I just had a thought about the new KH design (page 2)

Village Idiot

konceptual99, the Governing Body has bitten Mammon's apple and their eyes have opened to the knowledge of abundant wealth.

Fair enough - where there is a will there is a way I guess. The long and the short of it is that we are all speculating right now. As I say, anything is possible and I am sure the prospect of making dosh from halls whilst they are sitting empty will have been seriously discussed.

Time will tell what the strategy is.

One thing is sure - the WTS has to keep on making the numbers seem big, keep on hyping up the activity, keeping the sheep working hard, keep the donations flowing, ploughing on yet preaching the nearness of the end.

_Morpheus

Negative, jeff. There are at least two flaws in your theory.

1) these actually will still be built with free jw labor. The thermosteel construction and brick exterior is a decade old (at least) in dubbie lamd. They absolutly are not contracting anything out, except in places like ny city where union laws demand it.

2) kindomhalls are used quiet a bit during the week outside regular meeting nights. Meetings for field service are held twice a day in most halls as well as various elder meetings and the like. Then there is the issue of blasphemy mentioned by someone else.

It seems clear to me that this new design is all about flipping the buildings.

ToesUp

The organization does not have to sell the buildings. Remember there are tons of investors that own commercial real estate that make money leasing the commercial space. It's a huge business. If "things" don't work out they can become Landlords. Big money in it.

_Morpheus

Or claim they sold it, tranfer it to shell company and then manage it all the while the congregation believes it was sold. That i could see as a possiblity

blondie

If they want to use space/time better, why not have 2 or more congregations using the building (assuming not in a small town far from other villages/towns). Save money by using less buildings. Below are some points churches should consider.

http://www.churchadminpros.com/rent.htm

konceptual99

If they want to use space/time better, why not have 2 or more congregations using the building (assuming not in a small town far from other villages/towns). Save money by using less buildings. Below are some points churches should consider.

This is absolutely the model they wish to implement as far as possible. I was discussing this with a brother who is part of the impending LDC in the UK just the other week.

OneEyedJoe

if the building has been dedicated to God, how could they turn around and sell it?

As dedicated witnesses of Jehovah, we still must "sell" our skills and labor to an employer to provide for everyday necessities. Similarly, what a wonderful opportunity we have to support kingdom interests by renting out dedicated buildings in order to fund the preaching work!

Doesn't take much to twist things in order to justify it. The civil rights issues could probably be side-stepped in most cases too. For one thing, I can't see any gays wanting to get married in a KH. JWs only do it because they can't afford a nicer place due to the education ban or the fact that they mostly get married right out of highschool. what in the world (other than having it out for the cult) would motivate some gays to want to get married there? Even in that case, can't churches establish rules about who can get married there? Things like pre-marital counseling, etc? They could probably make it either prohibitively expensive for a non-JW to get married there, or set the rules so strict that no one would bother. They could count all the meetings, etc that JWs do as time towards this requirement and therefore JWs could still use it to get married without the trouble.

Anyway, I suspect they'd be able to come up with something. If not, they can always quote a few scriptures out of context to silence any critics.

_Morpheus

I obviously dont know the situation world wide but in the washington dc, maryland virgina area there are no single use kingdomhalls. Its minimum two and often three congregations using a hall.

Jonathan Drake

The governing body and branch are not the ones responsible for the Kingdom Halls. They sanction the build but then the congregation is on its own to pay the loan and make its own money. They did recently make the change that all extra funds should be sent to the branch tho.

Its to possible you could be on to something. But I don't see how this could happen without local elders knowing, congregats knowing, etc. This would create a sticky situation for the times when a meeting is for gay rights or abortion because while the branch may be amoral the individuals aren't necessarily. So how many of the rank and file are they willing to lose? I don't know if they'd make that sacrifice, and they'd have to to avoid discimination lawsuits as someone else pointed out.

but, maybe they are thinking about that and will grab as much as they can before that happens.

I just had a thought about the new KH design

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