Downdog,
Read your other thread about being in love and was tempted to write "RUN, DD, RUN for your LIFE!" -- but I didn't. Until now.
Nonetheless, I will be the information booth.
One would attend meetings at the Kingdom Hall (that's FIVE meetings per week) and have a personal Bible Study with a brother (your girlfriend couldn't hold it with you -- male + female alone together = opportunity for "loose conduct" (you'll find out what that is later)) and study a WT publication which gives you the basics on doctrines.
What this publication and the meetings will not forthrightly tell you is this: Should you decide to become a dedicated, baptized member of Jehovah's Witnesses and later change your mind, you will be shunned by everybody in the organization, including your family -- that is, all your family members not residing in your own household. While officially family members not residing in your household may have limited (non-spiritual) contact with you, in practice they will not, because to do so would put them in the category of "spiritually weak" which is NOT a categorization to which any JW aspires.
OK, so you go to meetings, and you are completing the book. If you've progressed (meaning given your own thinking processes completely over to the Society) to the point of being convinced that you've found "The Truth," you may wish to become an "unbaptized publisher." You would tell your study conductor and have a short meeting with two of your local elders who would explain that you must now be living a Witness lifestyle, because you will now be representing Jehovah out in service. Now you would add a sixth meeting to your week, because you have to attend a Meeting for Field Service before you commence your public ministry (the house-to-house work). Don't be alarmed. An experienced publisher will accompany you to the doors, having rehearsed a simple presentation with you in advance for you to use when it's your turn to preach.
After some time preaching, attending meetings and having completed the book, you may or may not have decided to dedicate your life to Jehovah. If you have made such a decision, you will inform your book study conductor and the elders once again. You will be given a copy of a publication called "Organized to Accomplish Our Ministry." (This publication will ONLY be given to you after the local congregation is fairly certain that you, as an unbaptized publisher, have made a sincere commitment to JWdom.) You are then told to read this publication and to study, in particular, the Questions for Baptism that are found at the back of the book. The elders will arrange for you to have a personal Q&A session on each of the three sections under the Questions for Baptism. There are scriptures to memorize that show the underlying principles that should guide your answers to the questions. The elders ask the questions and YOU provide the answers. In some Kingdom Halls, you will have a different elder for each section. This is so that more of the elders get a chance to know you and your personality (which had better be meek and humble). If you pass this oral test, you will be considered a candidate for baptism and will be completely immersed in symbol of your dedication to Jehovah at the next circuit assembly or district convention (large meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses).
Prior to your immersion at the assembly/convention, you will be asked two questions. The first is something along the lines that you are a sinner and recognize that Jehovah sent Christ Jesus to pay for your sins. The second is along the lines that you accept membership in Jehovah's spirit-anointed organization. (Notice, please, that the holy spirit here is not really said to be operating on you, nor are you asking it to operate on you, nor are you being baptized in its name -- rather, you are pledging allegiance to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.) You are expected to answer affirmatively to these two questions, sing a song and then retire to the rest rooms to change into your modest bathing suit (don't forget your towel!) and on to the baptismal pool. Once dunked, you are considered to have died to your former course of life and to be made anew as an ordained minister of Jehovah's Witnesses. (Your faithful meeting attendance, completed book studies and diligent preaching work are the pre-requisites for your ordination.)
You would then become a full-fledged peon in the Organization. A peon, sir, because despite being an ordained minister you are still merely a lowly publisher. You are not an auxiliary pioneer, a pioneer, nor a ministerial servant* nor an elder*. You haven't yet made it to the travelling work -- circuit overseer*, district overseer*, nor become a missionary or a Bethelite. You have many years (literal and of field service!)to go before those privileges of
service are open to you. Before advancing to any of those higher positions, you will have to prove your loyalty again and again to the organization. (Oh! it also helps if you actually are a good and kind person.) However, proving your loyalty again and again to the organization tends to make one a bit hard-hearted and jaded and, well, you just keep surrendering your will and your mind over to them and you may turn out an automaton.
But if you don't turn into a self-aggrandized (WE've got God's Holy Spirit and nobody else does) automaton, and actually have a conscience and dare to be an independent thinker? Then you end up on a message board like this, because you will have become an inactive, disassociated or disfellowshipped EX-JW (and quite possibly an apostate!).
I hope this clears things up for you.
outnfree
* these positions, as well as those of Branch Overseer and Governing Body member are only open to males. Women are not taken too seriously in the WT World.
