering how I would explain that type of half-hearted door-to-door service to Jesus - or god forbid - Jehovah!

I finally came to my senses when I turned 21. I figured I had better things to do with my time and would take my chances if Judgement Day ever came.

JV

ttdtt

Current Population is :

7,418,536,274

There is this thing called GOOGLE not sure if anyone has heard of it:)

Lets hear what your local needs was about this week

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