i was stalking to a jw today about her recent experience on the carts and with being a jw generally.
until this conversation i considered the carts as just an ineffective preaching method and a harmless waste of time.
but now i wonder if the effect of the carts might be to produce noticeable decline in jw numbers.
And while the pioneers and uber publishers do the metropolitan carts; they and the average joe's do the congregation carts and the only ones left doing door knocking are the "looked down on" 4 hours or less per month stammerer's stutterer's and cant be bothered semi-awake ones!
If the UK and the western world (or even the Worldwide figure) doesn't show a minus figure in the yearbook next time I just know the figures are being cooked!
there have been very informative threads on presentations and audience reactions ("thrilled", "emotional") at this summer's regional conventions (formerly district conventions) but little on actual attendance numbers and numbers baptized.
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or could i be directed to current threads discussing these aspects - i searched but found nothing.
@JW Gone ...
I make it closer to 0.5% - not a ".005" rate.
Still low mind. And your analogy of 2 congs or 200 publishers worth of ministry still stands.
But don't forget there are two other assemblies in the year so maybe 1.5% per annum is more accurate?
Less deaths at 1.0% and DF/DA at 0.5% and fade at 0.5% and they are losing 0.5% overall - certainly in the western world.
All figures, statistics and speculation - mine!
i didn't attend the meeting last night, but my in husband came home and was quite shocked because there was a letter announcing that there will be no wt-library cd-rom any more, and..... no more calendar.. he said there was a lot of talking and noise when that was announced.. i didn't expect the calender to go, by the way.
and my husband sounded really concerned, talking about how society is cutting down.
i love it when he says with a tone of surprise in his voice: 'you were right, now they want us to do everyting digital, and throw out the printed stuff.
Isn't it that this year's (2015) library is on DVD not on CD? So the CD is not being produced but it is on DVD.
Next year will be interesting ... I see the on-line library being the only thing soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wackkicmf4k.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5lsyndc1me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnk52bu92oe.
@Xanthippe
Bunker Mentality. You know, I think you might be right!
Bunker mentality seems to be feeding into everything they do ...
with all the hoopla going on about the rc, i was wondering if anyone has ever heard of or witnessed to someone giving a talk at the rc/ca that went rogue and just started lambasting the society and calling it a cult and liars ect.
i would love to hear about the experience.
like did they turn the mikes off on them?
Little Toe (Scotland - Hebrides I think?) who used to post here did that in his congregation and D/A'd from the platform.
Google: Littletoe disassociation talk
It will come up on JWfacts.
i was just going through some of my talk outlines and i've decided to git rid of quite a few of them.
i'm still serving, but as time goes on... there are many subjects i will not teach anymore.. i got rid of the outlines dealing with blood, the field ministry, and ones talking about 607 and 1914. i can barely stand hearing them let alone give them.
in fact, talk 41 "stand still and see the salvation of jehovah" is one i got rid of because its whole point was about having blind obedience toward the gb and the elders during the great tribulation, and that we need to start practicing obedience now if we want to survive.
Outline No. 7 - Mercy, A Dominant Quality of Christians - was my favourite to give. (it's been changed now) It had a large section about the Good Samaritan and I used the material from The Greatest Man book to fill out the details
It was the last talk I ever gave and when I gave it as an "away talk" I would always include the line:
"So a man viewed as an apostate, from an apostate nation, put his hand in his pocket to truly help a worshiper of Jehovah; while those that professed true worship passed by on the opposite side!"
in an effort to reduce the number of posts, this year i will try to add links to this post.
now, on with the leaks & releases!
first up.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nzvwhflss4.
All this emotional heart-tugging resurrection/paradise stuff promoted by seven men who do not even believe they themselves will be there.
Perhaps it's because "They have their paradise now... " at the financial expense of the brothers and sisters?
first of all, i am not quite sure whether this is the right place to ask my questions.
if this is not really appropriate, please tell me in advance, but i really did not know who to turn to, so i thought why not ask the internet... now, i know many of you are apostates and i'm not really looking for "leave it all behind you" answers, but really for experiences, thoughts and ideas... as well as maybe some verses if you can think of any.. anyway, first things first.
since this is very anonymous and i'd like to keep it that way, i will not give you my name, but still, i think some background info might be helpful.
If you wish to be baptised as a Christian then why not self-baptise? Seriously. Privately between you and God.
Read Matt 28 v 18 - 20.
Recognise that Jesus has full authority as given him by his father. Make yourself a disciple and obey Jesus. (Not necessarily the JW's, not even necessarily Paul, just what you believe Jesus commanded.)
Take yourself off to a swimming pool, quietly say a prayer that in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (leaving open whether the trinity or a duality plus the holy spirit is true or whatever) you dedicate your life to doing God's will. Then stick your head under the water. No one else need know what you are doing.
Tell no-one in the JW's and give yourself time to think.
If you change your mind and want to affiliate with another religion (even JW's but candidly I hope not) then fine - it's between you and God. If you conclude that God doesn't exist then your dedication and baptism is pointless and it doesn't matter.
i'd like to relate an experience i had yesterday with a couple of jw's "working" with a cart yesterday.. been coming to this site for many years and these days i don't feel i've got much to contribute ,but i was out yesterday doing some voluntary work for a friend who has gone on an overseas trip .travelling around my local seaside area doing the job at hand ,i came across a couple of jw's sitting in a shelter overlooking the beach and had their trolley propped against a large public rubbish bin ,it was actually hard to see ithe trolley from most angles - whatever happened to lifting the basket to show the light stuff ...oh well .the large carpark was pretty empty except for us ,we've had pretty wet weather here lately ,bad storms and here they were set up for a days witnessing rugged up with wind and spitting rain ,i sort of thought " well that's dedication " ....that was my first thought then i pulled myself together and then thought "if i wanted to get some time in and not have to work at it too hard this maybe the place to go if i was a jw still".. well i finished my pickup and looked over at the two and realised i'd read other's experiences about approaching the cart people and wondered if talking to them would be of any benefit as i had witnessed this area for many years and my stance against the wts for hiding molestation of children is well known ,i thought, and they avoid me like the plague.. they were'nt familiar to me so i went up to them and introduced myself and quickly let them know who i was and what i am doing now as regards jw's.
they were a married couple middle aged been in for a long time and could relate to changes in the org very well to pre 1975 when i had first contact.
they pretty much suggested i was blinded to the truth ,when challenged on the royal commission into sex abuse they pointed to a case where they believed a victim they supposedly knew of in the jws was a liar ,so that's their case for the org -unbelievable.
@wozza
They're probably in holiday season mode now. Or pre-assembly "come to the regional convention it's only 100 miles away trash leaflet" campaign.
With the carts they tend do the same time and day. So if you caught them once in a particular location you'll possibly catch them again.
attending my boys parents evening it was mentiond they were to study the " diary of anne frank".
( he is 10 years old) i pointed out to the teacher that having read the book, in my option the book was not written entirely by anne frank, and i would educate my boy on why i believe this to be so.. in my mind this was a totally reasonable responce by me, but it has resulted in the head-master of the school wanting to meet with me.
i think it wrong that an educational system will i suspect meet with me and presumably suggest my options on the " anne frank diary" constitute hate speech, as nothing could be further from the truth.. freedom of speech is never absolute, but at what point do you think it reasonable and justified?
Why do those who want to discredit the authenticity of what Anne Frank wrote (it wasn't a diary like a 365 page diary from WH Smith's - it was loose leaves and an autograph book) nearly always seem to have filled their minds with websites like those that come from the neo-Nazi/Hitler was misunderstood/no ovens at (insert name of camp)/Zyklon B was only ever a pesticide etc. end of the spectrum?
It's as if they think that by saying that there were ball point pen annotations on two loose leaf sheets of paper or that a vacuum was used at 12.30 daytime that the whole Holocaust falls apart. That everything at Nuremberg was a falsification against those poor Nazi's who deserve so much sympathy.
I perfectly understand the points that her father Otto may have edited things out as he and his first wife may not have been cast in a good light and that he made money by having it published. Fair enough.
But I'm happy with the work that the Dutch Institute for War Documentation did in 1986 to prove the diary authentic as to when it was written and by whom.
I'll be drawn into the silliness about the vacuum cleaning schedule and quote from the work done by Paul O'Donnell, Professor of English at the University of Lethbridge in Canada.
"... Anne is careful to note throughout her diaries that the vacuum cleaner is only run when nobody is in the building - either at night, or during the lunch hour when everybody but Otto Frank's most trusted employees are away ..."
Look at the context. The type of building, the country (Holland was well known for "hiding" Jews from the hated German invaders, almost in open sight if they were fairer skinned, more hidden if they were not, like the Franks. Unlike Catholic Eastern Europe where Germany was often preferred to Russia and where a vein of anti-Semitism ran deeper than in England, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway.)
The hiding place was "over the workshop" as in the property was a place of business a fairly noisy place due to spice mills and food processing. River traffic added to the noise. Chimneys exhausted boiler smoke and burnt waste product. The secret annex was at the back hidden by tall 4 storey buildings and apartments on all sides.
It would be difficult to distinguish where the noise of a vacuum in an apartment building might have been coming from. In the unlikely event that a passerby heard a vacuum then if he noticed it at all he would just look in the direction of a 4 storey apartment block come factory and just put it down to normal noise in a city location.
As ex-JW's and exiting-JW's we should be used to drilling down through falsehoods to get to what rings true. But if we let ourselves down by lazy thinking or let our prejudices get in the way we will not get beyond scratching the surface.
(Edited to add - Giordano posted as I was typing - he puts it better!)
