they could still argue that family worship is like the fifth meeting. anyway, i was always against 5 meetings. for me it was a huge burden to have to go to two meetings during a week. i was always missing the book study and whenever someone would question my behaviour i would say, that if the organization would axe a meeting it would be that one. i think attendence of that meeting was down to 50% or so. and at the end i was right!
nevaagain
JoinedPosts by nevaagain
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1 Meeting for each of your fingers ? ? ?
by william draper inanybody remember how this became a doctrine , years ago , we were at the meetings so that out fingers would be learning something .
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42
Something a CO once said.
by cappytan in"there are only three reasons you should miss a meeting.
fever, fracture or funeral.
everything else is a sorry excuse.
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nevaagain
Our last CO spoke about meeting attendence in his last visit. He said something in this effect that we should not use holidays as an excuse to not go to meetings. That means, that we should check before we visit a country, if we could go to meetings there. And again, the only excuse to miss a meeting would be sickness. His excuse was, that if we missed a meeting and then Armageddon comes and we are banned, we wouldnt know where our next meeting would be.
Now my wife got scared, we wanted to go a remote place again and now she wants to make sure that we can go to meetings there.
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Memorial - Most depressing holiday ever?
by nevaagain inwe - as in we jws - say that the memorial is our only holiday.back in my young days when i was still living at home, my mom would buy us (or as we got older and made our own money, make us buy) new suits for the memorial.
my mom would put on her best dress which she probably only bought for the memorial.
she would say, it is our only holiday so we should dress special for it.
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nevaagain
@TheOldHippie
None of the things you mentioned, but it also should not be like a meeting. Why does everything have to follow the pattern of a meeting?
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Memorial - Most depressing holiday ever?
by nevaagain inwe - as in we jws - say that the memorial is our only holiday.back in my young days when i was still living at home, my mom would buy us (or as we got older and made our own money, make us buy) new suits for the memorial.
my mom would put on her best dress which she probably only bought for the memorial.
she would say, it is our only holiday so we should dress special for it.
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nevaagain
For a reason my lest text got cut, so here it is again (this time without paragraphs as there seems to be a bug)
We - as in we JWs - say that the memorial is our only holiday.
Back in my young days when I was still living at home, my mom would buy us (or as we got older and made our own money, make us buy) new suits for the memorial. My mom would put on her best dress which she probably only bought for the memorial. She would say, it is our only holiday so we should dress special for it. I would always (even as a youngling) question that behavior but my mom would say, worldly people have Christmas; we have the memorial of Jesus Christ’s death.
When I was still young (about 5 or so) I was always curious about the memorial. I wanted to see what is going to happen, since it was such a big holiday for us and they would always make such a big fuss about it. Sometimes we even had to find a different hall, because our hall was occupied by other congregations. Once I remember, we held our memorial in a hall fully decorated with Easter motives.
But really nothing exciting happens, every year it is the same boring procedure. There is a song at the beginning and a song at the end, just like at meetings. There is a talk in the middle, just like at meetings. Unless you are anointed, you cannot touch the bread and the wine.
I see many interested ones or unfaithful spouses in the audience, many faders, many who got disfellowshipped, many who have studied for 20 years but still unbaptized. I still don’t get why a single one of those groups would attend a memorial or why I should go out of my away and invite non Witnesses to this "holiday" or special day. Because really, it is nothing special.
I get why it is important for us JWs, but I am not sure if we are doing it right. For me it is a very depressing day and I am happy that it is over, at least for yet another year.
So what’s so special about the "special talk" again? -
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Memorial - Most depressing holiday ever?
by nevaagain inwe - as in we jws - say that the memorial is our only holiday.back in my young days when i was still living at home, my mom would buy us (or as we got older and made our own money, make us buy) new suits for the memorial.
my mom would put on her best dress which she probably only bought for the memorial.
she would say, it is our only holiday so we should dress special for it.
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nevaagain
We - as in we JWs - say that the memorial is our only holiday.
Back in my young days when I was still living at home, my mom would buy us (or as we got older and made our own money, make us buy) new suits for the memorial. My mom would put on her best dress which she probably only bought for the memorial. She would say, it is our only holiday so we should dress special for it. I would always (even as a youngling) question that behavior but my mom would say, worldly people have Christmas; we have the memorial of Jesus Christ’s death. -
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Have you met people in the "world" who are more commited to their christian believes than JWs?
by nevaagain ini met a coworker at my work who was even more commited to his religion then almost anybody i had seen in the jw mids yet.
whenever we went for lunch, he would do a little prayer first, he didnt care if anybody would take notice of him.
he does not curse, never!
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nevaagain
i want to ask him if they practice shunning, or what happens if someone sins. if they dont have shunning practices then i doubt you can compare it to a cult. for me it looks like they found a way to make meetings more interesting.
another thing: anybody can contribute songs in his church, they use a beamer to show them on a wall, so not everybody needs a song book. not a bad idea if you ask me, seeing as we need yet another song book for the three new songs
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Have you met people in the "world" who are more commited to their christian believes than JWs?
by nevaagain ini met a coworker at my work who was even more commited to his religion then almost anybody i had seen in the jw mids yet.
whenever we went for lunch, he would do a little prayer first, he didnt care if anybody would take notice of him.
he does not curse, never!
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nevaagain
I met a coworker at my work who was even more commited to his religion then almost anybody I had seen in the JW mids yet. Whenever we went for lunch, he would do a little prayer first, he didnt care if anybody would take notice of him. He does not curse, never! He is not smoking. He does not watch violent movies and he checks the lyrics before he would listen to a song and ... *drumroll* occasionally he tells me about his preaching activities in front of his church on saturday and how many new people come to his church every month. He says his church is blessed.
At first I thought he was a JW, just felt weird, that he wont use the JW lingo but the worldy church lingo instead ;-) but itturns out he was a member from a protestant free church (not sure how to properly translate it from german to english).
He has to travel 3 hours back and forth to work and I would always tease him why he would not move near or workplace and he would always tell me, that he wants to stay there as to be near his church. They have even more meeting that we JWs do. Other then church on sunday, they have small get togethers (similar to our home book studies back in the day) which are often up to 3 times per week! They eat together and talk about the bible and sometimes the even watch christian movies. He truly enjoys what he is doing. He constandly tries to find new christian activities to do and he feels truly happy.
Hard to explain because some witnesses want you to believe the same, but i feel that his happyness is truly genuine.
So at first I was mentioning him in my friend circle and I was doing jokes about him as how he is even worse then JWs ... but then I thought damn, that how JWs are supposed to be. How can we say that people like him would get destroyed when Armageddon arrives just because he goes into the wrong house for worship? Just because his "organisation" has a different name than ours? His believes might now be accurate, but then again, ours are only accurate until the new light comes, which renders the believes we had one day ago as myth.
When I mentioned the last time to a couple of friends but rendered him as a positive example I only got blank stares, because even the worse JWs are supposed to be better than any world person. -
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Hot topic in congregations: having a beard/goatee
by nevaagain ini am starting this topic because i was wondering, i see many who leave "the truth" are glad because they can finally have a beard.
is having a beard really a no go in congregations?
how is / was it in your congregation?.
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nevaagain
I am starting this topic because I was wondering, I see many who leave "the truth" are glad because they can finally have a beard. Is having a beard really a no go in congregations? How is / was it in your congregation?
I know from a different brother though who has a beard and is (if they chose to invite him) even giving talks in other congregations. He is an MS.
Now I did the start in my congregation (as you have guessed I am still in but I am not an MS or an elder). I approached a younger elder first (without having a beard yet) and asked him how his view is on beards and he told me that is nothing in the bible that prohibits having a beard and if a brother wont do it with wrong motives (like being a rebelious) it should not be a problem. So after a couple of weeks without meeting (we were on vacation) I came back with a goatee :-)
Two months have passed by and I can feel that some brothers dont like, I got a lot of compliments on my look, so the goatee is here to stay. I had talks/prayers/public readings with it, so I guess it is save to assume that I won't have to cut it:-)
so what are you experiences with that hot topic?
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Counting service time in a creative way
by nevaagain incouting time and, how to count time while doing as little service as possible is often a hot topic around witnesses.
i even overheard pioneers discussing about it.
they call it "creative time counting" (i translated that phrase from a different language so bear with me ;-).
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nevaagain
MissFit: Hi Nevaagain, so are you still in and trying to get your 10 every month?
Yes I am still in but I dont try to get my 10 hours, never did.
Back in the day, when I cared more I felt that I could never compete with the creativity of some of the brothers/sisters. My father was the elder responsible for the reports and submitting them to bethel and he would always tell me to crank up my time. Then I would tell him, that my 6 hours might be as much worth and someone elses 10 hours. Just because the other was creative about the way he counted his time, doesnt mean I doing less then him.
But sadly appeareance is everything, even in the JW world.
I might do a post about my personal JW story but I fear that I might bore everybody.
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Counting service time in a creative way
by nevaagain incouting time and, how to count time while doing as little service as possible is often a hot topic around witnesses.
i even overheard pioneers discussing about it.
they call it "creative time counting" (i translated that phrase from a different language so bear with me ;-).
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nevaagain
I had that conversation many times with JWs and obviously everybody has his own opinion. Many say like you correctly that travel should count because it is still service related, you don't travel for fun, you travel to go to service.
But what if you travel with a group of four to go to a terrirtory and while you are driving, the others play with their smartphone. Should it still count? So instead of watching youtube videos at home, they watch them on their way to the territory. So thats why I think the official word from WT is that travel time does not count. Thats why some genious pioneers try to circumvent that.
Anyway JWs only have that discussion because they have to write a number on a piece of paper at the end of the month.