The JW's will never completely stop the door-to-door work but they will eventually make it only optional.
In "In Search of Christian Freedom", Ray Franz makes the excellent point that how we translate the Greek kat' oikon that the Watchtower Society translates as 'house to house' depends entirely on the context, and there are other scriptures with the same Greek work that are translated 'according to homes' or 'in homes', etc. However, the Greek preposition kata does have a 'distributive' sense and, unfortunately, Ray Franz did not adequately address this in his research. All he did was say that 'distributive' does not mean 'consecutive', implying that the bible writers would have used the 'consecutive' sense if they meant door-to-door down a street, BUT Ray Franz failed to elaborate on the point and did not provide a single single scriptural or scholarly example to try and back up his point. So he did not prove that the New World Translation's rendering of scriptures like Acts 20:20 is absolutely wrong, all he proved is it may be wrong. But it may be right too and there are scholars who would agree with the Society (eg, Randolph Yeager) on this. A 'distributive' sense doesn't necessarily mean preaching in the fashion JW's do door-to-door down the street, but it does denote an effort to reach everyone thoroughly, not haphazardly, or just by inviting people to a disciples home. So although the Watchtower is wrong to assert that the early disciples definitely did preach house-to-house in a consecutive door-to-door manner, it remains that this could well have been what they did. We can't say 100% sure either way.
So the correct scriptural position is for the Society to make door-to-door style preaching optional for all JW's (not just the elderly or sick) because the scriptures are inconclusive on the matter. There needs to be a shift from the almost mandatory emphasis on door-to-door style preaching. Those who don't do it are marginalised and usually leave the congregation. However, JW's are correct to try to preach in a 'distributive' manner by trying to preach thoroughly and not leave anyone out and, quite simply, the door-to-door method has been an excellent way to do that.But it is not the only way and is proving to be less and less effective with each passing year, especially as more and more people are not at home during the day, even in the weekends now. The pioneers are mostly wasting their time door-knocking during the day during the week. They are mainly just not-at-home slip collectors (those slips will be dumped eventually)
Instead, the focus should be on more mall witnessing, street witnessing, commuter witnessing, display stands, evening witnessing and phone witnessing. There will be a greater shift to these methods in years to come.
Regards,
yadda