shepherdless

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Posts by shepherdless

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  192

  Question for SBF

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

  can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

  - this thread is your if you want it..

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  shepherdless

  yes, LV101, it seems to be a high volume low margin business. Lots of newspaper and magazine publishers used to make a lot of money from a lot of individuals' small change. Not so, these days.
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  192

  Question for SBF

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

  can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

  - this thread is your if you want it..

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  shepherdless

  Question for Sparky:

  lets say of the 11,150,000 Watchtowers of 1 Jan 1985, half were sold by subscription, and half by door to door or paid for by JWs themselves.

  11150000 x (0.16 + 0.2)/2 = $2,007,000 or about $2 million revenue?

  Also, didn't Awake sell almost as many copies per edition?

  Aren't we getting close to $2 million per week revenue, without including the sale of books, or am I missing something?
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  192

  Question for SBF

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

  can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

  - this thread is your if you want it..

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  shepherdless

  Just in response to Sparky, I recall reading that Watchtower was making about $2 million per week in 1985. I don't know the circulation of around that time, so I don't know if that is plausible.
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  192

  Question for SBF

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

  can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

  - this thread is your if you want it..

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  shepherdless

  Its always made its money selling hope and dreams of panda petting paradise to people. Books were just the vehicle to do that.

  For most of its history, it made the bulk of its money selling magazines (and in the early days, books) to members of the public, not so much its own members. I think one of the Studies in The Scriptures books was the third highest selling book of all time, at one stage long ago (the bible holding the no 1 spot).

  Hell most religions have sold nothing since their inception and have done very well.

  Other religions tithe. If you count elders as clergy, Watchtower has a much higher ratio of clergy to adherents than other religions. Other religions do have businesses. SDA has food companies, nursing homes, a University, and goodness knows what else. Catholics have huge property portfolios, schools, hospitals, hospices etc. Other religions are far less micromanaging. Watchtower has to come up with a new "church" service twice a week, whereas Catholics, for example, give the identical church service every 3 years. And to top it off, many Christian religions are starting to struggle.
  
  
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  192

  Question for SBF

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  slimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.

  can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?

  - this thread is your if you want it..

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  shepherdless

  I am mostly in agreement with sbf on this, except I do not think they are close to a financial collapse as yet. Limited financial info, such as the UK accounts, suggest (in the U.K. at least) there are still investments being held by the Borg, although these have decreased. Further, I doubt that the Borg has significant external debt, and I haven't seen any evidence otherwise. Most sudden and outwardly unexpected financial collapses (but not all) involve a significant amount of external debt.

  I suspect they are making losses, and this is using up their reserves, but there is a while to go, yet.

  One question I don't think anyone has addressed in detail, is what would a "financial collapse" look like. For a religious institution with no significant debt, there might be little to see. There might not be any sudden default. I would have thought it would be more of the same as we see now; more asset sales and bethel layoffs, and only very core activities continuing. Not an actual collapse; more of a "financial fade".

  It is not as if JWs are going to wake up one morning and find they have been merged with, eg, the Mormons. I think the average JW won't notice much change, in a "financial fade", apart from less micromanaging from Borg Central. I think it would mostly affect bethelites and various others feeding off the teat of the Borg. The GB might get a shakeup, or even replaced, and many senior managers will go, but the Borg would probably continue on, with whatever donation income is available.
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  8

  Coping With Parents' Becoming Jehovah's Witnesses

  by DNCall in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  my sister recently wrote a short piece on the impact of our parents' becoming jehovah's witnesses in the 1950s.

  she was a teenager at the time.

  what is so striking and disturbing is that the same predicament faces so many teenagers to this day.

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  shepherdless

  Awesome, and sad at the same time. I admire your sister's strength of character, in adversity.
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  5

  Do you have a dumb politician like Sara Hansen Young in your country?

  by barry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  we have one in australia and there is even a song about her.

  i would like to know if you have someone like this among your politicians.https://youtu.be/bdwxpwl89sk.

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  shepherdless

  Perhaps a bit of background for others. This young Australian Greens senator (in my view) comes across like an angry left wing Uni student. She is a little out of place, in a party that seems to be trying to become more mainstream. She used to be her party's spokesperson on all matters relating to immigration and boat people, which was an intense political issue. Back then, the Greens were the only significant party that was advocating letting all boat people arrive, and even rescuing them in their attempts.

  About 3 or 4 years ago, there was a Senate committee where the military and the customs and border protection department were being grilled. Her questions as a senator revealed that she thought the fictional tv series, Sea Patrol, was some sort of real life reality show.

  In relation to the "she only got 200 primary votes", it should be pointed out that these days, there are very few primary votes cast for senators. When voting for the senate, Australians can either number all the available candidates in order (from one to about 100) or simply vote "above the line" which means voting for a party and having preferences distributed as directed by that party. Most people can't be bothered and just vote "above the line".
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  33

  New "Annointed" Brother In My Old Hall...

  by pale.emperor in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i've only just stopped laughing.. in my old hall there's a brother who's now claiming to be of the anointed.. he's 28.. i do wonder if he's doing this for attention, if he's awake and messing with them, or if he really is that deluded.

  when i was in he was an ms. which surprised even me because only a year earlier than that he was "a bit of a lad", is rubbish at talks and relies on his elder uncle to get him out of trouble all the time.. i guess this now means he's get his pick of jw sisters.

  he's been after the same one as the rest of his peers since 2014..

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  shepherdless

  I was thinking that, if circumstances force me to actually become a JW, I might as well become an anointed one.
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  34

  Thinking about the end of the Watchtower

  by JeffT in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  first, a word about the watchtower’s financial position: nobody (outside the watchtower organization) knows.

  the wtbs is not required to disclose its finances, and doesn’t.

  we can speculate, but that is all we are doing.

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  shepherdless

  How many religions with over one million members have collapsed in the last 100 years?

  None have collapsed completely. Most Christian religions of that size or above have shrunk.

  The best 2 examples of a significant Christian religion going to near collapse in relatively recent times are Worldwide Church of God (now under a new name) and the Christian Scientists (also known as the First Church of Christ, Scientist, and not to be confused with Scientology)

  The Worldwide Church of God had about 145,000 members at one stage. It has less than a third of that now. They lost many adherents after they abandoned many of their more radical doctrines. That was a mistake the Borg would have taken note of.

  The Christian Scientists for much of their history were larger than JWism. They had about 270,000 adherents in USA in 1936. In an eerie similarity to what may happen to the Borg, the Christian Scientists tried to become something of a multimedia organisation, producing the Christian Science Monitor, some television news programs, some journals, and a 24 hour news channel. It nearly went broke in the process.
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  34

  Thinking about the end of the Watchtower

  by JeffT in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  first, a word about the watchtower’s financial position: nobody (outside the watchtower organization) knows.

  the wtbs is not required to disclose its finances, and doesn’t.

  we can speculate, but that is all we are doing.

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  shepherdless

  This topic is something I have been thinking about for a while.

  I think that should something major happen to the Society we will see a wave of depression, anxiety and suicide the likes of which we’ve never seen.

  I am sure it will be bad, but I doubt there will be large numbers of suicides. I think it will be similar to post-1975. A lot will leave and a lot will find some other reason to continue to believe. Another historical guide is the "Great Disappointment" of 1844. After the Great Disappointment, instead of disbanding, Millerites went on to form the Adventist churches.

  I expect that most Witnesses will eventually (or sooner) find somebody to tell them what to do. It would not be difficult for somebody (perhaps even the current governing body) to set up a new religion that looks very much like the old one. We’ll still be fighting the same enemy, he’ll just go by a different name.

  Yes, this worries me the most. Borg ver 2.0 will have a free hand to ditch the inconvenient aspects of its history and iron out the flaws in its theology. Borg ver 2.0 might be more difficult to deal with.

  However, Borg ver 2.0 will have some major hurdles. Firstly the current Borg is busy consuming all the cash and assets, selling surplus Kingdom Halls, etc. There may be less and less infrastructure available for Borg ver 2.0 to use. Secondly, the very centralised style of religion where everything globally is micromanaged from New York would be very hard to re-create in a relatively short period of time, and it would be a very daunting financial risk for even a member of the GB to try to do.

  In any event, even though I thing the Borg has serious long-term financial issues, I am not expecting the Borg to collapse in the near future.