Posts by SnakesInTheTower

32

Convention-Assembly CONTRIBUTIONS, Elder Experience Required

by V in

do you have experience as an elder and the contribution arrangement for assemblies or conventions?

an upcoming watchtower comments video will be exposing the resolution arrangement that makes this a cash-cow for the society.. i am particularly interested in recent experience, including countries other than the us.. let's get our facts straight and explain the ever-present "deficit" once and for all.. v. [email protected] .

SnakesInTheTower

All assemblies start out with a "deficit," even if not a "debt". A circuit can have funds on hand in the local bank and/or with the Society but have a deficit for that particular assembly (this is for CA and SAD). At the assembly halls owned by the Society, an annual accounting of the expenses is compiled and divided by the number of publishers in each part of a circuit. That per capita amount (usually between $5 and $8) is multiplied by the number of publishers and that amount is the "bill" the circuit gets for their assembly. I know, I seen the accounts and expenses for the local assembly hall when I would talk with the elder that took care of the bookeeping.

If it is an event at a non-JW facility, then the expenses are tallied and divided the same way and a bill is submitted to the circuit elders.

At SADs, circuit and district assemblies a deficit is always always always announced no matter what the actual contributions are...why? because if they announced a surplus, then the donations would stop before the end of the event.

Added to the actual expenses of the facility, the circuit elders will have a "business meeting" to rubber stamp other obligations already decided upon by the CO, DO, Assembly Overseer and his Assistant. Add in these "donations" to the Worldwide Work, the Society Kingdom Hall Fund, the Disaster Relief Fund (now rolled into the WWW fund), and sometimes additional donations to the capital fund of the assembly hall.

One time though, several thousand dollars worth of donations were approved for local congos to assist them because they were having financial dificulties..... a definite no no but a nice gesture. This happened while I was attending MTS. I happened to attend MTS at my home assembly hall. I attended our circuit's business meeting which was being held below the classroom. The door open to the stairs to the classroom so the instructor could hear this (hmmm I wonder who did that).... he was livid.... circuit donations are only to be used for circuit expenses and Society donations.... I think those donations were made, but never again... LOL. I think the instructor bent the locals ears.

For district conventions, the society pays for all of the expenses up front, and all donations go back to the Society. Any excess over and above expenses also go back to WWW funds. It is not held over from year to year.

In any of these cases, if there is a deficit, if it is not a big amount, the local elders stupid enough to still be on site afterwards are made aware of it and usually checkbooks and wallets are brought out to take care of it. If it is a larger amount, letters are sent out to the attending congos in the circuit/district reminding them of their privilege of assisting with the deficit.

What a twisted thing...and who of you have seen the "accounting" forms used by the Society? IMHO, these forms do not resemble anything resembling GAAP accounting rules. I know, I am taking accounting classes right now.

I once said something to the elder that did the audits for the CA and SADs for our circuit...he was the Accounting Overseer! How is that possible? Where are the checks and balances? The Overseer audits his own books? Especially when I found out years later that his wife was stealing money from one of her clients...sheesh... I think it still happens, even though I said something to the CO at the time.

Glad I am done with it.

Snakes ()

78

The IRS took my money. :(

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

this year i owed money to the irs.

(the result of cashing in some investments so i could put a down-payment on my first house... i owed taxes on the "income").

i mailed off the check the other day and today i looked at my bank account online.

SnakesInTheTower

I got back almost $1600.... I try to tweak my W4 allowances to minimize my refund so as to not give Uncle Sam a free loan all year.. get the money throughout the year.

Half of that $1600 was a credit for education expenses.... pretty sweet. I will use it to pay for my tuition for my summer semester instead of charging it to my credit card again.

Snakes ()

35

How Public Talks are Done by some Congregations

by Amazing in

jw
friends

reading lady lee's post about collecting public talk outlines made me recall the following:.

when i was the public talk coordinator and cong.

secretary, i kept the public talk file.

SnakesInTheTower

I had the auxiliary counselor job for awhile. I think the BOE just liked to give me the $hit jobs. I told them, "now, don't give me this job and complain when I come and give you counsel. You know I will." I didn't give them counsel every time, nor did I give commendation every time. Frankly, as secretary, CBSO and talk coordinator at the time, I didn't have that kind of time. Some elders liked the counsel, others hated it.

When I went through MTS, the new TMS guidebook had just came out and we were still using the old guidebook. So much for new light. But the position was discussed and what it required. Tact was one of those things. Why in hell any BOE in their right minds would give me that job is beyond me. I think they were trying to set me up for failure. They had me as TMSO in 2 congos right after MTS....not a good fit. I also had the TMS job the last year that counsel was offered from the platform...I told that tale here...

As to me following with the outline. I didn't do it with every speaker. I did it if I knew they liked to go off on tangents. I did it more for my own concentration than anything... but again, not all the time.

Snakes ()

35

How Public Talks are Done by some Congregations

by Amazing in

jw
friends

reading lady lee's post about collecting public talk outlines made me recall the following:.

when i was the public talk coordinator and cong.

secretary, i kept the public talk file.

SnakesInTheTower

My question is...if you work for an employer, and you do a bad job....does the boss let you keep doing a bad job or reward you ....or do you get brought in and talked with and given instruction on how to do a better job?

Yes, the speakers were volunteers and often came long distances. And that is why they are given much more latitude. We would first find out if there was something wrong...were they sick, kids sick, something causing them distress. If that was the case, we would certainly back off and chalk it up to a bad day...and call the PO to be certain that was all it was... or if the speaker had previously been a good speaker, we would try to figure out if it was a one time bad talk, the outline itself may not have suited them... Meetings were hard enough to attend without forcing people to listen to (then) 45 minutes of painful delivery.

We had one elderly faithful brother in the circuit that had the most grating voice imaginable...hard to listen to. Stroke or something years earlier. He rarely gave outbound talks. I begged him (and his coordinator) to come because though his voice was grating, if you listened carefully, he was by any standard (not just JW) an excellent teacher. I put the word out during the week prior that the brother had a bad voice but was an excellent teacher... and everyone was glad he came.

It wasn't as if we were beating these brothers or being unfair.

Snakes ()

35

How Public Talks are Done by some Congregations

by Amazing in

jw
friends

reading lady lee's post about collecting public talk outlines made me recall the following:.

when i was the public talk coordinator and cong.

secretary, i kept the public talk file.

SnakesInTheTower

scott77.... no, what was unfair was the other body of elders not having the cojunes enough to not send out $hitty speakers. some brothers may have been good or excellent speakers at one time but after awhile you have to give them assignments that suit their remaining talents and not embarrass them or make others uncomfortable.

I have to say about the so-called grading system... it was never because they inserted apostate stuff... some times they strayed so far off the outline that they were not even giving it... they were just making up their own like the old days.....

the talk would have had to be absolutely the worse most awful experience to pull a brother into the back room immediately. I know I only had to do it once in 5 years as an elder. Our PO did it once or twice. A few other times we had to call the PO because we knew if we talked to the brother personally it would go badly. Usually we just did not invite them back again.

Problem was when the other congos talk coordinator was a bad speaker... it was tricky getting around that. One brother that was talk coordinator that we didnt want kept insisting that we schedule him or he wouldnt send anyone else from his congo. And we really wanted some of his other speakers. So we scheduled him during the Circuit Assembly or SAD and then called about a month before (to allow plenty of notice) and told him we had "inadvertently" scheduled him then...and I would profusely apologize.... we would get back on rescheduling him.... it worked... devious but necessary. Better than listening to him drone on and on.

We had some speakers who were so bad that if the congo heard a bad speaker was coming, they had the memory of an elephant... that Sunday would be a lot of empty chairs.

Snakes ()

16

First Assembly of Ex-Jehovah's Witnesses-United State

by Scott77 in

jw
friends

hmmm..., why not organise it?

we have all the experiences in our group.

afterall, we are a significant block.

SnakesInTheTower

i could never sit through another "assembly" or "convention" and listen to "talks" and "experiences"....

Apostafests on the other hand.... good times. The one in Toronto October 07 was great... 12 hours in a brewery/pub.. outstanding.. and we got to here people's tales in the Borg and many better stories of what folks were doing with their lives after WT...

And nothing against Rick Fearon..he does a lot of good.... but I can only handle that in small doses...reminds me to much of the KH.

Snakes ()

1

Woman surprises everyone on Britain's Got Talent

by observador in

have you heard of this woman?

she's not so pretty, but has an absolutely heavenly voice.. what was she waiting for until now?

she's 47.. http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92464?fp=1.

SnakesInTheTower

other threads on this topic...including why she waited so long

Snakes ()

33

The Rapid oncoming time of the end part 1

by Homerovah the Almighty in

to the student of ignorance and fear mongering : regarding your proclamation of the end times.. the point is the select signs of the times of the gt as written in the bible could be placed well in any moment of human history.

for last 2000 years and even be placed with greater accuracy in the middle ages, so when someone reads information from apocalyptic religious.

cults like the jws who are trying to superimpose fear into people so they will react in the way they want them to react, hence it pays to analise.

SnakesInTheTower

And I thought some of my posts were long. I guess when registrations opened up again, we have to take the good with the bad with the WTF?

Snakes ()

35

How Public Talks are Done by some Congregations

by Amazing in

jw
friends

reading lady lee's post about collecting public talk outlines made me recall the following:.

when i was the public talk coordinator and cong.

secretary, i kept the public talk file.

SnakesInTheTower

I was a talk coordinator for a number of years. I was pretty organized. I used an Access database that allowed me to filter by just about any conceivable method. One of the best things was I could tell the last time a talk outline was given. I used the software to print out schedules for each of our speakers. I would email filtered lists with congos I exchanged speakers with. If I would have had more time, I could have used the same database to generate the information board copies of schedules (and for quick update drafts I did).... but I could never get the formatting the way I liked it so I typed the board copies in word.

The way I usually figured it...I only needed inbound speakers 35 weeks of the year. There were 3 weekends a year that were assembly weekends....and 2 weekends a year that were CO visits... leaving 47 weeks we needed talks. Then I used the first Sunday of the month to use local speakers and did not usually send out any...providing (allegedly) for more "First Sunday Field Service" support. 35 weeks was easier to schedule.

I tried to send even numbers for scheduling purposes. I hated when a small congo could only provide 2 speakers (of good quality) and they needed 6 or 8 speakers. When this was the case, I would tell them that we could provide qualified MS to them...often they were so desperate that they were happy to have anyone come the 60 or 90 miles to their little congo. For a brief while, the tables were turned and I was the coordinator for one of those small town congos.

If a brother gave a particularly bad talk, I would mark it my notes column.. I did follow the outline while listening to the talks...not to be overly critical, but because I have ADD and it helped me focus.....The so-called D and F speakers were counseled by myself, and/or the TMS overseer or the PO after the meeting. Often they did not stay for hospitality (aka lunch).

When it came time to exchange speakers with that congregation again, I never allowed blanket swaps... If a talk coordinator wanted to send me a particularly bad speaker again, I would ask what outlines that speaker had.... didn't matter if we needed those outlines or not, I told their coordinator we didn't need that outline at the time.

Sadly, we had one elderly brother in our congo who was a crap shoot when it came to talks...and it was not predictable months in advance what would happen. On good days he gave outstanding talks and had that deep voice of a DJ...and in fact he had been a radio DJ in his early days. His stories were funny and the congregations enjoyed his talks. On bad days, it was a horribly uncomfortable disaster. I remember one of the last times I sent him out, I warned the PO (talk coordinator) exactly what I just said. They let him come based on that disclaimer. He gave an outstanding talk. Unfortunately, the next two trips out (and meeting parts in our hall) were disasters. I quit scheduling him. He came to me after a few months wanting to know why he wasnt going out... I told him his outlines had not been requested...not the truth exactly....I just told folks he was unavailable. I finally had to meet with the rest of the body to take him off as TMS overseer and I had two of the older elders talk to him about public talks......it broke his heart....and ours... he loved the school and going out... but we could not continue to subject the congregation to his "old timers" moments...

As I was sitting here thinking about this, it reminded me of how tricky it was scheduling and not hurting people's feelings. I was never good at the politics of it all...

Snakes ()

16

Blondie's Comments You Will Not Hear at the 04-12-09 WT Study (PROMOTE HAPPINESS)

by blondie in

jw
friends

" (matt.

(a) why are those conscious of their spiritual need happy?

meetings.--matt.

SnakesInTheTower

Blondie...good job as always..something you said made me think of some things that happened when I was an elder....and the hypocrisy.

As a former elder, I observed on multiple occasions in multiple congregations where elders swore at each other. In the congo that I was first appointed an elder, it was a mixed body, old and young, black and white. Black PO. Two other elders also black. The three of them were the minority of the group. The secretary was an older white guy nearing retirement. KNOWN RACIST.... how did we know? Because he and his wife were members of a Sportsman's type club that until very recently implicitly did not allow blacks to be sponsored by current members.

One of the black elders went off on this elder and the BOE in general in a meeting in the library. Very loudly dropped the F bomb several times. Was and still is an elder. The secretary was eventually relieved of his duties and is an elder in title only. That only because the current CO is married to a sister of another race so is a little more sensitive to that kind of prejudice.

There is no room whatsoever for use of foul language let alone by men that are supposed to be setting examples.

One elder in a different congregation came after me repeatedly with false accusations to either keep me from reappointment or to get me deleted (he was eventually successful as I allowed him to get away with it ..so I could start my fade). On two occasions in the elders meetings he kept pushing and pushing me to the point that it took one or two elders to hold me down and not come across the conference table. One time his own son (the PO) had to hold my arm and warn his own father... what a joke.

This article emphasizes to me realize how hypocritical the whole elder arrangement is (of course, the whole Borg is hypocritical). Holy Spirit has nothing to do with elder appointments.... it is all politics.

Snakes ()