Going Door to Door...

by Priest73 28 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  noni1974

  Well lets see the old hall I went to covered their territory once a year.It was a small territory.I now live in a suburb an inner ring suburb of Cleveland Ohio called Lakewood.I've live here for 5 years.I have in all my time here seen only one JW.She was doing street witnessing and I was standing at a bus stop.She approached me I told her I'm DA ed thanks but I'm not interested.The local hall used to be down the street from me.The WTS made them sell it because it had black mold.Now they meet at a hall in the next county.So you don't even see them for meetings anymore.You never see them going door to door on the weekends.You never see them during the week going door to door.I've come to believe their invisable now.Their a figment of my imagination.Lakewood has 57,000 people living in it.And only one hall.But I live in the middle of town.So you'ed think I would have had them ring my bell at least once in 5 years.

  I live in a secured building.You have to be buzzed in to get in.Their a sister from the spanish hall who lives in my building.I've seen her once coming home from a meeting.I see the magazines in my lobby all the time.But I have never see witnesses or had one knock on my door the whole time I've lived here.I've been in the same building for three years now.I work at night so I'm home durring the day.What's their excuse?
• 

  aniron

  we DID have a brother who did this! He threw them out like a newspaper boy then counted them as placements

  We had a brother , in his 50's, who used to have 160 magazines each month (80 WT, 80 Aw).

  Everyone used to think how wonderful he was placing all these magazines. very spiritual !!!

  Then after he died it was discovered all he did was just put them through peoples letterbox.

  They're witnessing to empty houses and taking the door to door message, too literally.

  I agree with this.

  By the time I lieft the JW's. It was becoming increasingly hard to find anyone. morning, afternoon and evening. Even at weekends through the years it changed. People no longer stayed in. They now had places to go. Whether it was just to have a day out, or going to stores, shopping centres etc. It was now easier for them to go out at weekends, everyone practically had a car.

  You could work down a road of 50 houses on a Sunday afternoon, and we would be lucky to have 6 people answer the door. It was like this street after street.

  Yet one of our local Evangelical churches would three times a year put up a 500 seater tent in a park for a 2 hour service, and they would fill the thing.
• 

  paul2

  door to door is one way of contacting wittnesss, it works because you have contacted me

  many miles away, god works in as all
• 

  MidwichCuckoo

  So funny...never heard of ''Drive-by Witnessing'' before. I suppose we'd call it ''Hit and Run Witnessing'' in England.
• 

  James Free

  There are literally millions who have never spoken to a witness. I asked an elder about this once. I said, how can Jehovah destroy them if they never heard the good news? he said basically that everyone at least knows someone who knows a witness and also most people know about Jehovahs Witnesses so that should be witness enough? HUH?

  Actually, there are BILLIONS who have never spoken to a Witness! More than one billion in China alone!!

  Witnesses always think they are bigger than they are. In fact, there are nearly 7 million. To put that into real perspective, there are more than 48 million blind people in the world! The population of the world is growing at the rate of 6% a year. So the 'growth' of the Org. does not even keep up with the number of births and deaths, let alone grow bigger.

  I always used to smile every January when some idiot or another would comment on the 20 or 30% growth on one country or another. On closer examination you would see that there were only 100 in the country to begin with, so it only took 4 families to move in to record an amazing growth! Like the famous quote says, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.
• 

  Dr Jekyll

  I live 10 minutes walk (max) from a kingdom hall in one of the most densely populated cities on this planet and in the 8 years I've lived here no ones called while I've been in. The nearest I got to it was coming home one day to find a half eaten Watchtower in my dogs bed. I'm assuming they posted it through the door and that he never escaped and ate the dub as well.

  I'm a "walk away" had they knocked sometime in the last 8 years before I found this site I might have gone back! What a missed opportunity for them :)
• 

  MidwichCuckoo

  How was your dog after the experience, Dr Jekyll? Is there a medical term for eating a whole dub?.........and is it me, or have you swiftly moved Continents?
• 

  Fleur

  They're technically not supposed to preach in our complex, private property and all. Some JW's live in here, and a couple years ago when they did that "big huge tract' thingie we had one left in our door.

  I find it interesting though that the elders have never paid me a visit despite the fact that several of my family members have specifically asked them to. Perhaps they saw my DA letter (they df'd me but I wrote the DA letter before they did it) that said that the elders were not to contact me under any circumstances except by mail to inform me of their decision on my case. They didnt' contact me then, so I'm amazed when people say they got registered letters informing them of their df'ing.

  I had a funny experience with my mom awhile back. I wanted to drop off a small gift to thank a neighbor for a kindness they had shown to my aging parents...and so Mom and I went across the street and to the door together. We stood on the too-tiny porch, and after I knocked on the door, she laughed and said "you wanna take this one?" I laughed out loud. Then I had a cold chill. "Brings back memories, eh?" she said. "We haven't been on a porch together like this in years."

  Not enough years for me to forget how much I hated it, I thought.

  ~essie
• 

  sir82

  why aren't we going when people actually answer the door?

  The Society is very well aware that most wirtnessing is done when people are not at home. They give lip service to "going where the people are", but in practice, no one really does it (except for the super-zealous types).

  Frankly, the Society doesn't much care if anyone hears the message or not. Field service has been little more than a team-spirit building ritual for at least the last decade or so, at least among native-language-speaking congregations in the US and western Europe. A means to measure the "spirituality" of brothers "reaching out", and a way to reassure the members of the group that they really are different & special & unique.

  Think about it. Imagine you control hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in a multi-national publishing empire. If you really, truly, deep-down in your soul, honestly believed that hundreds of millions of angels were poised and ready at a monent's notice to pour out death-dealing streams of fire and sulphur on humanity, obliterating billions of lives, including innocent babies and children, and the only thing preventing their annihillation was the knowledge that you possess, would you depend on Brother Pioneer-Shuffle and Sister Oh-My-Lumbago to knock on doors on a Saturday morning, or sand like a cigar-store Indian with a 6-month old copy of Awake held out in your hand?

  Sorry. The Society doesn't really believe the end is coming any time soon. The irony is, the "sheep" are finally reading that message, and the powers-that-be are getting in a tizzy, because their control is slipping.