Posts by neverendingjourney

97

Unconfirmed 2014 Year Book Numbers - Peak Pubs, Baptized, Hrs, Reg Pio & Studies

by OwnAccord in

jw
friends

i bethelite sent this email out - can't really give out names.

we wrote these figures as quickly as possible, but could not keep up 100%).

you get to check these figures out when you get your 2014 yearbook.

neverendingjourney

Interesting. If the numbers are real, they're still outpacing the global population increase rate.

Again, assuming the numbers are legit (by that I mean they weren't fudged by the Society), the growth has to be coming from the third world.

All evidence seems to suggest that in the developed world the "growth" is coming from within, children born in the religion. But you would think this wouldn't be enough to keep pace with those publishers who die every year and those who are DF'd or simply fall away.

52

Wasting Time In The Ministry--How Did You Do It??

by minimus in

jw
friends

i know of a couple of elders that regularly went out in the ministry throughout the week.

no matter which street they were on, they always seemed to be near the same spot.

someone here talked about the michael jackson moonwalk.

neverendingjourney

I struggle with serious, deep, chronic depression.

I would not ring the bell or knock at all .

There was an MS/Pioneer at my hall who battled through serious bouts of depression himself.

Handing out tracts during the very early hours of the morning at the parking lots of local grocery stores and gas stations was popular in my area. On one occassion I found him sitting in his car, alone, no tie, with the windows up just sulking.

Other times he would arrange the group so that he would be the odd man out. Rather than fake knocking he would drive around making sure "the sisters were okay." Kind of like a rent a cop.

I used to really loathe the guy (he was an a-hole in a lot of other ways), but with time I've come to realize he was suffering from something he couldn't really seek treatment for.

He eventually went to MTS and found ways of skirting difficult assignments. Last I heard he'd been DF'd. I lost touch with him about a decade ago.

52

Wasting Time In The Ministry--How Did You Do It??

by minimus in

jw
friends

i know of a couple of elders that regularly went out in the ministry throughout the week.

no matter which street they were on, they always seemed to be near the same spot.

someone here talked about the michael jackson moonwalk.

neverendingjourney

I was raised by inactive JW parents, but at 16 I bought into "the truth." At that time, field service was to me a life-saving work. I would walk around with a 20 pound briefcase full of books (in two languages) and brochures to cover every possible topic that could come up. I would get into arguments with householders and would implore them to accept the lifeline i was offering.

By the time I was finished my first full year of pioneering (I was 18), field service had morphed into an exercise in counting hours. I remember the exact moment when it reached a tipping point. It was August 31. I needed 10 hours in field service to finish out my 1,000 hours for the year. It was summer. School was out, so I swapped out unbaptized children of various JWs throughout the day and went out to field service with them. That way I could continue to count my time. In the evening when I was finally done, I took one of the kids to a Chucky Cheese type establishment to celebrate.

It was not a joyous occasion for me, though. I realized the pointless nature of what I was doing. I'd gone from believing that I was saving people's lives to finding ways to game the system and waste time to maintain a "privilege." I never completed a second year of pioneering. I was done.

51

Categories of Former Jehovah's Witnesses

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

i was never disfellowshipped, but it's been about 10 years since i was an active jw.

i've made an occasional meeting or half-day at an assembly here or there, strictly at the behest of family (maybe once a year), but i'm completely disconnected.

more importantly, mentally i'm 100% free.. we all have a tendency to project our views and beliefs onto others, and tending to believe that other former jws share our views is no different.

neverendingjourney

I was giving this a little more thought yesterday, thinking about all the JWs I know that left and what classification they might fall under, and I realized there is a small subset of former JWs not captured by any of the four categories.

I wonder if this was a local phenomenon or whether it's widespread, but there were a few folks who showed up, made a splash, got into pissing matches with elders, decided the JW religion was too small to contain their talents/wisdom, and either faded away or were shown the door.

Most of these folks came from charismatic churches and had a tract record of church-hopping. Other were just Class A a**holes and thought they were always right and should be able to run the show from the get go. Few people were sorry to see them go.

This is by the far smallest group I can think of.

51

Categories of Former Jehovah's Witnesses

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

i was never disfellowshipped, but it's been about 10 years since i was an active jw.

i've made an occasional meeting or half-day at an assembly here or there, strictly at the behest of family (maybe once a year), but i'm completely disconnected.

more importantly, mentally i'm 100% free.. we all have a tendency to project our views and beliefs onto others, and tending to believe that other former jws share our views is no different.

neverendingjourney

Well this thread has taken a turn toward the weird.

51

Categories of Former Jehovah's Witnesses

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

i was never disfellowshipped, but it's been about 10 years since i was an active jw.

i've made an occasional meeting or half-day at an assembly here or there, strictly at the behest of family (maybe once a year), but i'm completely disconnected.

more importantly, mentally i'm 100% free.. we all have a tendency to project our views and beliefs onto others, and tending to believe that other former jws share our views is no different.

neverendingjourney

Judge Judy must be a category 0.

As for me, I'm certainly a category 4 type. The process of discovering that it wasn't the truth was long and torturous. I fell into a deep depression and had thoughts of suicide. Not having many people outside of online forums who understood what I was going through was rough. Thankfully, it's all a distant memory now.

Jamie:

I didn't know there was a separate inbox. I sent one of the guys a facebook message (we were not facebook friends), but I have no way of checking now since i deleted my facebook account a year or two ago. I sent the other guy an email to an address that was posted on a non-facebook website. It was the email to his business.

29

We shall dress with modesty (1Tim2:9), why dress like rich lawyers or wealthy financiers?

by Mr Fool in

in my point of view, modest clothing is simple and humble.

so why are jw-men dressed like they own a big company or are challangers to the president post?

.

neverendingjourney

There was an elder at my old hall who absolutely loved playing dress up. Before he was an elder his wife told me she knew he would "accept the truth" because Witnesses would walk around in suits looking important. That was right up her husband's alley.

Before they became witnesses, they had jointly run up their credit cards and maxed out every credit line they could get. They lived like upple middle class folks, but he made 10 dollars and hour and she worked two office cleaning jobs. After they became witnesses they downsized and went into a debt consolidation program, but they always wanted to appear to be of a different social class.

This is a very long way of saying that while their dress code is mostly a negative, there are some who are drawn to it because they like to feel important.

35

Most Irritating Thing About The Jw's

by integ in

for me it is the smugness.

it's their inability and refusal to admit they are wrong....ever...even in the face of irrefutable evidence.

isn't pride a sin?

neverendingjourney

I would have much more respect and admiration if they would just be HUMBLE enough to say "Hey. We don't have all the answers but we're trying our best.

How could they justify excommunicating disobedient members if they admit to only having a best guess of what god might want from them?

29

We shall dress with modesty (1Tim2:9), why dress like rich lawyers or wealthy financiers?

by Mr Fool in

in my point of view, modest clothing is simple and humble.

so why are jw-men dressed like they own a big company or are challangers to the president post?

.

neverendingjourney

The problem is, the WTS has not updated its dress code from the fifties. Nowadays, jeans are the uniform.

Outside of the big New York law firms, the vast majority of attorneys don't wear suits anymore. Of course, you need to wear a suit to go to court, but the vast majority of attorneys rarely, if ever, go to court.

The flowery dresses and suit nonsense is, as you said, a relic of the past. The religion is ossified. It won't update its preaching methods much less its dress code.

51

Categories of Former Jehovah's Witnesses

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

i was never disfellowshipped, but it's been about 10 years since i was an active jw.

i've made an occasional meeting or half-day at an assembly here or there, strictly at the behest of family (maybe once a year), but i'm completely disconnected.

more importantly, mentally i'm 100% free.. we all have a tendency to project our views and beliefs onto others, and tending to believe that other former jws share our views is no different.

neverendingjourney

Great thoughts so far.

Categories are just constructs to help us organize information. There isn't any truth inherent in the construct itself, it's just a tool to help us think about certain subjects.

The folks who've mentioned specturms, is the spectrum an anger/bitterness/trauma specturm? The angrier you are, the more likely you are to want to talk about your former religion?

I think there is certainly some correlation. The longer I've been out, the more I've healed, the less I'm on websites such as this one, but there are people who feel little to no trauma and enjoy talking about their experience. Conversely, there are highly-traumatized people who hold in a lot of anger and simply don't want to talk about it.