With WBTS, it's only and always about the money. The changes in the excess of printing should have happened 20 if not 30 years ago..what a waste of time and money while thousands of magazines and books languished in closets and basements. Consolidated meeting materials makes perfect sense. I thought they should lose the WAT and AW for FS and just print a quarterly brochure and effectively cover their territory using those.
Revamping the meetings, (although not really), was a savvy attempt to keep the attendance numbers up to "all 5 meetings." Fewer qualified elders to oversee the school is a situation in my area. Using MS's to conduct 2nd school, very little participation...the TMS just isn't what it used to be...again in my area. It needed a huge change and it makes sense what they did, I think.
The biggest outlay of cash is the monthly support of the full time workers, Bethel/missionaries/DO's etc. It only makes sense to revamp and reduce that expense. Now they don't rely on flexible donations but debit the congregations for a set amount, that was smart. Selling their prime real estate at the top of the market, creating their own bunkers makes sense to me.
The court settlements and losses, and the cost of litigation, those are things they out of their control and they must budget for it. It already looks like they are moving money around to show how "poor" they are. Believe me, they have expert advisers in regards to their finances. They are a corporation, and a corporation only makes decisions to keep itself in existence.
I could be very very wrong, but I think the WBTS coffers are full. The RBC was a brilliant money making scam. But, they have to change they way they were doing business. The stipends that went out for thousands of full time workers are now going to at least some victims of abuse. That's a pleasant thought.
It's also a pleasant thought that their master revamp building program is on hold. That is very interesting. It's all very interesting.
