Interestingly, there have been a few similar threads in the last week or so asking more-or-less this same question.
I quit attending
meetings seven and a half years ago. Since then I have only been
contacted once by an elder; he wanted to have a “shepherding” call. I
politely declined, but said I would appreciate if he would set up a
meeting to help me reconcile with some JW family with whom I had been
alienated by the religion when I was DF’d six years prior to that—I had
been reinstated for two years at this point.
He said he couldn’t do that because they weren’t in his congregation. (Both congregations are less than a 10 minute drive from my house.) I replied, “That’s funny, because that’s exactly what the elders in their congregation said to me—they couldn’t help because I’m not in their congregation!”
So much for an “International Brotherhood”!
That was more than five years ago.
Let’s review: It’s a cult!