Posts by TMS

23

An intriging tale of corruption in the congregation {Mark Heber Miller}

by sf in

http://www.nazarene-friends.org/pubs/confessions/000.htm

i haven't read marks story in a while and was looking for the part where he states ted jaracz went out in field service with him and a few other brothers back in the 70's, in newport beach/ balboa island, for another thread here.. if you grew up in southern california as a jw, you might find it a very intriging tale of just how the elite congs were being run.

i know for myself it is like trying to fit pieces of a puzzle.

TMS

Possibly, I can shed some light, having grown up in that era.

Public talks were not limited to elders. Qualified speakers who were at least 18 years of age were assigned such talks. Since I was already pioneering and the P.O. forgot to check my age, I gave nearly 50 talks before I was 18, as many as three on a Sunday given the staggered meeting times.

I was appointed as a Congregation Servant at the age of 21. That was the pre-elder equivilent to Presiding Overseer. I was also department head at the circuit level. I began giving funeral talks at the age of 19.

Part of what I've just stated above leads to jealousy and back-stabbing. During my youth, I experienced the same political manuevering by elders older than myself who were jealous of my opportunities. It takes several of these situations to get battle-hardened enough to protect yourself.

Unfortunately, I can identify with what Miller said about non-white elders flexing there muscles a bit after being appointed. I was foolish enough at one point to allow myself to be appointed Presiding Overseer in an otherwise all-black congregation. Without giving details, we barely got out with our Theocratic lives.

I can identify with much of what Miller states. The story may not be totally objective, but the basic details fit with my life experience.

tms

36

July KM for USA: Get ready, here come the ex-Bethelites!

by sir82 in

jw
friends

text of article on page 3 of the usa kingdom ministry for july:.

title: they have set an example of faithfulness.

the year 1937 witnessed the beginning of a new avenue of full-time service--the special pioneer activitiy.

TMS

Special Pioneers have traditionally been sent to remote areas, possibly unassigned territory with no congregation or rural towns with a small congregation. They learned to live on meager provisions will little outside assistance.

If Bethelites are now assigned as Special Pioneers in affluent urban areas, it will be an obvious ploy to turn the financial support over to the rank and file.

It will also be a serious adjustment for someone working at a desk in Bethel to be back in the field. His door-to-door skills will not be that razor sharp. The local pioneers will quickly see that he is not "all that".

It will take continuing encouragement from traveling overseers and the "mother" to make sure the congregations supports these downsized Bethelites materially.

My advice to "reassigned" Bethelites would be to suck up big-time to rich JW's.

tms

43

The New "Invite" - How Stupid Can They Be?

by metatron in

jw
friends

while traveling down thru new england, i happened across one of the new district convention "invites".. how dumb can the watchtower society get?

for the moment, let's ignore the fact that they expect people to drop everything.

within a radius of one, two or even three hundred miles and attend an inner city convention over a weekend.

TMS

Metatron,

Based on your description, the tract seems to have been designed with very low expectations of achieving results. Are extra chairs being set up at the convention sites for the "visitors"? Were there pre-assembly Service Meeting parts about welcoming the first-timers?

Without more information this appears to be a ploy aimed at the rank and file.

Jehovah's Witnesses have distributed millions of handbills over the years advertising public talks. It would be interesting to know the actual percentage acted on by the public.

tms

11

All Mavs Fans...Show your spirit HERE

by Sparkplug in

jw
friends

nothing but net baby!!.

yeah that is her pregnant belly.

she does not know it yet, but the child is a mavs fan!.

TMS

Well, Shaq and Co. are schooling us right now in the first half, but I'm not too worried.

I watched every Mavs game for many years on NBA league pass. Almost no coverage down here in extreme south Texas.

tms

17

1996

by JH in

jw
friends

although we are in 2006, often i think we are in 1996. i'm 10 years off.

my mom showed me something that she bought, and she wrote the date on the box.

i looked at it and it was written january 1995. i told my mom, it's only 1 year old.

TMS

When writing a handwritten, dated letter, I've found myself writing 1968 as the year. I must have done a lot of letter writing that year to make my pioneer hours.

tms

34

Speaking to an Elder tomarrow, I'm almost free!!!!!!!

by drew sagan in

jw
friends

major developments in my world, just wanted to let you all know about it.

i'm meeting with the elder tomarrow afternoon.

i'm going to stick heavy to the watchtowers interpretation of matthew 24 and how it is unbalanced, sensationalized and out of touch with any historical evidence or respect for the bible.

TMS

Drew,

As you well know, your wife's response is 1000 times more important than the whatever response you get from the "elder".

tms

24

youngest disfellowshipped???

by loosie in

.

ok so with all this talk about geeting young people to get baptized, got me to wondering.... how young have you known someone to get disfellowshipped?.

youngest i knew was 17 years old.

TMS

thoughts on this from a thread some time back. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/73489/1.ashx

tms

106

Lots of Bethelites Not Happy With Downsizing

by Seeker4 in

jw
friends

i had a long conversation last night with an old jw friend whose sister and brother-in-law are bethelites since the 1970s.

she is an artist, and he runs a small but important department there.. we were talking about the bethel downsizing (my friend was well aware of it), and i told him i figured his sister and b-i-l would be safe due to the fact that they are now in their 60s and have something close to 4 decades seniority.

but he said no, that they were worried that they would be asked to leave as well, sent into the circuit work or as special pioneers sent where the "need is great.".

TMS

Stephanus "They could have simply continued to charge for everything and paid sales taxes as well; if they had, they'd still be riding high on the hog and wouldn't be making all these cost cutting changes that are simply driving more Dubs away. But the Tower has an almost psychotic aversion to rendering unto Caesar, that they'd sooner die than pay taxes. "

I certainly thought so at the time, especially since the percentage, whatever it was would simply have been passed on to the "spiritually-thirsty ones."

Nothing ruined the mood of a good Bible discussion like the anti-climactic panhandling for money "for the world-wide work."

Although a pioneer and elder during the years of all that "simplification", I never could bring myself to ask for a donation. It was absolutely against my nature. I simply featured the literature less, used tracts more to start studies, and if it went far enough, gave the householder a "gift" of the study book.

I think the new "donation arrangement" in light of the Swaggert court case was the beginnning of current financial decline for the Watchtower. It was a poorly thought out decision, which now has life-changing implications for thousands of Bethelites.

It put the current Watchtower leaders directly at odds with Charles Taze Russell who said "we will never beg for money."

tms

106

Lots of Bethelites Not Happy With Downsizing

by Seeker4 in

jw
friends

i had a long conversation last night with an old jw friend whose sister and brother-in-law are bethelites since the 1970s.

she is an artist, and he runs a small but important department there.. we were talking about the bethel downsizing (my friend was well aware of it), and i told him i figured his sister and b-i-l would be safe due to the fact that they are now in their 60s and have something close to 4 decades seniority.

but he said no, that they were worried that they would be asked to leave as well, sent into the circuit work or as special pioneers sent where the "need is great.".

TMS

I can't help but think that in an indirect way, much of this downsizing is directly related to the tax problems of Jerry Lee Lewis' first cousin, Jimmy Swaggert.

Recall that shortly after the Watchtower filed a brief as a "friend of the court" in this case, holy spirit moved them to the "simplification" that made assembly food and Watchtower literature available freely with donations to the "world-wide work" graciously accepted.

Nothing has financially been the same since.

tms

19

A statement in the Watchtower that angered me...

by slimboyfat in

jw
friends

the study article on the "patience of jehovah" a few weeks back caused some discussion on the forum.

but there was one particular turn of phrase that stuck out in my mind concerning job:"the outcome?

jehovah "blessed the end of job afterward more than his beginning.

TMS

A personal story written on this forum five years ago references Job's ten lost children in the second to the last paragraph. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/9890/1.ashx

As brainwashed JW's we were calloused to the loss of even ten children. After all Jehovah replaced them with ten more. Getting away from Watchtower spin gives us all a chance to re-examine all these Bible stories.

tms