How did you REALLY feel when you where out in field service?

by megaflower 42 Replies latest jw friends

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  megaflower

  I never felt comfortable knocking on door and I hoped no one would be home. My presentation was short and to the point because I did not want to get into discussions. As we walked from "door to door" I secretly wished I could be like all the ones I saw in the nighborhood. They where gardening, playing ball with thier children, packing up ther car to go somewhere as a family. JW's have time stolen from them by the society. You are told the knocking on doors is a very important work. In fact, it is life saving. I never felt that way. It just made me depressed,anxious and edventually angry.

  How did you feel?
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  Warlock

  Honestly, I was fine after a couple of doors, but in my heart, I felt the people didn't deserve what we were doing for them. Really.

  Warlock
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  verystupid77

  JW's have time stolen from them by the society. You are told the knocking on doors is a very important work. In fact, it is life saving. I never felt that way. It just made me depressed,anxious and edventually angry.

  I hated it, never did feel good doing it but I also thought that it was the right thing to do and that it did mean their lives. I look back right now with peer bitterness. I am so hurt it is unreal. They lied to us to get us to make money for them is all I can see right now.

  They defently stole from us by taking away our life.
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  seeking help

  i was never baptized but i did go out a few times. i can say that i totally hated it with a passion. it was the worst time of my life. i would hope that my wife (witness) would sleep late so i wouldn't have to go. such an awful expirence for me. and i only saw someone i knew once. that was it. never went back out gain. i felt like a salesman. i hate that kind of stuff, pushy people and thier BS. i have chills just thinking about it.
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  Witness 007

  What a waste of my friggin time....I would knock on abandon homes to make sure no one answered......Oh damn Hobo's!
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  bittersweet

  I did not enjoy field service at all. I did auxiliary pioneer quite often and I was a regular pioneer for about a month ( until my husband told the elders we had fooled around before we had gotten married 5 months before ). I did this because it was my christian duty. I used to knock on the door soooo quietly, secretly hoping no one would answer the door. I used to look at the side of the street that had the least amount of cars and offer to take that side. I am a very anxious person when it comes to talking to people I do not know, especially when the topic is religion. I don't answer the door to strangers, yet I expected strangers to answer the door to me. I am so glad to have no part of field service any longer. I do not miss it one bit!
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  Quirky1

  Stoopid!!
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  mindmelda

  I always felt uneasy that I was selling religion door to door like vacuums and Avon. I had done door to door selling and frankly, it felt like the same thing.

  I couldn't bring myself to do a lot of formal field service for that reason, but I did a lot of incidental witnessing simply because it seemed more natural to me.

  But, I made the mistake of actually listening to other people! LOL Some well informed "householders" had theological convictions that I couldn't overturn or refute.

  I never converted anyone to JWs in 36 years, thankfully. I tried to have respectful conversations with people instead of preaching at them, so maybe that's why. Also I had a lack of conviction about many WTS doctrines after I actually studied them so I guess I was never really a convincing spokesman for the WTS. I got into Witnesses as a child and of course had no idea there were other theological ideas and arguments out there until later, when I read and discussed them.

  My baptism at barely 16 years old was based on a really rudimentary and incomplete understanding of JWs...if I'd known then what I knew later as an adult, I'd have never done it.

  I don't think it works well unless you mindlessly preach AT people the sermons you're taugt and then those who are looking for someone to do their thinking for them are the ones who respond to that.
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  BluesBrother

  Let's be honest..It would be appropriate on this forum to say how much one hated it and I knew it was pointless...But the truth is that my motivation swung one way or another over the years.

  There were times, few, when I really wanted to do it and felt good about it..That was a "spiritual high" . Most of the time I jogged along with it , doing it because it was an essential part of the religion that I wanted to practice and treating it as a job of work to be done. There were low times when I absolutely hated it and felt I could not face it.

  When I realised the truth about "The Truth" it had not been one of those low times.

  Looking back I sure regret all the time I wasted doing it, and the times that I upset people and got them up at a weekend,,,
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  mindmelda

  Comedian Jim Gaffigan says it best, "You want to make someone really uncomfortable? Talk to them about Jesus. Even if the Pope said, 'I'd like to talk to you about Jesus.' you'd be like, 'Whoa freak, keep that stuff at the office.'"

  LOL Too bad the JWs don't actually talk about Jesus that much, but point made. It FREAKS people out to ambush them about religion. Why does the WTS think that's the best way to get them interested in JWs?

  It's true that Jesus and the apostles spoke publicly about their beliefs, but it was a common thing to that time to present and debate your views in the public marketplace, as we didnt have a lot of other forms of communication in those days. No newspapers, no TV, no internet, of course. Town criers were common up until the widespread distribution of newspapers in the 1800s.

  It seems to me that when the disciples went to talk to people in their private homes, it was people who had already approached them and expressed some interest to what they were discussing in the public forums.

  What JWs do is nothing like what is spoken of in the Bible. Jesus didn't say to go find people and annoy the crap out of them on Saturday morning!