Traditional the borg was very decentralized, and that decentralized structure was a big advantage to those who were attempting to fade. Now they are slowly taking away those advantages by finding new ways to track wayward witnesses.
Faded4good
JoinedPosts by Faded4good
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40
What Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Like Nowadays?
by minimus ini’ve been gone a long time.
after my mother passed away a few years ago, i pretty much lost most contact with the witnesses.
a couple that were family friends for many years stopped checking on me to say hello.
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40
What Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Like Nowadays?
by minimus ini’ve been gone a long time.
after my mother passed away a few years ago, i pretty much lost most contact with the witnesses.
a couple that were family friends for many years stopped checking on me to say hello.
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Faded4good
In my area they've got some new thumb screws for Christmas. Be online with your cong or look... apostate. After all, where else would you want to be? You know how important it is to be together.
Even after the vaccines are fully distributed to the public and the pandemic is 100% over such a scenario could still be a problem. It's easy to imagine a world in which video meeting apps like Zoom are used to check up on people on holidays. It would be especially bad for those who are partially faded that like to quietly do things at home that no one else needs to know about.
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34
Are there more Bethel layoffs in the immediate future?
by LongHairGal ini just saw a post on reddit: ‘wt are prepping the r&f for changes in the march/april meeting workbook’.. in the post the person noted what they read (for march 8) and it mentioned bethel adjustments and reference was made to 2015 when bethelites were let go.. if this happens (yet again) another bunch of people are being sent home to fend for themselves in the big bad world at an advanced age with little to no preparation.
even though this doesn’t surprise me, it could not come at a worse time with a global pandemic and massive job loss everywhere..congregations are already in turmoil because of so many who reached retirement age totally unprepared because they were told armageddon would be here before they reached that age.
this is in addition to all the other ‘needy’ and troubled types in the congregations looking for as$istance.. i hope any bethelites there have a plan and some people they can contact.
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Faded4good
bearing in mind that no printing is taking place
That's my question. Weather it be at the home office in Warwick, NY or at the branch offices around the world, what work is there for bethelites to do? Whatever printing is being done is mostly automated, and considering the fact that modern computer-controlled printing equipment must be very expensive it probably makes more sense to contract the work out to printing companies. So how much work is there to be done at bethel? It seems to me that the workforce will continue to shrink.
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40
What Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Like Nowadays?
by minimus ini’ve been gone a long time.
after my mother passed away a few years ago, i pretty much lost most contact with the witnesses.
a couple that were family friends for many years stopped checking on me to say hello.
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Faded4good
I wonder if some of the people who only attend the memorial are actually inactive witnesses who faded years ago and come back to the memorial so that their family can pretend that the faded dubs are still "in the truth." -
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Are there more Bethel layoffs in the immediate future?
by LongHairGal ini just saw a post on reddit: ‘wt are prepping the r&f for changes in the march/april meeting workbook’.. in the post the person noted what they read (for march 8) and it mentioned bethel adjustments and reference was made to 2015 when bethelites were let go.. if this happens (yet again) another bunch of people are being sent home to fend for themselves in the big bad world at an advanced age with little to no preparation.
even though this doesn’t surprise me, it could not come at a worse time with a global pandemic and massive job loss everywhere..congregations are already in turmoil because of so many who reached retirement age totally unprepared because they were told armageddon would be here before they reached that age.
this is in addition to all the other ‘needy’ and troubled types in the congregations looking for as$istance.. i hope any bethelites there have a plan and some people they can contact.
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Faded4good
I wonder how many (or how few) bethelites are truly necessary for the operation.
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34
Are there more Bethel layoffs in the immediate future?
by LongHairGal ini just saw a post on reddit: ‘wt are prepping the r&f for changes in the march/april meeting workbook’.. in the post the person noted what they read (for march 8) and it mentioned bethel adjustments and reference was made to 2015 when bethelites were let go.. if this happens (yet again) another bunch of people are being sent home to fend for themselves in the big bad world at an advanced age with little to no preparation.
even though this doesn’t surprise me, it could not come at a worse time with a global pandemic and massive job loss everywhere..congregations are already in turmoil because of so many who reached retirement age totally unprepared because they were told armageddon would be here before they reached that age.
this is in addition to all the other ‘needy’ and troubled types in the congregations looking for as$istance.. i hope any bethelites there have a plan and some people they can contact.
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Faded4good
Eventually bethel will consist of the governing body, and the few staffers necessary to support them and nothing more; everyone else will be sent packing. They can't afford to have all of those people around anymore. Also, over time, many branch offices may close around the world. If they had to the WTBTS could easily administer everything from Warwick, NY and let foreign congregations fend for themselves. I suspect that the Australian branch will close when the borg losses it's tax-exempt status in that country.
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17
Predictions of The Org in one year.
by Overrated ini predict that in a year kingdumb halls will be replaced by zoom.
they will still have assembly halls but will charge a heavy entry fee.
baptisms will continue to be so low that would not be worth counting.
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Faded4good
They will loose worldwide their charity status.
Over time, I think the GB will slowly close the branch offices in countries around the world and administer the individual congregations from Warwick because doing so would bring them several advantages:
Of all of the wealthy developed countries in the world the U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for religion, so while WTBTS may lose it's tax-exempt status in other countries they will likely keep it in the U.S. Also American courts, both state and federal, usually try to do anything they can to toss out any case brought against a religious organization for fear that such a case might be impacted by the free exercise clause or the establishment clause.
If they get to the point that Warwick is the only thing left other than the congregations themselves then the GB gets a bigger percentage of the money coming from the shrinking donation pie.
As for any abuse that has occurred or that continues to occur in nations other than the U.S. the GB will be able to shield themselves from financial exposure.
Finally, as the membership continues to dwindle and Kingdom Halls around the world slowly close the GB will be free to sell the real estate and take the money for themselves (without a local branch office taking a cut) so that they can support the Warwick complex for as long as possible.
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In the end they may devolve into an online-only organization where JW . org has a paywall section where dubs are expected to pay fee of something like $19.95 a month to demonstrate that they are "active" witnesses. Although such a scenario would probably take many decades to develop.
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29
Publisher's Record Cards
by Faded4good inokay, i haven't been to a meeting in over 17 years and i don't live anywhere near the place i grew up.
i have had minimal contact with my jw family, essentially just occasional phone conversations.
i think they could easily guess that i'm inactive but they pretend not to know and they've never shunned me.
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Faded4good
This was an extraordinary case mind you. There was complete dysfunction across the country.
It seems clear to me that you were located somewhere other than the U.S. in which case the situation would have been a little different than my old cong down in Florida. That said, I'm beginning to get a picture of how elders look at old publisher record cards of people who they don't remember and likely never met because those dubs disappeared long ago.
Maybe I'm wrong by I can imagine a scenario something like this: The secretary pulls an old card out of the box for brother John Doe. The card is from August of 2011. The secretary says to the other elders "does anyone remember brother John or anyone else in the Doe family" they look around at each other and they all say "no." Later on or maybe the next day the secretary quietly disposes of that card and a few others. A week or two later the when C.O. comes around there are fewer uncomfortable questions for the elders to answer.
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29
Publisher's Record Cards
by Faded4good inokay, i haven't been to a meeting in over 17 years and i don't live anywhere near the place i grew up.
i have had minimal contact with my jw family, essentially just occasional phone conversations.
i think they could easily guess that i'm inactive but they pretend not to know and they've never shunned me.
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Faded4good
...tossed a few dozen publishers cards in the can
For a congregation secretary and the other elders isn't it to their advantage to get rid of some of the old cards of inactive people so when the circuit overseer comes around it appears that the congregation has a higher percentage of active witnesses?
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29
Publisher's Record Cards
by Faded4good inokay, i haven't been to a meeting in over 17 years and i don't live anywhere near the place i grew up.
i have had minimal contact with my jw family, essentially just occasional phone conversations.
i think they could easily guess that i'm inactive but they pretend not to know and they've never shunned me.
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Faded4good
I ask questions using simple logic that they simply cannot answer and do not wish to think about. I have the dreaded "bad attitude."
What concerns me is this: Sometimes I think my mom stays in just because leaving would destroy her social life, other times I think she is a true believer who is afraid of hearing things from me that she "does not wish to think about."