Do you recognize this?

Gorb

Thinking sometimes about my youth days and the stories my grandfather told me about our jw congregation.

Do you recognize that your congregation was full of somehowe strange folks, very low educated, poor and simple?

The PO was an elder with some distance, with some personality acting intelligent and following the rules strict.

There was always a kind of scandal. Someone went apostate, some became angry and split up from the congregation and some folks did a sin and the whole congregation knew what happend. Brother X did it with sister Y direct after the bookstudy, when we were all doing coffee and cake.

Some weeks later it was all peace again and we went on if nothing happened.

But my question is, do you recognize that in the 70's and 80's it was a poor flock with unique strange folks, and now they made progression to more education and better jobs, and more normal witness.

Just curious!

Gorby, better then ever outside.

road to nowhere

NO! Now the only converts are oddball. Narcissist, poor, grifters, not even home schooled education. Born ins are not staying.

There are a few born leaders in but most are pretending. The last good elders here died.

If you question timeliness they trot out the jehovah wants more people to destroy so is waiting. Or proof of something by reading a scripture of an event 2 or 3 thousand years ago.

I quit!

I can't really speak on the quality of leadership in the congregations now as I haven't been a Jdub in decades, but I would think that it varies a lot from area to area and from congregation to congregation. I did go to one congregation in the early seventies where one of the elders was a college professor. Thinking back, I'm amazed that someone of that educational level would buy into the JW fantasy world.

Balaamsass2

As a kid in the silicon Valley we had some VERY interesting people in the congregation. A chemist, accountants, contractors, cops, tradesmen, a management consultant, a few engineers and a few strange gifted oddballs. I think the 1930s and 1940s "anti religion -slogan "Religion is a snare and racket" and Fred Franz's convoluted bible prophesy writings attracted some free thinkers.

After 1975, Knorr's death, Ray Franz leaving, the 80s had a whole new "vibe". Fear of heretics and free thinkers took center stage. In the grumpy mean Ted Jaracz era, service meetings became scripted, humor evaporated, "Speculating" became verboten, as did Congregation picnics, ball games, and even home Watchtower studies. Some Halls I attended became more "churchy", almost like Southern Baptists or Pentecostals...and attracted some of the same people.

Purely my opinion from attending only a dozen halls on both US coasts.

Vidiot

Agreed.

Rutherford’s anti-establishment contrarianism appealed to a lot of folks, but he had a mean streak that started Knorr (and to a lesser degree, Fred Franz) down the hardline path….

…culminating in the embarrassments of the 1970s that started to really undermine the Org’s claims of exclusive divine favor…

…and the fear-driven - and therefore disproportionately heavy-handed - responses taken during the Jaraczic Period to snuff out any real or imagined threat to that premise (particularly the growing problem of child abuse) permanently cemented the Org as an authoritarian high-control group…

…which virtually guaranteed things would continue to get progressively worse.

Vanderhoven7

Charlie Ryde was a JW during the 80s. He writes:

When I was a Jehovahs Witness in the 80’s and 90’s we were told we had THE TRUTH.

What was the Truth?

It was the unflinching belief that Armageddon was so close…soooo close… that wasting your time on having children or getting a college education was unwise. Many JWs believed this so much they failed to prepare financially for the future. The Truth sounded great, all you had to do was be a faithful JW for a little while, a few years at best, and you would live a life of immortal perfection on a paradise Earth.

But time marched on, and here we are. The Truth said people living in 1914 would never die, because that’s when Jesus returned and the promise would be fulfilled. Millions then living have most certainly died, so The Truth was changed to make that false prophecy seem okay.

Now the New and Improved TRUTH says the generation that overlapped the generation of 1914 will never die. Too bad some JWs didn’t get a career or have children based on the old Truth, chalk it up to experience.

The good news for the Watchtower is the New and Improved Truth bought them some time. Time they are using wisely to regroup. Recent changes include reorganizing finances so the individual congregations no longer control their own donations.

Nothing bad could come from a centralized government taking complete control of finances right? Of course not, nothing bad ever happened in this situation in the history of mankind.

Now we have the video below. The New and Improved Truth with 10% more Bonus Truth. Personally anyone who doesn’t immediately reject a leader who says what this JW Leader says is not worth associating with in my life, much less a whole room full of these people.

Remember, this man is part of a direct link to god that gets “new light” and alters The Truth as needed

https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/vmxvzr/babies_are_enemies_of_god_and_we_know_what/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

So what’s the next Truth? what level of control are you willing to give in to? Are you comfortable with living a life with only one purpose, to serve the Jehovahs Witnesses?

Many are. Including much of my family. And it has fragmented our families, dividing us into believers and nonbelievers who don’t speak. Just know going into this that that is a distinct possibility.

LongHairGal

GORB:

I am a long-time ‘Fader’ and as others have said I haven’t attended in decades so I cannot comment on the quality of the ‘leadership’.

I came in as a young working adult and the people in the congregation were conservative families. I didn’t get the sense they were oddballs except some women seemed like they stepped out of the 1950s. I was the ‘oddball’ as a working woman but I paid this no mind.

When I stopped going (late 2001) they were still using bibles and songbooks. No tablet or videos yet. So, I missed out on that. It was ‘early enough’ in time so that the pioneers (who knocked me for working).. were not yet worried about retirement.. Everybody assumed Armageddon was coming soon and no need to worry about that.

Well, fast forward to now: I am retired and the pioneers there (who thought they’d never become senior citizens in this system) have reached retirement age unprepared.

At least when I last attended I was surrounded by responsible people. There was no desperation in the air yet that I could perceive. No panhandling.. Now, I would never want to be anywhere near these misled Witnesses who didn’t prepare for their future and all the other problems in the congregation - and bethelites who were sent home and so on! 👎

3rdgen

In the 1950s I was born and spent the first 7 years in the Monterey Peninsula. My overseer father and pioneer mother had previously helped form the congregation. They brought me home from the hospital to live in the apartment above the Kingdom Hall.

Our congregation had a doctor, a female college professor, a building contractor who handcrafted violins and incredible Swedish furniture, a radio actress, a retired actual cowboy, a chiropractor, and an entrepreneur to name the ones I remember. I was the only child in the hall until I was six! Most of the ones I mentioned before were childless or their children were already grown. All were hard working or retired and lived comfortably or better.

It was a different religion then, much worse for children with the weekly talks stressing corporal punishment and vivifying Dr Spock. Yet, it was better for the adults in that they could freely speculate and even debate certain aspects of "The Truth". And they DID in my presence.

Most of the people were intelligent or gifted or both. They simply were disgusted with the clergy of Christendom and became JWs because they were "not a religion" and neutral to politics.

Of course the 1960s brought huge changes to society in general but the borg exploded with growth -especially in the mid 60's to mid1970s. Many joined who were poor or uneducated looking for a way out of their miserable life or disgusted with the Vietnam War. A message of paradise coming in just a few years or even Months was too good to resist. Gradually, the free thinkers were silenced or died. The converts tended to "serve for the reward" and the rest is more history.

i

truthlover123

Yes, exactly. Remember when no colored shirts and no sports jackets if you wanted to give a talk. Congregation made up of self employed, farmers, window washers, poorly educated brothers and sisters - I say this because in our province only one to three overseers to take care of many -well travelled congregations- all small, all a good distance from each other. Those who pioneered stayed in brothers homes. No elders at that time until 1971-72. That was in the country -and in cities, mainly employed with those already set up in businesses. Talk about the end of the system started about 1975 around 1973-74 with magazines and field ministry updates plus being mentioned at assemblies-off the platform. Brothers sold homes, furniture, businesses- membership increased dramatically as those out came back in along with interested ones. So many issues for the elders at that time - adultery, secular divorce, child abuse, sexual morays- calls at 3 am cause a brother was drunk.... it was handled, went away and back on track. this was just one congregation. After 1975, membership started to drop again and the famous anointed number was talked about as "when you see the last of the anointed, you know the end is come"-- back then it was about 6-7,000 anointed- now over 22,000.

blondie

As to the quality of leadership, if anything it has gotten worse! Obedient to the WTS elders stay in, others who rock the boat are told to shut up or lose their "position", "bad" elders are rewarded. Imagine the WTS was the kind of organization that put men in charge of building projects who were "spiritually" qualified but did not know how to use a hammer, or pipe wrench... I saw it many times. It is like it says in their bible, "so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch.”"

Do you recognize this?

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