Religious meetings once a week=enough

by JH 31 Replies latest jw friends

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  ozziepost

  No
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  willyloman

  My wife and I sat down one day and estimated that we spent at least 15 hours a week preparing for and getting ready to go to meetings, including time actually spent AT meetings. We had done this for about 30 years, and we added up those hours, and, well, it was pretty revealing. We could have both taken part time jobs and we'd now be retired millionaires.
• 

  boa

  weeeell if you believe that you have a 'spiritual need' that must be satisfied by association with others in a building or home then I suppose some regularity of gathering would be good....

  however, this exdubbie has had over 30 yrs of being 'over-meetinged' to death and wants none of it for a while

  i'll continue to listen though to all of you who have found solace or answers within other churches.....maybe i'll get it together that way in the future....

  boa....of the 'thank god i don't have to go to another jw meeting - ever class'

  xq - the meetings at bethel i can remember that are in addition to normal jw meetings are:

  morning worship (before work), sometimes meetings during the day for bethel elders, monday night family study of the watchtower, annual general meeting, bethel entrance school for newbies.

  thats all i can remember for now.....

  boa
• 

  barry

  My wife and our two boys usually go to 1 meeting a week and is the weekly bible study, we could stay for the divine service but with two small boys it is difficult. The classes they go to is for there agegroup so they have fun singing and playing with kids there own age. I go to the adults class.

  Sometimes we go to the catholic church as my wife is catholic thats only an hour service but they have closed communion and I dont realy fit in. Also the Catholics have a strange way of raceing to their car straight after the service unlike members from other churches who stand around after church in an effort to talk to fellow cultists. Barry
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  blondie

  Actually in the church I attend, my bible study group is held once a fortnight, and that comes round quick enough. There's no meetings in the school holidays because it's viewed as important for families to have time together. When there's three bible studies in a month, the last one is finished early and all those who can go to a local Sizzlers restaurant for a meal. Now that's civilised! We never hear of things being bad because they "take time away from witnessing"!! How refreshing!

  ozziepost, that sounds balanced. As you pointed out, I said the diffference it is voluntary and you are not labeled "weak" if you miss one. If we lived closer, we would visit your group with you.

  I have seen people sit through 3 football games in a row, no problem, because they are interested in it. We sign up and pay for classes in the university, sometimes for 5 to 6 hours a day (with breaks), why, because we see value in it.

  I hated the meetings especially at the end, because nothing was interesting any more, just regurgitated WTS thinking. The only thing I every enjoyed was studying the Bible with people. Now I tutor people in English. I enjoy the time I spend every week. I attend meetings and conferences on religious sexual abuse, and find it invigorating.

  In the end, it is our choice, we are interested in our choices, and we aren't penalized, marked, or shunned for nonattendance.

  Blondie (the Bethel routine was a killer, don't forget the newbie class after the Monday night Bethel family WTS study)
• 

  Room 215

  If attendance slips, and it does appear to be the case today, the WTBTS's approach is to step up the browbeating of the dubs to attend and far too little on urging the speakers and presenters to make them interesting and relevant, so that people actually WANT to attend. Nor is there much introspection on the WT writers on improving their content. It's as if the owners of a failed restaurant were to blame the customers rather than take a hard look at what their kitchen is dishing out.

  My experience is that the large majority of JWs who attend all five meetings regularly do so out of a perceived sense of obligation or duty--usually driven by guilt-- than because they actually ENJOY them. An then for many who say they like to go, the enjoyment often derives from the social interation with their friends than in any sense of fulfilment from the content. Some also seem to regard meeting attendance as a sort of installment pre-payment on their idyllic New World Homestead.
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  ozziepost

  Has anybody mentioned the "meeting after the meeting"? For a while we banned them in our congregation, but the Bethel elders couldn't help themselves, they had to have them back, and they gradually were re-introduced. I wonder how many tens of thousands of women around the world spend hours each year just waiting for their husbands who're at a "meeting after the meeting"?
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  JH

  "meeting after the meeting"?

  That reminds me of the last time I went to a meeting.

  It was a Sunday meeting, and right after the 2 hour meeting, brother elder said, for those who want to go out in the field service right after the meeting, please gather in the second hall...(they do this every 2nd or 3th sunday of the month)

  That's it, go bother people at 12 noon, while they are having lunch, while your own children are starving for physical food...
• 

  Room 215

  Oz, JH, those infamous ``meetings after the meeting," often interminable and invariably focused on some triviality were one of the main reasons I ``packed it in" as an elder. They were particularly taking when convened midweek, after the service meeting, piled on top of a full day's work, the rush home to eat and post-dinner sprint to the meeting.
• 

  Mary

  If attendance slips, and it does appear to be the case today, the WTBTS's approach is to step up the browbeating of the dubs to attend and far too little on urging the speakers and presenters to make them interesting and relevant, so that people actually WANT to attend.

  Bingo. I mentioned this to one of my elders who was concerned about meeting attendance. I told him that instead of Brooklyn TELLING us what losers we are for missing meetings, perhaps they would do well to ASK us why we're missing meetings and go from there. I've always been very vocal in my opinion that there are simply too many meetings and that no other church (not even Muslims for crissakes) expect their people to go to 5 frigging meetings a week and prepare for them before hand. In times past when meeting attendance was low, the guilt trip used to work pretty good. Now alot of Dubs are just saying to themselves "bite me if you don't like it".