Suggested reasons for the 1l0 to 15 minute break
1) allow time for "newly interested" to leave after public talk without walking out during song (a spectacle) (meetings ran more than 2 hour 15 minutes or more if you factored in the ending prayer and songs. Do younger jws know that there was no opening prayer for the publlic talk (until 1972) even at the assemblies; didn't want to offend any visitors)
2) smoking break? Even prior to 1973 many jws hid their addiction. I never saw the outdoor smoking
3) restroom break not interrupting the meeting (big lineup not always done after 15 minutes)
4) candy store one block away; jw kids with money rushed down there to get their stash to chomp on during the WT study (to the consternation of the conductor (chewing noises)
I was an older teen then and we did not have many non-jws at the meeting. The society wanted to train people to stay for both meeings. My grandmother said they went out in service all day Sunday inviting people to the Sunday evening meetings. The focus was really on getting non-jws to come. During 1966 to 1975 the focus was on getting non-jws to the meeting or dropping them after 6 month as a study. Also the local servants wanted to end the candy excursions and perhaps the ones that went out to their car to smoke. The society annually had a part about people not being able to hold their urine for 2 hours even after the between break ended.
The candyman missed out on his customers.
w50 3/15 pp. 95-96 Letters ***
ABSENCE OF PRAYER AT PUBLIC MEETINGS!
November 17, 1949
Dear Brother:
Answering your query of the 9th instant regarding the absence of prayer in opening and closing our public meetings:
It is certain that the public does not come to our public lectures in our Kingdom Hall or elsewhere to hear us pray, but do come to hear the advertised subject spoken upon by the speaker announced as competent to handle it. Our Exemplar Jesus held many public lectures, but there is no record that he opened or closed any of them with prayer. There is no Bible record that he opened up the sermon on the mount with prayer, or those open-air lectures after which he fed the multitude, first the 5,000 and then the 4,000. But there is a record that when he thus fed the multitudes he did offer prayer of thanksgiving to God before breaking the bread and fish and distributing the pieces to the hungry crowds. And these lectures, mind you, were public gatherings of practically all Jews who already believed in Jehovah God. But in our case today we advertise our public lectures as open to all peoples, whether nominally Catholic, Protestant, Jew, skeptic, atheist, or of the many pagan religions. Surely those of the public who are not of the Christian faith do not turn out to our meetings in order to join with us in prayer to our God, but solely to hear the speech which is the drawing feature. So we give them that and do not think to impose upon them by attaching something else to the lecture which might offend or stumble them before they hear the speech they came for. The apostle Paul, at 1 Corinthians, chapter 14, says Christians should offer prayer at their own meetings in a language to be understood in order that the hearers might be able to say Amen! at its close. But we should not expect any non-Christian public to join in any prayer if offered at a public meeting and then say Amen! with us at the close. Our brethren are offering public lectures in many pagan lands, and if it would be imposing upon the pagan public to offer our prayers before we let them hear our public message, then the same rule ought to apply even in Christendom. Because the message is for the public to tune in on, prayer is likewise not offered over the Society’s radio station WBBR. But this does not mean prayer is never offered in behalf of all such public meetings. It is, privately, by those promoting and supporting the public lecture campaign. That suffices.
Yours faithfully in serving The Theocracy,
WATCH TOWER BIBLE & TRACT SOCIETY
