Posts by 88JM

17

Kingdom Hall consolidations in the UK

by raymond frantz in

/from reliable sources (brothers in position within the congragation) i've been informed that in two different location within the uk congragations are to be consolidated .these men are loyal to the society and have no contact with ex-jw community .many brothers and sisters within these 4 congragations are devasted and undertantably very upset .one of these congragation has in excess of 150k in the bank currently "held" by the society as a loan .do you have any more information on this ?

is this just a one off or a new trend ?.

.

88JM

Dissolve and reform the congregation moving the members around, meanwhile the WTBTS takes over th funds in the bank accounts of the congregations that have been "dissolved."

If so (and it does sound a possiblity) I'd love to know how that was achieved - because to disperse 4 large congregations, surely it requires having nearby congregations with lots of spare capacity in their halls, or forming new congregations and sharing halls more?

EDIT: Ah okay Raymond Frantz - that's interesting. I would say I've heard of previous instances where a congregation couldn't rennovate because their current building was old or unsuitable and finding another location for a rebuild wasn't possible or too expensive, but even then, I've not seen a congregation dissolved over that - they usually just put up with their old hall. Obviously the congregations in your example were quite eager to push for a rennovation, and it sounds like they certainly had the cash to pay for it, but the cash was tied up with the branch who wouldn't release the funds? I thought the return of any loans made to the WTBTS was unconditional, or is that just personal loans?

I wonder with that loaned £150k if they found a way to funnel (or it was done willingly) it into the "worldwide assembly hall fund" so it's now non-returnable?

Interesting it should come at the same time as this: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/287036/2/Meeting-for-not-paying-assembly-fees

It's almost like a memo went out to circuit overseers to try to find ways to kick congregations out of their halls?

17

Kingdom Hall consolidations in the UK

by raymond frantz in

/from reliable sources (brothers in position within the congragation) i've been informed that in two different location within the uk congragations are to be consolidated .these men are loyal to the society and have no contact with ex-jw community .many brothers and sisters within these 4 congragations are devasted and undertantably very upset .one of these congragation has in excess of 150k in the bank currently "held" by the society as a loan .do you have any more information on this ?

is this just a one off or a new trend ?.

.

88JM

"Consolidated" is a bit of a vague description to me - does that mean:

4 congregations will be dissolved and reformed as 2 congregations, but they keep their halls? If members are "devasted" and "very upset" I'm guessing it's not this one.
Or is it that all 4 congregations will be dissolved and their halls will be sold off and the members will be sent to other nearby halls and congregations? This sounds more likely from what you're saying.

If it is the first case, then I've seen previous instances where a congregation's numbers sometimes hover for years around the "too small to split, but getting too big for the hall" mark, and there are sometimes many years of splitting and merging.

However in the second case, whole congregations being dissolved entirely because they have become too small (or over some issue) are pretty rare in the UK until now, unless it's perhaps a small non-english language congregation?

But if they are being dissolved because they are too small, then how have they managed to raise £150k and lend it to the society? Someone left them something in their will?

I'd be very interested to know the circumstances around this if it does prove to be true - i.e. if it's a small rural congregation and the numbers involved - because the local congregation here is also very small and rural (and certainly doesn't have £150k) and would be interesting to know why they have "consolidated" the ones you speak of and not the one here.

16

Um, It's November...Where is that meat in due season?

by CaptainSchmideo in

jw
friends

tv.jw.org is still on october programming.

what happened, did jehovah forget to turn in the script?.

.

88JM

They've never been all that great with their grasp of dates. Perhaps they're trying to stretch time again.

Is it later than you think, tv.jw.org?

55

Meeting for not paying assembly fees???!!!!

by Kool Jo in

jw
friends

hey folks......has anyone else heard of, or experienced this before?.

i visited by parents over the weekend and accompanied them to their assembly....same rubbish spoken about since ive been born....obey the gb, donate your last penny, no education and be a pushover.. anyways, our assembly hall has lush vegetation and scenery, so i was more focused on that....i started dozing off after lunch, so got up and went walking, saw some older folks from the congregation i grew up with.. upon the conclusion of the assembly, wed normally leave out right after the prayer ends so as to avoid the traffic.

however, for this assembly he told me that hes gonna be a few minutes with the elders and branch representatives...so a few minutes turned into an hour..

88JM

what recourse would the wolves have?

They'll threaten to take away that nice assembly hall you almost finished paying for, make you go back to sitting in those drafty cold (or swealteringly hot) stadiums and crumbling old town halls, while we sell your assembly hall (that you built for us with your free labour) for a nice tidy sum and take the all the money. Rinse and repeat.

Can someone how this model is any different from a property investor? Oh yeah, the free labour bit. But really that's what the WTBTS is - they're not even pretending anymore.

i just wonder who/what is really behind it.

I think if you've been watching the forums over the last couple of days alone, you would get a pretty good idea of why they might be trying to generate massive amounts of cash quickly.

55

Meeting for not paying assembly fees???!!!!

by Kool Jo in

jw
friends

hey folks......has anyone else heard of, or experienced this before?.

i visited by parents over the weekend and accompanied them to their assembly....same rubbish spoken about since ive been born....obey the gb, donate your last penny, no education and be a pushover.. anyways, our assembly hall has lush vegetation and scenery, so i was more focused on that....i started dozing off after lunch, so got up and went walking, saw some older folks from the congregation i grew up with.. upon the conclusion of the assembly, wed normally leave out right after the prayer ends so as to avoid the traffic.

however, for this assembly he told me that hes gonna be a few minutes with the elders and branch representatives...so a few minutes turned into an hour..

88JM

If your circuit is selling the ASS Hall and reverting back to using secular facilities, why would JWs be donating to an Ass Hall fund?

Is this tied to the new "donation" (tithing) arrangement? Or is WT continuing to maintain a local Ass Hall fund for a future project?

As I understand it, there is now a "worldwide assembly hall fund" that most congregations (in the USA and U.K. at least) are paying either a lump sum and/or what used to be their KH loan into monthly as well. That's what the big fuss was mostly about in September - to the JWs, it's sold to them as "the society has written off your Kingdom Hall/Assembly Hall Loans" when what it actually is instead "give us any spare money you had in the bank" and "while you're at it, make a monthly pledge for a fixed donation" - a.k.a. tithing.

It looks like in this post we are seeing the sharp end of the stick and what happens when those payments aren't kept up. Expect more of this in future?

17

Singapore: The Religious consequences of Tim Cook coming out as gay

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

as if we needed any further evidence that the minds of christians are not all that they should be, the shenagins in the christian segment of the christian segment of the singapore population once again demonstrated that each time they fart, they blow some of their brains away, and sadly they fart so much that there's not much brain left.. i guess most people have heard that time cook (boss of apple) publically stated this week that he was gay and proud of it.

in most of the western world, it barely caused a ripple, but not so in singapore where christians are always lobbying the government against sin.. but, tim cook as a gay man provoked the ire of the singaporean church leadership.. i have not heard that anyone claimed that using an apple iphone would make you gay, but prominent church leader lawrence khong, was commissioned as an apostle by dr. peter wagner, of the international coalition of apostles, in 2000. .

on hearing the news about tim cook, lawrence khong stop using iphone and even denounced technology altogether.

88JM

It's funny that GB member Tony Morris hates tight pants because they're supposedly made by homosexuals. Does this mean he will not be using his iPad on stage any more?

4

Theocratic "Apostate" WarFare

by mana11 in

there are many things that can be done to make others aware.. perhaps in the following comments it would be good to have suggestions of "direct actions" that everyone can do to have an impact on the wtbts.. .

i suggest as an idea the following if you havent already done so;.

google play app's.

88JM

I could be wrong, but I think the strategy proposed by mana11 is more for the benefit of non-JW's who see the app and think they should install it because it's a "5-star" app with gushing reviews, so it must have something amazing in it. You're correct that most actual JW's will install it regardless though.

48

Posters do you know of any cases where a devout JW was DF'd for Lesbianism?

by booker-t in

i think this is a hush hush topic among jws but i remember years ago at an assembly i saw two sisters(i am only assuming they were jws they could have been studies or relatives of jws) walking arm and arm like a married couple.

some of the jws looked at them like they had horns.

some of the jws moms were covering their small children's eyes and those two women were stared at like they had the plague.

88JM

Okay, if we are going to go there...

I don't doubt that many child abusers have homosexual or bisexual orientations. At the same time, I'm sure other child abusers are entirely heterosexual too.

I also don't deny that the orientations of child abusers may even be far more often homosexual or bisexual than the general population distribution. I think there are valid arguments that their environment, upbringing and attitudes of society around them and towards the feelings they held could partly be to blame for their choices later in life to abuse children, or have a view that there is nothing wrong with sexual activity with minors. There are studies that support the idea that many child abusers were abused themselves when they were younger - again, I'm not saying we should start suspecting the parents of all child abusers, but it could be a contributing factor in some cases.

Along with many people though, I'm just uncomfortable with the implication that putting ALL homosexual and bisexual people always in the same basket as child abusers gives - that it implies ALL homosexual people are just potential child abusers who haven't had the opportunity yet, and also that all homosexual or bisexual people have an "unusual view of sex". Child abusers may happen to be homosexual, but it wasn't their homosexuality by itself that caused them to abuse children.

38

Jeptha's Daughter- what actuallyt happened??

by Kudra in

hi all, especially the scholars amongst you ;)a .

i was listening to richard dawkin's talk at lynchburg va and he was tlaking about how horrible the god of the old testament was- and he mentioned this: .

that when jeptha's daughter came out (and jeptha had promised god he'd sacrifice the first thing out of his house) that he had to sacrifice her as a burnt offering.

88JM

what if a dog had come out to meet him? To offer up an unclean animal would be an affront to God, so Japtha most likely dedicated her to service to the Lord

It seems there's a couple of flaws in that reasoning.

I haven't read the LDS source (I'm on a bad connection right now) but what justification does it have for suggesting that the Jews at that time would be keeping unclean animals in their houses? Even many muslims today do not keep dogs in their home for similar reasons. Would Jephtha really be expecting an unclean animal to come running out of his house to greet him? I know there is reason to believe he was the son of a prostitute, but still? Even in the account of Jezebel, she had to be thrown outside before the dogs could get to her - they were not invited into the house to kill her (yes I know it was supposedly a "prophecy" so it had to happen that way but...).

Assuming that Jephtha could have expected and conceivably there had been a dog running out of his house and such an animal would not have been an appropriate burnt sacrifice, are you then saying the same dog, still an unclean animal, would instead be an appropriate servant around the tabernacle?

Judges 11:31 in the Jephtha account (apologies that it's the NWT) says: "whoever comes out of the door of my house" - I can't look up a Strong's Dictionary right now, but it seems apparent that he was limiting it to a person ("whoever") and it was not something running down the garden path, but definitely 'out of the door of his house'.

48

Posters do you know of any cases where a devout JW was DF'd for Lesbianism?

by booker-t in

i think this is a hush hush topic among jws but i remember years ago at an assembly i saw two sisters(i am only assuming they were jws they could have been studies or relatives of jws) walking arm and arm like a married couple.

some of the jws looked at them like they had horns.

some of the jws moms were covering their small children's eyes and those two women were stared at like they had the plague.

88JM

The judicial commitee meetings in these cases must be even more bizzare than usual. I know with male-female "fornication" they interrogate and pry into every detail to determine whether they think "porneia" was committed (and even then it's still mostly arbitrary), but with female-female... how do they... umm... draw the line? When does a Victoria's Secret party become "porneia" to them?

"Hey some Gay guys got promoted to the governing body."

I could be wrong, but I think Balaamsass2 is perhaps referring to Ewart Chitty and Leo Greenlees - one an alleged child abuser, and one reportedly homosexual or at least bisexual. And it's been said before, but I do agree it's important to draw a distinction between the two cases, but I don't want to start an argument about sexual orientation and child abuse - that's for another thread, and perhaps even another forum, considering rule #2 on this particular forum.