we get plenty of company men passing through our circuit, often filled with misinformation and lugging around a suitcase of guilt, they bring more guilt to the weak while praising the braggart pioneers and slapping the "righteous over much" elders.
why are the wrong people getting praise in this distorted community?
i know for a fact many of the elders i served with have issues with alcoholism, when "brother guilt" brought his emotional hurricane through our circuit, i had the chance to eat and help pay for his "seven shots of tequila", both him and his wife were not immune to over-indulgences.
I was introduced to alcohol by the brother who "brought me into the truth", as JWs like to say. And oh, boy, did I prove to be a a quick learner!
Further to never a jw's remarks, the district I grew up had a rather notorious reputation for alcohol abuse. Even if drinking amongst the JWs was "no worse than the population in general", that would still put them well inside the category of heavy boozers.
Bill.
here's a few from me.. no more having to go to stupid boring meetings.. no more having to go knock on doors in field service and waste my time!.
no more mind numbing elders meetings..
All the strange people I no longer have to tolerate.
Bill
have decided to check out my local parish church.
it has a real mix of people.
old, young families and military personnel/families.
All I can say is that if you must go to church, one of the mainsteam ones can't get you into too much harm.
Bill.
i ran in to a ex-jw and had a good laugh once he realized i was not going to shun him.
i am a different soul when we are dealing with watchtower demonology, everything about the organization is fan boy based.
watchtower creates the illusion of a community that never existed, we were too blind to realize most of the people we invested time with was nothing more than a farce, once you can't offer up more sacrfices on the watchtower's alter, your going to get less attention and eventually if your kingdom hall is big enough, they won't come looking for you.. .
"Unless it's your family, then it is your problem..."
Nothing like hitting the proverbial nail fair on its head!
Bill
fewer new zealand citizens affiliated as jws in 2013 than in 1996: over 15 years of successive decreases.
the first table shows the new zealand census from 1976 to 2013. typically, numbers of citizens affiliated with the witnesses are higher than the number of active publishers because it includes children and those who are affiliated with the witnesses but who may not be active publishers.. of note, more citizens were recorded as affiliated with the witnesses in 1996 (19,527) than in 2013 (17,931).
the decline in numbers affiliating with the witnesses in new zealand started in 2001 and has continued across two further census reports - so this is not just a temporary blip.
There was a time when building larger kingdom halls than was necessary was considered to be "forward thinking":
- i.e. gearing the organisation up for the "huge increase" that was "about to happen."
Bill.
as a born-in, i was eager to join the ministry school.
my cousins were also born-in but lived in different states.
there was keen competition to see who could do mature things, such as baptism (my mom said when i was 35) and ministry school.
I realize that this is not always a popular thing to claim, but in my case I did benefit from the TMS. As a teenager and young adult, I was plagued with shyness - almost to a crippling degree. The Ministry School did help me overcome this.
Still, I would be the first to agree that the TMS proved to be a bloody expensive course in public speaking!
Bill.
i thought i'd share the 2014 yearbook stats.
i converted the file to excel format & sorted the increase in publisher's column from largest to smallest.
as i suspected, the growth is limited to a very few # of "lands.
Cumulative since what year?
For example, Italy:
- increase in publishers between 2012 and 2013 = 1933
- "cumulative" increase in publishers = 114 676
Which year did you begin the "cumulative" increase count from?
Bill
the year is 1969. faithful followers of the watchtower society are gearing up for the imminent end of the system of things just as they had been for the previous ninety years.
a young witness named andrew is trying to decide what to do with his life.
andrew is a smart kid and he has an entire lifetime ahead of him.
BU2B:
" all of those who were told they would not grow old in this system are about to become seniors."
With that statement, yu hit the proverbial nail fair on the head!
Bill.
i am reuniting with past students and return visits.. i met up with a young lad i used to call on.
he is not baptised, but at university in his 20's and living away from home.
his mother is a jw and his father is not.
It has never happened to me yet:
- but if asked, I would describe myself as "a former JW who is now non-religious."
I refuse to wear labels that other have dreamed up (particularly the Governing Body), and if "former JW who is now non religious" sounds quite a mouthful - then I couldn't care less!
Bill.
looking at the percentage of average publishers of 2013 over 2012 (not the peaks):.
brazil 1.46%.
nigeria 2.60%.
Japan:
- how back in the 1980s, this country was upheld as showing the rest of us how to do it.
Now it is in decline.
Shame the bloody rest of this empire founded on bull$h*t wouldn't go the same way!
Bill.
