service overseer - we're only reaching 10% of the people

by truthseeker 10 Replies latest jw friends

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  truthseeker

  At the service meeting last week, it was announced that which area of service do we need to work on more? Was it bible studies, return visits or not homes?

  Well, apparently it was not at homes. The service overseer said that nowadays, 70% of people are not home. Publishers and pioneers are forgetting to work these not at homes, and forgetting to hand in their house to house record slips.

  The society is worried, according to reports of recent letters to the congregation, because these people who aren't at home are never reached.

  It is estimated that we only reach 10% of the people in our area who are at home. And in some households, there may be 6 people, yet only 3 of them are spoken to. Publishers and pioneers will continually call at the same time every week when they do work not at homes, so they always miss them.

  Is this a national trend?
• 

  La Capra

  I think that it is, and has been, a national trend to ignore the door should one hear a knock or the bell between 10 a.m. and noon, when one is not expecting any visitors. I know I generally do. So do all my neighbors, too. Shoshana
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  blondie

  Makes you wonder about the fairness of killing 6 billion people who have not been kind to "Christ's brothers" or their representative if they are not reaching the people in the countries where the work is not banned and there are large numbers of JWs.

  Blondie
• 

  Country Girl

  There's only one thing to say to *that* subject line and that is: Thank heaven they are only reaching 10%! Hopefully, it'll be 0% at some point in the future.

  CG
• 

  Amazing

  Is this a national trend?

  Not only a national trend, it is international throughout the western nations, and it has been a trend ever since I can remember. The Society periodically focuses on "Not-at-homes" and then focus on "Bible Studies," then "Informal Witnessing," then the "Unbelieving Family", then to "Unassigned Territory," then to "Return Visits," then "Subscriptions" when they used to have those ... then fresh "Door Kocking," then nack to "Not-at-homes," ... the cycle never ends ... it is always the same, and always made to sound urgent, and as though it was some new realization that the JWs are forgetting ... the eternal task master never stops beating the slaves. - Jim W.
• 

  rocketman

  I agree with Amazing - there's always some angle being played, some 'aspect' of the jw witnessing that needs attention.

  Frankly, the average jw doesn't really care about who is home and who isn't. They don't care about talking with various household members. They didn't when I was an elder and we tried to motivate them toward such goals. What they cared about was this: going out, working a couple of blocks of territory, taking a break, then spending an easy-going hour making return visits. And can they be blamed?
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  Swan

  Hmmmm.

  What is being left unsaid speaks volumes.

  Double income homes not being reached and possibly converted.

  Yes, I can see why they are concerned about these and not the homeless people living under the bridge downtown.

  Tammy
• 

  Room 215

  The door-to-door work is a hopelessly inefficient charade that 90 percent of today's JWs would be only too glad to dispense with if they could. For all the countless billions of hours wasted ins shuffling around desultorily, not one in ten thousand people have any inkling as to what JWs believe, or that they were just handed an opportunity to ``choose life by serving Jehovah before it's too late" or told ``God's Kingdom will soon restore paradise" by the two nervous youngsters who just stood at their doors a moment ago, staring down at their shoes while holding out magazines about ``Are You a Slave to Fashion?" or ``What to Do about Garbage?"

  To the public, whose reaction ranges to bemused tolerance or annoyance, JWs are nothing more than kooks that refuse blood and don't celebrate Birthdays or Christmas.
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  Gordy

  I noticed the change over they years I was a JW from 1971 to 1999.

  During the early days we would get most people at home. morning, afternoon, evening. I even remember doing field service at 8 - 9pm.

  But by the 1990's people lives had changed. Both husband and wife would now be working so there would be no one home during the day. Shopping has become a 24/7 thing. Families will now go out shopping in superstores in the evening or on Sundays. Also leisure time has grown people are now able to go off for the weekend or longer. Everyone near enough has a car so why stay at home.

  I worked roads on field service with about 100 homes in and be lucky to get half a dozen people in. Some territories where so bad for not homes that when we got to the end of a map rather than just go back doing the not homes, we just started the map again.

  Then we had to do away with the WT's own House to house records, because of the Data Protection Act. So we had to write them in our own notebook, then verbally pass them on to someone who would be able to do them at another time, if we couldn't do them. More often than not this was forgotten to be done.

  To me ot just seemed a total waste of time. I could probably count on both hands the number of people who became JW's through the door to door work, in my congregation in 30 years. In the latter years most of those baptised at assemblies were usually members of the family of a JW.

  It seemed to me such an inefficient way to contact people. I used to think that if I was in business and selling a product by the same way I would not be in business long. Yet the WT claim to be placing magazines and books on a large scale. Well not in my old territory they weren't , brothers and sisters would be carrying round the same old books and mags for months on end. I've seen piles of unplaced mags in JW homes.

  As already stated I believe that the door to door work has just become a stick with which to beat members. A means of controlling them by causing fear , that if not done they will not get through Armageddon. There can be no other reason, because its a totally useless way to bring people into the WT.
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  shamus

  According to the society, you only need TO KNOW about Jehovahs' Witnesses to be destroyed along with billions of other people at armageddon, so what are they worried about?

  Bring it on, this Armageddon. I'm ready!

  They're just stalling again. Failed expectations of 1914 rearing its head. That's all.

  They're pitiful, aren't they?