I think something similar has happaned to almos every congregation and it happaned to my home congregation as well a couple of years ago. Without mentioning too many details, this is a foreign speaking congregation. So there is this woman with a kid coming to our congregation. She hasnt been baptised yet, but among the help she is seeking (money, work and somebody to look out for the kid) she also wants to "continue" her bible study. After awhile and after the fact that she got all the help that she needed and after getting invited to all the get togethers with free food, she hooked up with a worldy guy and we never saw her again. I also was a lot younger when it happaned so thats why I dont have all the details to the story but this shows that JWs are very gullible. When the prospect of a new recruit arrives, everything is forgotten.
nevaagain
JoinedPosts by nevaagain
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6
Larry
by Wild_Thing inin the congregation where i grew up, the witnesses converted this 20-something young man.
he was very strange, lived in a very shady apartment, and he couldn't afford a car, so he rode his bike around the whole area, which was very strange for our rural part of the country.
according to larry, he came from quite a wealthy family in the country he was from.
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A lot of "forbidden" talk is going on among witnesses
by nevaagain inme and my wife are still "in".
we had the "talk" a couple of times, but shet is not ready to leave yet.
while a couple of years ago she started crying on the thought that i am an "apostate" and even gave me an ultimatum until she would rat me out to the elders (never happened), now i sense that she might is a little bit more open to the the thought to leave one day .... anyway, all out friends and family are still in the truth and whenever we are meeting with other witnesses topic #1 is always the recent changes to the meetings / conventions (reduced to one day) which always lead to the changes to the magazines and the recent lay offs of the special pioneers and bethelites.
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nevaagain
Me and my wife are still "in". We had the "talk" a couple of times, but shet is not ready to leave yet. While a couple of years ago she started crying on the thought that I am an "apostate" and even gave me an ultimatum until she would rat me out to the elders (never happened), now I sense that she might is a little bit more open to the the thought to leave one day ...
Anyway, all out friends and family are still in the truth and whenever we are meeting with other witnesses topic #1 is always the recent changes to the meetings / conventions (reduced to one day) which always lead to the changes to the magazines and the recent lay offs of the special pioneers and bethelites.
Most sense that something is not right but still try to justify the changes somehow. Whenever the layoffs are mentioned I always say that its probably a money issue since this topic is always mentioned on the jw broadcast. Then I wait for the question, why is there a sudden need for money which then I carefully mention the lawsuits resulting from child abuse and the Australian Commission hearings. Couple of months ago we had the CO visit our place and for that visit he had the substitude and his family with him and the substitute mentioned the Australian Commission hearing in front of the CO, so I recite him and the CO as the sources to that ;-)
With my parents and especially my elder father the lawsuits are a non topic. He doesn't care about none of that, and for him its always lies and apostates wanting to do "us" harm. Since my father loves to read watchtower magazines and books and often the watchtower literature is not enough which leads him to study spiritual material from the christendom, he often comes at a different conclusion than the watchtower. He keeps this to himself and only get it out of him on our little talks. I then tell my dad that even though its fine for him to read worldy book consisting of spiritual matters, a JW would never be allowed to write such a book because it would be regarded apostacy. This got him thinking ...
Also my dad saw the 1975 fiasco first hand and I always tell them, that for me that was false prophecy and recite the scriptures Matthew 7:15 and 2 Corinthians 11:13-15. So we are having "apostate" conversations whenever I am visiting and I see that my dad kinda enjoys them until my mom steps in of course.
So yeah I am trying to hang in there until the proper times comes to prepare for a smooth exit and see that I get some of my family out :-)
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What would you do if the Society Declares Bankruptcy
by Quarterback inspecial pioneers let go.
bethel workers laid off.
construction halts, what's next?
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nevaagain
I dont want to rain on your parade guys but I dont think the WTS will declare bankruptcy ever! If you think about it, whare are their expenses? Printing and paying for bethelites and special pioneers. What did they just do a couple of weeks ago? Announced that they will reduce the magazine and lay off bethelites. So before they declare bankruptcy they will just lay off everybody not essential for putting and translating the magazines/literature and go full digital. They will just let the rank and file know that from now on they have to print the magazines themselves for service and just use digital literature for meetings. They could also ask the congregations for more money.
So the recent measurements taken were probably already to prevent bankruptcy.
Plus it is already known ammong witnesses that the WTS wants to put 4 congregations into each hall. That means there is a lot of real estate to sell. More congregations supporting a hall while assuming the same contributions for hall maintenance and the world wide work would still come from the rank file, more money for the WTS since the maintenance bill would get shouldered by more ppl. I hope I am making sense here.
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Doing the Right Thing, Making a Choice (shunning)
by Simon incontinuing a topic that is dear to my heart because of my experience as both a shunner and a shunnee .... some people seem to get very agitated when i talk about the responsibility people have to make the right choices and that despite all the wrongs within the wts, people themselves have a role to play and some personal responsibility for the experience.. notice i said "some" responsibility, not "complete" - this doesn't absolve the wts for the things they do wrong in any way shape or form.
so please don't get argumentative about possible meanings and absolutes - of course the wts has a significant role to play but we need to decide what we're trying to achieve here and why the personal choice is so important.. i'm also not talking about actual crimes that the wts should answer for.
if they cover up child abuse for instance, they absolutely should be reported immediately.
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nevaagain
My best friend and also my best man at our wedding got disfellowshipped some years ago. I wanted to show him that I am not shunning him so I sent him various msges (we dont live in the same city anymore) but he never replied back, only when he got reinstated one year later. I never asked him why he never replied back ... but i still found it rather odd that someone disfellowshipped also upholds that rule. -
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Double Standards in the JW world
by nevaagain inno other organization has so many written and unwritten rules like the jws.
so it comes to no suprise that there are a lot of double standards.. even though the end is "near", wt is building new and bigger offices.
while the small jw should live in a closet and should make plans to have a bigger house in the new world.
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nevaagain
No other organization has so many written and unwritten rules like the JWs. So it comes to no suprise that there are a lot of double standards.
Even though the end is "near", WT is building new and bigger offices. While the small JW should live in a closet and should make plans to have a bigger house in the new world. At the same time his money and time should be better spend for donations and preaching.
Donations are encouraged almost in every meeting and always at conventions and assemblies but at the same time the JW is supposed to only make enough to pay for food and his small closet and better spend his time pioneering. I bet its not pioneers who donate the most.
I had to laugh when a couple of months ago there was a letter read in our congregation that the bethel was looking for lawyers and other professions with degrees. Of course you had to have attended college or university to obtain such a degree, by their own definition wasted time better spend in the ministry (and the college fund better spend donating to the "world wide work aka paying off pedophile cases").
What is worst is the double standard of the witnesses or better the elders. You have retired elders which have a nice car and a paid big house being pioneers telling everybody from the platform they should work part time and also pioneer. The truth is, that they werent pioneers a couple of years when they were still working for a living.
We now have a new elder, he became a MS just two years ago when he sold off his own company and started aux pioneering and after one year he became an elder and stopped pioneering.
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How was it when you were a JW as a kid?
by nevaagain inwhats worse than being an adult jw?
when i was a kid i always had a bad concience all the time.
i believed i would not survive armageddon for the fact that i didn't like going to service and i didnt like going to the meetings.
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nevaagain
Whats worse than being an adult JW? Being a JW as a kid.
When I was a kid I always had a bad concience all the time. I believed I would not survive Armageddon for the fact that I didn't like going to service and I didnt like going to the meetings. There used to be a time when I had school every second Saturday. The other kids hated school on Saturdays, but not me! That meant no service and my parent would not be mad at me for missing service!
My parent didnt have a lot of money so I don't think that even as non-witness I would get showered with birthday and christmas presents, but still listening to other kids what great presents they got was very hard.
I still didnt forgive my mom for all the beatings she gave me for being a lively kid during the meetings. My parents where pretty old school, that meant no notepad and no pens. Also no children books or other things to keep busy during meeting. They really expected that I would stand still the whole 2 hours without even understanding whats going on. No wonder I still loathe meetings to this day!
I still dont understand why they dont have a seperate program for children during meeting time. As if just from repeating what his parent told him to say as a comment would benefit the child in any way.
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Who would you like to hear of leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses ?
by wozza ini'll start off with this one:.
some years ago when i was formulating my exit, i employed for some time an ms brother from another congregation.. i'd had a couple of young "worldly" lads work for me but they proved unreliable as they used drugs or alchohol and consequently would'nt arrive at work and such like.. so when i was was contacted by this brother and spoke to him and heard he'd worked at the australian bethel for some time on construction and wanted an opportunity to learn the trade of bricklaying ,i thought ,"great someone to finally trust and be reliable".
he was in his 40's at the time and he worked like a trojan ,was honest ,really likeable and interesting ,could play the classical guitar beautifully ,had a beautiful family.
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nevaagain
My dad (a longtime elder) is one of those people who reads all the witness literature the second it gets released. New magazines and new convention releases sometimes dont even last a day unread. The thirst of all bible based literature made him to start reading "worldly" bible based literature. And now he started to question the JW understanding and and he is agreeing more with the "worldy" one.
Now everytime we are on the phone I am trying to plant little seeds, I told him about 607/1914 but for one reason or the other he still believes that the year 607 was thoroughly researched by the organization (as if the watchtower had his own archaeological team haha).
If I could get my dad to wake up, I could probably get my whole family out plus me.
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Reports of lower memorial attendance
by thedepressedsoul ini have heard a lot of reports from kingdom halls in the area that there was less than last year, for both time slots.. we had the first time slot and we were down 50+/- compared to last year.
last year we had the lobby full of people standing and this year we had empty seats and no one standing.
we ran out of parking last year and this year we made it.. like i said i am hearing quite a few reports of this from halls in our area.however, somehow the number seem to inch up every year.
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nevaagain
i know i am late to this, but i still want to share something with you. I used help out with counting attendance on both assemblies and congregations. my rule was, count a kid if it is old enough to give a comment. always my numbers were not trusted by the responsible elders and they would increase them. i bet that happens more often than we think :-)
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There is a reason the mass exodus hasnt happaned yet
by nevaagain inbefore i was fully awake (i was never really) i would use the time at the meetings for day dreaming, for solving work related problems (in my mind) or just simply not fully listening to the talks.
after awhile everything just sounds all the same to you, nothing new.
think about it, i was really disappointed when they got rid of the announcements part, because actually thats the only part, where you could have heard something new (when the announcements where not from the kingdom ministry of course).
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nevaagain
Before I was fully awake (I was never really) I would use the time at the meetings for day dreaming, for solving work related problems (in my mind) or just simply not fully listening to the talks. After awhile everything just sounds all the same to you, nothing new. Think about it, I was really disappointed when they got rid of the announcements part, because actually thats the only part, where you could have heard something new (when the announcements where not from the kingdom ministry of course)
my dad has been a watchtower conductor for several years (more than 30, with a few breaks in the middle) he used to tell me that he is dissaopointed with the brothers because not enough ppl raise their hands and for him the reason is that not many are prepared. and i told my dad point blank that the reason is that the brother just dont care about reading the material and commenting about and they just want to get it over with to get their life back.
A couple of meetings ago we had a program point just discussing numbers from the year book and comparison with our numbers! i thought to myself, this program point offers exactly zero "spiritual food"! Every witness who is fully aware should see that for the Watchtower it is just a numbers game.
anyway, my point is that most publishers dont even listen to the program and they keep coming and just endure the chore. they want to get it over with so they can associate with their friends again after the meeting, which seems to be the most fun part of the meeting. (just like the break is the most fun part of assemblies and the music before the assembly starts is the most sad thing, because this means that the fun time is over)
if more witnesses would actually listen to the program, more would wake up
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A Green Handshake
by dgp ini just learned that sometimes people give "green handshakes".
is this the same as bribing your way up?.
thanks for any posts..
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nevaagain
when we joined our actual congregation, there was a brother who had his own business. he was neither an elder nor a MS which seemed to be odd to me. I dont know his story before but anyway, after he sold his business (he is in his 50s) he almost immediately became a MS. one year later he became an elder.
Our old CO in my former congregation, always bragged about the gifts he would receive in other congregation (with wealthy members) as far as I remember it was not unusual for him to get laptops, phones and even a new car. our congregation was not so wealthy so i guess he didnt like coming to ours.
few years ago we went to visit the bethel in brooklyn and patterson, thanks to somone we knew in the NY area who knew ppl in Bethel, they took us inside for dinner. so after the dinner when they took us outside we said thanks hugged them and wished them jehovahs blessing for their efforts ... they also said thanks but then there was an akward silence ... like they expected to get something in return for taking us inside. so this happaned both times, for brooklyn and for patterson so i guess it is not unusual to give something to them.
the last two CO couples my wife liked very much so and the end of their visit she wanted us to give them some money and i said yes, so far my status hasnt changed so i guess it was not enough ;-)