Posts by Hoffnung

63

Are the Witnesses Really Losing Their Young People?

by What Now? in

that article about jehovah's witnesses having the lowest retention rate for born ins keeps popping up every now again ... i'm just curious if any of you have noticed that this is actually the case.

in the congregation that i grew up in, i'm going to say that 95% of the young people in their teens to mid twenties are either regular pioneering, regular auxiliary pioneering, serving in foreign language congregations or where the need is greater.

both of my younger sisters are regular pioneers - and the young people in their hall even organize 8 pm to midnight service on friday nights of their own accord.

Hoffnung

verifying retention rate objectively is not easy either, since small doubts in the late teens with some added kicks in the butt might lead to leaving the religion at 35. if i look at youngsters from around 20, about 60% is still there, but once you take this up to youngsters we still remember that are now around 30, then 70% has left, if not more. the lack of quality of the content in WT publications and the lack of social activity organized by the congregation are definitely contributing. Some just don't fit in the kind JW life, and would have left anyway, even if everything was done right. their effort to keep up the appearance of being gods only mouthpiece is going to drive 1000's away, no matter how good their mind control techniques are. most witnesses have at least once in their life the need to verify if the truth is what it claims to be, and then it is game over for the WTBS

Hoffnung

32

Part 1 of the 2013 Conti and Simons interview now on YouTube (questions posed by JWN members)

by cedars in

a while back we ran a "competition" whereby people could pose questions of candace conti and rick simons for them to answer in a video.. there were so many questions that we needed to do a series rather than just one video.

this first instalment is now on youtube.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhvfefpig4a.

here are the questions that were answered.... (to rick, asked by "exwhyzee") is there a possibility that part of the ruling, if you overcome the appeal, will be that the society must make an announcement outlining the details of the case to its members, as well as an apology to candace?.

Hoffnung

Thanks Cedars, and of course Candace and her lawyer to set time aside for this.

I loved the remark from Rick that the WT was now as polite and professional to them as they should have been to Candace to begin with

Looking forward to the next installments.

Hoffnung

24

An elder called me.

by Julia Orwell in

jw
friends

an elder who handled the minor matter with my husband a few weeks ago called to see how we were doing.

this guy genuinely is a gentle, kind, man whom the congregation loves.

he's the one everyone approaches because he never judges or condescends.

Hoffnung

And watch out for the good-cop-bad-cop game that is only designed to keep you under the influence. I am not sayinf this one is part of it, but it could very well be.

Hoffnung

51

My chat with an Elder about the UN thing! Help!

by awakening in

jw
friends

well it was a very long discussion.

the elder knew nothing about the scandal, but he stated that he had no issue with it since when the case was brought to light, the society acted immediately to right their course.

in fact he thought it was a sign that that the organisation was indeed the "truth".

Hoffnung

show the elder with the WT LIB CD-ROM the amount of occurences of "United Nations" from 1980-1990, from 1991-2000 and from 2001-2010. He will have to notice that there is a double amount of occurences from 1991-2000 than in the other 2 periods, and the tone of the articles took a definite 180 degrees turn to the positive in the 90's. This proves they knew what was requested from the UN for this membership, and they acted accordingly, thereby promoting an organization they identified just a few years earlier as "disgusting" and the thing that wants to sit on the throne of "Gods Kingdom". The contents of Watchtower and Awake articles must be approved by GB members prior to going in print, so it had received the "thumbs up" from the highest levels in the Society's hierarchy. Does somebody wants to argue that this promotion of the disgusting thing happened under the guidance of the Holy Spirit?

Obviously they did not correct it when they became aware of it, they corrected it because it started to draw a lot of negative attention from outside (newspaper article in the Guardian) and inside (a lot of letters were sent to Brooklyn about it), and started to threathen their holy papal position.

Hoffnung

27

Why did the organization stop providing food during conventions?

by redvip2000 in

i'm sure many of us still remember these times when the organization used to sell food at conventions.. i also remember that when this was stopped, the official reason was that the "brothers" were missing some of the program because of all the preparations.

typical watchtower "pretend we care" excuse.. i've wondered if there is another reason behind it, tied to perhaps finances or logistics that was the real deciding factor.

history and typical "modus operandi" of the society tells me that if there was some money to be made that way, they would not have stopped.. wonder if anybody has more info on this..

Hoffnung

Purely an after effect of the Jimmy Swaggart court case. If you sell food or anything else on a regular basis (assembly halls are used almost every weekend of the year), you cannot claim this is a rare event (rare in like once-in-a-year) that should go tax free, but is classified as a commercial activity, just as selling literature for a fix price. As the watchtower's society TAX FREE STATUS is more holy to them than anything else (including God, Christ and whatever is written in the bible), they would not risk this holy status for sandwiches and coke.

Hoffnung

14

Special Assembly in Puerto Rico Coliseum to annouce Branch Closure

by Calebs Airplane in

so, 2 weekends ago, my wife is showing an apartment to a potential buyer in the financial district of san juan and walks the buyer over to the balcony to show her the awesome views.

the buyer looks down at a crowd approaching puerto rico coliseum (aka jose miguel agrelot coliseum) and asked my wife: "are those jehovah's witnesses?

" my wife looks down from 19 stories up, notices the "pioneer pace" of the crowd and says: "yes.

Hoffnung

they did the same when they closed the Swiss branch office, standard operating procedure.

Hoffnung

8

Silence is Consent!

by DonJuel in

please like our new page "silence is consent"!

we have made the page to make awareness about children who grow up in religious cults and are put in harm's way by the cults rules!.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/silence-is-consent/372373866194292.

Hoffnung

Just "liked" the page. Honestly I do not see any negative outcomes from liking this page, as it is not anti-witness. And as it is kept under the radar here there was so much negative publicity in Norway, nobody will see a connection.

Congrats for the facebook page, good job BO, keep it up.

Hoffnung

8

For those of you who read/understand German

by Nika Bee in

jw
friends

there was a documentary about jehovahs witnesses (in austria) on the austrian tv channel orf2.

http://tvthek.orf.at/programs/4204899-kreuz---quer/episodes/5322965-kreuz-und-quer.

for some reason i can't hear the sound, just read the subtitles.. i am watching it at the moment, so i cannot say much yet, but might post something later or tomorrow..

Hoffnung

thanks for the link.

indeed a weird kind of documentary, where there isn't any narration, just a sequence of scenes. The introduction states that it took them several years to get the Witnesses to work together with them for this, so I guess it was part of the deal.

One particular detail, 2 sisters are doing door-to-door on appartment blocks, and they did not get a single positive reaction. and every 5 minutes or so, they showed another door with the 2 sisters, same result, over and over again.

It overall shows a watchtower world where nothing is allowed (including plays to help children refuse worldly invitations), and everybody is dressed up every second of the week. A creepy movement to be in.

So I guess, all in all, not too bad, however kind of boring.

Hoffnung

34

yet another newbie..

by ragnarok75 in

jw
friends

i've been lurking here for some time and now that i've registered here's a little bit about myself... i'm in northern europe (so english is not my own language,but i have indeed studied it for more than 18 months) and i was born into this hateful cult in the "momentuous" year of -75.good that my parents stayed alive till then!.

as far back as i can remember i had doubts both about the doctrines and the whole existence of god.however,i instinctively knew that these doubts are not to be mentioned.so i learned to be a fake at an early age.though having read many other stories here i realise how easy i got it.i now understand that we lived in a rather liberal area and also my family was quite liberal eventhough my dad was an elder since mid -80 and mom was really "strong in the truth".i never brought up the religion at school or with friends and was never bullied or anything.it helped that i was good at sports,especially football (soccer for americans) and football is also the source of my biggest hurt in childhood.i know it may sound very trivial,but the fact that i wasn't allowed to join a football team felt just so unjust and painfull and it lasted all through my childhood.whenever we had a new gym teacher,the first thing he asked me was which team do i play for.i was too embarrased to tell the truth and i just gave the impression that i only wanted to play for fun and not join any team.oh,how badly i wanted to!.

somehow i managed to silence all those doubts and got babtised as a young man.very soon after the babtism i knew that it didn't have the hoped for effect of making me more spiritual and meetings and field service still felt an absolute bore.now began the long years of just "going through the motions".all my family (parents,many brothers and sisters,uncles and aunts,nieces and nephews) and most of my friends were in.i never reached out and attended only one or two meetings a week and penned my hours.i kind of liked my congregation (also,the seats at our kh were really comfy,so i often slept through the meetings) and made some very good friends.friends that - as you all can guess- didn't turn out to be so good in the end,but with whom i nonetheless had some good times and felt a strong connection to.. for a long time nothing happened that would've disrupted my rather non-eventfull life as a lacklustre jdub with at least another foot in the "world".i'd done many things that would've gotten me d'fed,but i never had any intentions of going to the elders about it and i had no pangs of conscience about it either.it was just a matter of convenience..i liked my witness friends,wanted to hold on to them and not to lose my family.. however..there was this girl... a (worldly,of course) girl that i had absolutely fell for and had a brief romance with many years ago.now she was back in my life.i must omit the proceeding turns of events for the sake of anonymity,but the end result is that i'm a proud father of a lovely baby girl.well,not so much baby anymore as she starts school soon.i love her so much and it gives me great satisfaction that she is growing free from any influence of vicious cults or of any gods for that matter.we live now in different countries but i see her often and there's always skype.. her birth also acted as a catalyst for the change in relationship between me and the society.i decided that i wanted to share the joy of her birth and existence with my family,eventhough i also knew that that would mean i'd have to go the elders too.if i didn't,they would,and that would result in automatic disfellowshippping.. a jc was duly formed and i had decided that i'm not going to go there and tell them that i regret her,as having her is the best thing that's ever happeded to me.

Hoffnung

Welcome. Good you made it out quick enough so you can enjoy life.

Hoffnung

38

The story of Bo Juel Jensen - the man behind the Anti-Watchtower media campaign in Norway

by cedars in

hi guys.

richard e. kelly has kindly contributed a great article to jwsurvey.org on the link below.... http://jwsurvey.org/child-abuse-2/bo-juel-jensen-could-he-be-watchtowers-worst-nightmare.

richard tells the story of bo juel jensen, an ex-witness who has been doing marvellous work in raising awareness of watchtower child abuse mishandling in norway.. as with most child abuse victims, bo's story is a disturbing one.

Hoffnung

Hey Bo,

Man you rock. Just all the media attention on the Norwegian NRK during an entire week must have rocked more than a few chairs.

Your story, although extremely painful, is even more hideous as we know it is facilitated by the WTBS policies, and that is true to this day.

I have tried to reason on this with my parents, going as far as comparing the orgs policies with those of the Protestant church, but they still believe theirs is the best.

Would it be possible to expand this beyond Norways borders? Your video on youTube was quite impressive. Are you mastering some other languages like german?

Keep it up, I like what you are doing.

Hoffnung