What if field service reporting were done anonymously?

eyeslice

A favorite Watchtower quote has to be Psalms 110:3 " Your people will offer themselves willingly on the day of your military force." However, the way the field service reporting system works is based on hounding the brothers and sisters to fill in their report slips. Miss a month and you are bound to get a call from your book study conductor asking you why you haven't reported. The whole system is based on pressurisng people to into doing what many feel uncomfortable about, i.e. going from door to door.

But suppose suddenly field service reporting was to be anonymous. All you had to do was write down the month, check a box which said "I confirm I have been in field service for the above month", enter the total number of bible studies conducted and ,finally, enter the number of bible studies conducted out side the family (e.g. 1 bible study, 0 outside the family). Out of a congregation of 100 publishers under the existing system, what do you think the number of publishers would drop to?

My guess is 54. (a 46% drop)

I base my calculation on the estimate that out 100 publishers now, a third would stop under the new rules. That makes approx. 67. Of the 67 20% would either regularly forget, be just too lazy or be too tardy to fill in a report slip. This reduces the 67 by another 13 to give 54.

What about elders and elder's wifes what would the percentage be here? Higher or lower?

eyeslice

calamityjane

They would have a problem with that, as that is one of the ways they keep tabs on you.

How are they now going to know who the inactive ones are.

drwtsn32

I agree that there would be a decrease in the time people actually devote to field service (and perhaps an increase in the amount of lying on the field service slips... lol). Without the elders keeping tabs on how you're doing individually, there's no real pressure to go out as much.

Room 215

``There would be a decrease in the time the people actually devote to field service(?!)" IMHO, this would be an unmitigated disaster for the WTBTS; demand for magazines would plummet to a fraction of current levels and it would a trigger a shutdown of a significant percentge of their production capacity, with a draconian slashing of Bethel staff worldwide.

Elsewhere

Hell.. I'd screw around with them and put in hundreds of hours every month.

eyeslice

calamityjane: How are they now going to know who the inactive ones are.

precisely my point! But Psalms talks about 'willingly', and Christ spoke about 'not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing'.

eyeslice

xjw_b12

Hours spent in field service is the measuring stick to determine how spiritual you are, (both men and their families) therefore what privelages you are entitled to within the congregation and beyond.

Without it they would have to rely on the true christian personality of the individual, and we all know that don't mean squat to WTS.

Gopher

Your people will offer themselves willingly on the day of your military force.

How will the holy-spirit-appointed elders ever know WHO is offering themselves willingly unless they could attach names to statistics? The better your statistics, the more willing you are!

I was always puzzled how "hours in field ministry" had any correlation to how loving or how Christian a person is. Using that statistic to judge a person is like judging a car's performance merely by looking at the speedometer, rather than by all factors (handling, brakes, overall condition, etc.).

RunningMan

Everyone who has ever been involved with a sales force knows that in order to be effective it must measure the amount of production and provide substantial rewards and punishments for performance. If you take these away, production will drop - by a lot more than 50%.

The society is nothing but a sales force. I bet production would drop to almost nothing.

Satanus

Paul said that only some were evangelists.

What if field service reporting were done anonymously?

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