Witnesses never call around here, for some reason. My wife has lived in this town for 15 years and says she's never talked to one, though she has (rarely) found a tract or something in the door. Two JW guys did call one day when I was home alone, and it was a really bad day, so I couldn't talk to them. But I accepted the magazines - made it almost a classic Service Meeting - style placement for them, and I figured I'd nail them when they made the return visit. That was over a year ago, and I'm still waiting for them to show up.
I did have a series of meetings with some Mormon missionaries a while back, though, and I found what they said to be very interesting. After several meetings in which I asked them numerous questions about their religion that they could not answer, one of them finally said that it wasn't their position to defend their beliefs. Their job was just to go out and find people who were interested and to cultivate the interest. They didn't have time to waste on people who were not really interested in joining their church.
I thought that was a very "cultic" thing to say. I mean, if you accept an assignment to go out and promulgate your faith to the public at large, doesn't it make sense that you would be expected to defend it against other ideas and legitimate criticisms? And yet, it seems to parallel exactly the attitude of most JWs who engage in the field service. Just go out and cherry-pick; skim the cream, and if someone starts asking the wrong kind of questions, run away before you get contaminated. Appropriate for them under the circumstances, I guess, but hardly the hallmark of someone who is actually promoting Truth.
