It's amazing to see AMIII's rant being put into writing as instructions to the CO's to read out to the Elders. He has demonstrated that he wields a lot of power and any dogma that he creates will become law.
It would appear that these instructions come from the Service Committee as opposed to the Writing Committee. AM had worked on the Service Committee since 2002. I wonder if he has caused any waves in Bethel but time will tell whether the Writing Committee jumps on board with these ideas.
The fact that no announcement is to be made in the congregation if Elders decide not to allow a JW to witness might suggest that the writing committee aren't prepared to make this officially sanctioned policy by printing it in publications. It appears that this form of action is unprecedented and paves way for this form of punishment to be applied to all sorts of scenarios. Who knows where this could lead and the Elders aren't being told to update their Shepherding book and don't have anything in writing.
Rather than this being a non issue these are the very types of issues that could cause disharmony and arguments between the individual GB members and also between the various committees. No doubt some are reasonable in their thinking and some aren't, to see a person's own wacky opinion being translated into law should be of great concern for those that are more level headed.
Furthermore, if the body of elders agree that a brother or sister is blatantly and deliberately ignoring repeated council and his or her dress or grooming is disturbing to the congregation, the elders may determine that the person no longer qualifies to share in the ministry. In such rare cases no announcement would be made to the congregation.
'and is disturbing to the congregation'. Rather than admonishing or even discouraging brothers and sisters for murmuring or making judgements against another brother or sister they are being told to act upon it. This is a mob mentality. There is no mention that the disturbed brother or sister should approach the person that is disturbing them.
They use Deuteronomy 22:5 which talks about men dressing as women and vice versa as being unpleasing to God and another scripture about being worldly. Are they going to also apply Verse 11 which states that you are not to wear clothes of wool and linen woven together? They demonstrate that they continue to have lost the plot when they quote scriptures from laws set out under the defunct old covenant that applied to the Israelites and not modern day.
You just need to look at the photos they have published to see how they are dressing on their very own construction sites. They are all dressed the same. The standard attire are jeans/trousers, t-shirts, hard shoes or sneakers. Are the men dressing as women or are the women dressing as men? How is this any more acceptable to them? Just because it is practical doesn't negate the same principle being involved or ignoring the bible council that they use to justify for one situation but not another.