Faithful Witness, I love your posts. You seem to be such a nice person. I am still an active Witness. In fact, as you might guess if you read any of my prevous posts, I am an elder. But some of your posts have caused me to ponder about the nature of true friendship. I am a teacher, and in my last few years of teaching I have met some wonderful young people with great personalities. I live in Europe but not in my land of birth. What I have found is that the young people in the country I live in have a more innocent take on life than in northern Europe or in the US. They are just people. Sorry to hijack this thread a little bit but it has struck me that I am starting to see people now as individuals rather than through the narrow confines of a Witness perspective. When I was young I, like many if not all young people, had a sense of wonder about the world around me. I read poetry, listened intently to music and watched different types of movies. But all of that was somewhat stymied by the last 30 years or so as a Witness. Reading the varied and various posts here have helped me to re-evaluate what friendship really means.
thedog1
JoinedPosts by thedog1
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33
"Worldly" Friends vs "True" Friends
by DuvanMuvan inhey guys i am new to the whole forum thing (long time reader, first time postererer) and i wanted to get some other opinions on something that has bothered me ever since i first became a jehovah's witness.. i was always taught at the kingdom hall that friends inside the orginisation were the only ones i could count on and that the ones out of it (mainly at school) were just being controlled by satan to trick me into leaving the religion.. however, i always found it to be the opposite.
my "worldly"friends were all accepting of my religion (back when i was ok with being a jw) and are the only ones i have really opened up to about wanting to leave.
the only things i have in common with the other teenagers in my hall (3 boys, 3 girls) are that we've all been raised in the truth and... well that's it.. i was just wondering if anyone else found the same thing when they were a teenaged jw or if anyone still in my age finds the same thing..
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14
Lots of campaigns this year
by thedog1 inlots of leaflet campaigns this year.. 1. leaflet campaign to invite people to the memorial.
2. district convention invitations.. 3. campaign to advertise jw.org in august.. .
doesn't leave much time for conversations..
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thedog1
Must say I did get a shock when I realised that we were supposed to now count all tract placements as well as mags and now these campaigns will bump up the numbers. Mmmmmm........ I smell a rat, and I'm still in!
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14
Lots of campaigns this year
by thedog1 inlots of leaflet campaigns this year.. 1. leaflet campaign to invite people to the memorial.
2. district convention invitations.. 3. campaign to advertise jw.org in august.. .
doesn't leave much time for conversations..
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16
Had a strange moment last night.
by thedog1 inin my line of work i have to deal with a lot of different people each day in a teaching capacity.
sometimes, with adults that i teach, we have some informal discussions not directly related to the subject being taught, but still important as far as developing a friendly relationship in the classroom.
anyway, yesterday i noticed that in one class the students had been given a little religious calendar in a diary form, quite a popular thing for people to do in the country i live in.
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thedog1
Thanks Sam for those thoughts and your post on the other thread. As I mentioned on the other thread I am starting to formulate a plan as you suggest. First resign as an elder so there are not so many expectations from others and I can concentrate on helping my wife through her health issues. Then...
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17
Schizophrenia
by thedog1 inthat is what it feels like at the moment.
i am leading a field service group tomorrow morning.
taking the wt study on saturday.
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thedog1
Thank you for all the comments. Those who made comments about this being bad for my mental health are correct. I have family and friends involved with JWs so these ties are very powerful. I was thinking of the slow fade, starting with resigning as an elder for family reasons (partly true) and then gradually fading away. I think family would be reasonably sympathetic, as I don't see so much of them anyway as we have moved countries but we see them at holiday time in the summer. One family member through marriage had a very bad experience with a JC a few years ago which has shaken their trust in the org. Am friendly with all the local bros here but no special friends so it would be easier to do it here.
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17
Schizophrenia
by thedog1 inthat is what it feels like at the moment.
i am leading a field service group tomorrow morning.
taking the wt study on saturday.
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thedog1
That is what it feels like at the moment. I am leading a field service group tomorrow morning. Taking the WT study on Saturday. Meeting all the admittedly loving bros and sis at the hall. Loving them as individuals and persons who are trying to be Christians (they really do) while at the same time despairing internally at the prison we have locked ourselves into as members of the group.
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16
Had a strange moment last night.
by thedog1 inin my line of work i have to deal with a lot of different people each day in a teaching capacity.
sometimes, with adults that i teach, we have some informal discussions not directly related to the subject being taught, but still important as far as developing a friendly relationship in the classroom.
anyway, yesterday i noticed that in one class the students had been given a little religious calendar in a diary form, quite a popular thing for people to do in the country i live in.
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thedog1
To Kate/Sam
yes, informal witnessing, or any witnessing, feels a bit weird since I read CoC, and have almost finished In Search of Christian Freedom. What to do? I went on the ministry recently, and our territory is very rural, and we often don't meet too many people. I found myself hoping I didn't meet anyone, as I was working on my own, and I didn't want to offer them the magazines. Hmmmm.
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58
New congregation accounting system
by thedog1 ini'm sure i read a thread here about the new congregation accounting procedures.
i ask because i handle the accounts in our cong and in our part of the world the new accounting system has just arrived whereby local congs do not have their own account any longer, but all funds outside of basic monthly costs is forwarded to an account controlled by the org.
this is causing huge confusion in our cong as we have to work out how much we need to keep back for monthly costs and the new idea is that you send all your extra cash to the org and if you need it back you can ask for it but we don't know how easy or hard it would be to do that.
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thedog1
To suavojr,
I didn't mean to freak anyone out! But maybe, from what you say, it is easy to withdraw money from the account, so that they are really only just keeping the money in trust for the cong. But still, it seems to me to be a loss of local control of funds.
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16
Had a strange moment last night.
by thedog1 inin my line of work i have to deal with a lot of different people each day in a teaching capacity.
sometimes, with adults that i teach, we have some informal discussions not directly related to the subject being taught, but still important as far as developing a friendly relationship in the classroom.
anyway, yesterday i noticed that in one class the students had been given a little religious calendar in a diary form, quite a popular thing for people to do in the country i live in.
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thedog1
In my line of work I have to deal with a lot of different people each day in a teaching capacity. Sometimes, with adults that I teach, we have some informal discussions not directly related to the subject being taught, but still important as far as developing a friendly relationship in the classroom. Anyway, yesterday I noticed that in one class the students had been given a little religious calendar in a diary form, quite a popular thing for people to do in the country I live in. So we got chatting about the little picture on the front which was a representation of Jesus. Sort of out of the blue one of the students asked me what religion I believed in. I told her that I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I didn't want the conversation to go on too long in this way, as even though as witnesses we are encouraged to informal witness at the drop of a hat, I feel it would be an abuse of my position of trust as a teacher to exploit my contact with students to use the classroom as a vehicle for witnessing. The student persisted, however, and she asked me why I believe it, and how do I know that I have the truth? That was when I had the strange moment. In the past I would have said, 'well, we believe we have the truth because we teach what is in the bible." Last night I found I could not wholeheartedly say that (the generation teaching, mind control, no opportunity to honestly dissent etc.) so I fudged the issue at bit by simply saying that we study the bible and find it helps us a lot. I did also mention that I had been in another religion as a child but had changed because it took many of its beliefs from other sources and not just the bible. But I'm not sure if I can even say that this is not true of Jehovah's Witnesses.
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58
New congregation accounting system
by thedog1 ini'm sure i read a thread here about the new congregation accounting procedures.
i ask because i handle the accounts in our cong and in our part of the world the new accounting system has just arrived whereby local congs do not have their own account any longer, but all funds outside of basic monthly costs is forwarded to an account controlled by the org.
this is causing huge confusion in our cong as we have to work out how much we need to keep back for monthly costs and the new idea is that you send all your extra cash to the org and if you need it back you can ask for it but we don't know how easy or hard it would be to do that.
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thedog1
St George of England, yes I have a copy of the instructions for accounting, and it does say that the congregation is 'encouraged' to send any excess to the branch account. As our CBOE told me the other day, 'we don't need any extra money locally, so why not send it? ' In effect it will be resting in their account, but they are saying it is still our money, the balance shown belongs to us, and each cong has an individual number in the account which relates only to that congregation. But if we send it we can't automatically take it back when needed. We have to ask for it.