Let's hope that the JWs who begin tithing remember that the old testament tithe was never in money, but was in crops and livestock! I want to see how the WT handles the wheat and cattle being left on Kingdom Hall doorsteps.
Will the GB Eventually "observe" Tithing?
by Sea Breeze 49 Replies latest jw friends
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TonusOH
If they do it in cash, it becomes easier to see just how much is being requested of them.
Say you have a JW who earns a modest salary, like $36,000 per year. Ten percent of that is $3,600. Or $300 per month. If you're more middle-class, you might need to donate twice as much to meet the standard. How many JWs will want to do that? How many are even able to?
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no-zombie
As the world become more technical, the Brotherhood will effectively become poorer and poorer, due to low skilled jobs being automated or the minimum education standard for jobs being raised. Thus the whole issue of generating operating capital, will get harder and harder as time goes on. Young people in particular (the next generation of Witnesses) are just not as financial today as in past generations, with more and more being forced to live with their parents longer because they are unable to care for their own expenses.
So what are the options?
As we have discussed many times here, moving into the digital publishing fully, is a given. The Governing Body could also decide to cut back (or quietly cancel) its mega movie projects and any more new building projects. But I'm sure will not be enough.
They could introduce a two tier JW. site. One with a very basic level of free content (like perhaps the daily text, the month's CLAM workbook and WT study articles) ... and a premium account, like any other worldly streaming service. And when you think about it, who would not pay to see "A day behind the scenes with Geoffrey Jackson" or "Cooking with Kenneth Cook". Really, the potential is endless.
Of course, the Governing Body will never use the word tithe, but I'm sure that in the end, there are more emotional ways to get a similar result.
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Beth Sarim
"the Governing Body will never use the word tithe, but I'm sure that in the end, there are more emotional ways to get a similar result."
The Borg will call it every other word in the dictionary but ''tithe'',,,but they will practise every method named of to carry-out such stuff..
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NotFormer
The movie studio could become a money earner, if handled properly. "Faith based" films still have a market, examples being Passion of the Christ, and more recently The Sound of Freedom. The trouble is that the rarified atmosphere of the Bethel echo-chamber has produced a completely tone-deaf "creative class", such that they wouldn't know how to produce a movie that wouldn't piss off 99.99% of its target audience.
They've got subject matter that could translate to movies. They are always proud of the stances they've taken in the face of government disapproval. The trouble is, anything they've done in the past that could be depicted as positive influence on society is inevitably nuanced in negative ways.
They could make something about the Judge's going to prison for fighting for free speech and freedom of religion rights. A period piece handled properly (with the truth about the Judge heavily massaged) could be an interesting watch. But the WT these days has distanced itself from the Judge.
They could make one about the young JW men who resisted the draft and went to prison as consciencious objectors. Clean cut JWs struggling against the chaotic backdrop of the 60s (with some of the music from the time strategically dropped in!) might work in a film. But then people who actually went through it, like Terry, will emerge from the woodwork and tell their true story. And the whole Mexico/Malawi thing will come up.
They could go into full-on history rewriting mode and tell the their own version of Sound of Freedom, say the story of a fearless elder (or CO/DO) who hunts down and weeds out paedophiles in the organisation. Heck, since they're rewriting history, why not invent their own internal unit, along the lines of the HLC, that hunts down those guys? While it could make for a great movie, the outpouring of reality from the internet and other sources would destroy it within minutes of its release.
Let's face it, simply owning a state of the art movie production facility isn't going to help them much. Any attempt to make good, saleable movies is going to collide with their own history and their own rules.
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ThomasMore
The Jimmy Swaggart Ministries case spooked WTC. They joined him in court as "Friends of Jimmy Swaggart" which gave them insights into how the gov't might come after them. They got out of the contribution for literature business and began mentioning the donation arrangement. That did not generate enough cash for an ice cream cone, so they gradually got out of the publishing for money business and began to focus on their real estate business.
They are selling real estate to cover CSA settlements (In-Court and Out-of-Court) and probably have KH's leveraged as collateral for loans they take. Donations are not coming in as they desire, so they have their linguists feverishly working on a strategy to implement tithing without calling it that. Like shunning, they will claim that they don't, even though they do.
And now the elephant in the room: Loesch looks awful. Do they really think that his face will move the R&F to empty their wallets?
As for the movie studio, I think they are tossing dust in the air to generate excitement and possible donations. If I am wrong, call me out. Like Garrett, my skin is really thick.
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NotFormer
"And now the elephant in the room: Loesch looks awful. Do they really think that his face will move the R&F to empty their wallets?"
You're echoing my thoughts from when I first saw this thread. Why on earth would you use someone who looks like that as a frontman? I'm not just talking about him looking like Herman Munster; he just gives off an unpleasant vibe of unapproachability (to me, anyway).
If they're going to go down the televangelist route, they need to recruit zsomeone from outside the GB who is younger, charismatic (not in the religious sense, obviously!) and able to weave compelling stories for consumption. Someone like a Joel Osteen, perhaps. (Not like Kenneth Copeland; the guy stimulates nothing but revulsion!)
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KalebOutWest
I see it being repeated here and especially since the new arrangement on NOT keeping time, that the ancient Jews (and I guess modern) don't and never did have a system for checking on who paid their tithes...
I may be a JW, but I have Jewish parents and thus I went to Hebrew School for 10 years. The Governing Body lied. The ancient Jews sure did check on who paid their tithes and who did not throughout ancient history, and they kept this system going until modern times. It is in the Talmud.
And they make you study about it as a kid (which most think is boring). In fact this whole thing on how and what to pay and offer was so detailed (because it had to be memorized back in the day due to so few Jews could not read or write in the Bronze Age) that it eventually became what is known as a tractate of the Mishnah known as Ma'aserot. For centuries and generations this tractate was used by the rabbis to dictate how to pay to the kohen (the priests) to ensure that each person paid the right amount of what came to each kohen so they could survive. Even after the Second Temple fell, this system was still in use because the kohen played a major part in synagogue services until the Reform movement came about in the 1880s.
Today, modern Jews must pay--that is "must"--a membership fee to belong to a synagogue, community, or Jewish movement as Jewish law teaches such a stipend is deserved and only right, and the fee is registered, monitored, and carefully noted because Jews are under the Mosaic Law (for the most part), even though Ma'aserot is no longer in effect outside of Orthodox Judaism--and the law teaches such a thing.
So the Governing Body is lying about their "basis" for removal of the hours reporting requirement. (On a scriptural basis for giving a report to Jesus after being in the ministry, see Luke 10:1 and 17.)
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NotFormer
I thought of a membership fee when I was posting about whether or not the GB will implement tithing. I wasn't sure how they could really impose it, since there are no groups in mainstream Christianity that I know of that do it*.
That that is how modern Judaism works is interesting, but I can't see the WT appealing to their customs to convince the slaves.
*There are high control groups and churches that check people's payslips to ensure that they are tithing the correct amount, but most mainstream groups operate on a free-will offering basis.
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Earnest
KalebOutWest : The ancient Jews sure did check on who paid their tithes and who did not throughout ancient history, and they kept this system going until modern times. It is in the Talmud.
The Talmud contains the oral traditions of the Pharisees from the Second Temple period. After the destruction of the temple in 70 it was only rabbinical Judaism that remained to reconstruct the religious system. If we rely on the Bible rather than rabbinical Judaism then there is no indication that the tithe was monitored.