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

by megaflower 42 Replies latest jw friends

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  donuthole

  Well this confirms what Rutherford suggested -- you all became apostates because you hated the preaching work. (kidding)

  I quite enjoyed the last year of field service when I gave up trying to place literature and convert folks into the JW religion. Without the sales agenda and superiority complex, it was good to just get around and talk to different folks, listen to what they had to say, pray with them if there were any problems in their life. If you are still a JW and having to go out in service and not enjoying it, why not try this approach.
• 

  yknot

  My loving or hating of FS was totally dependent on my relationship with local congregation.

  Would the householder be 'saved and well tended to' or 'stumbled and cast aside like a skinned lamb' by the local Elders and congregation? Such determined if I would promote the local chapter of JWs.
• 

  donny

  I too hated it for the most part. I was always relieved to find no one at home and sometimes did the "quiet knock" or "fake doorbell press" to help ensure this. You can imagine how weird it felt when I took a job as a supervisor over a call center who managed calls from field service technicians for a computer repair company. My title: Field Service Overseer. Was Jehovah trying to tell me something?

  Don
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  megaflower

  Donny, LOL your reply cracked me up Field Service Supervisor-priceless!!
• 

  donny

  Donny, LOL your reply cracked me up Field Service Supervisor-priceless!!

  "Field Service Overseer" was what was actually on business cards. I challenged the FSO at our congregation one evening and told him I was the FSO as of this moment. He asked "And what is your authority on this claim?" I pulled out my card and showed him and said "By the authority of Fox Computers, Inc." He jokingly handed me his briefcase and said "It's all yours."

  Don
• 

  Olin Moyles Ghost

  My feeling was similar to that of "no more kool aid." I didn't enjoy going out, but after it was over, I felt good about having done it. I thought of service as one of those unpleasant things that you had to do--like clean the bathroom or take bad-tasting medicine.

  When I would express this opinion about service, some would tell me that I was doing it "just enough to hate it." My reply was that I didn't like it any more when I was doing it 90 hours a month.

  Some people are good at it, and some actually enjoy it. These folks are few and far between, but I have met them. But my experience is that most pioneers do not really enjoy going up and knocking on doors. As has been well-documented here, pioneers have many techniques to minimize the amount of actual "preaching" per hour (for example the pioneer shuffle, far-out return visits, etc.).
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  The Berean

  Field sevice to me was a modern counterpart of the early Christian flagellant movement. It amounted to allowing the public to "beat me up" in some insane attempt to appease God. Such a "whipping" didn't stop the spread of the Black Death in the 1300s and this form of humiliation didn't work for me either.
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  AllTimeJeff

  There were days I intellectually accepted the GB's premise for the importance of what I was doing. That would fade after I talked to the first offended person of the day, as I stood on their door and drooled out the latest KM suggestions on my colorful magazines printed on substandard paper...

  Here's what sucks: To know that you are the apostate you used to preach against, driving in a van full of cult followers, hoping that everyone will stay at Starbucks for 2 hours. Hoping your pioneer wife stops harrassing you from the back of the van. Looking at the nice houses you were doomed never to live in as a pioneer.

  Trying to sell paradise earth to people when you never did once really buy it.

  Towards the end, I just used the bible, and then, only certain scriptures. I asked a lot more questions at the door, listened, said things like "Hey, I'm a JW, so we all know we disagree.." shook their hand and left... I left most pleasantly, not like the other pioneers who often seemed determined to piss off the strangers they talked to at the door...
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  megaflower

  I agree with you wholeheartedly Alltimejeff. I felt like all we did was push JW literature on people. There where few times when people actually used the bible. And if they did use "the good book" they only cited the scriptures from that months KM.
• 

  chickpea

  any "joy" in service was directly linked
  to the car group members....

  i had 2 really fun friends that
  made midweek witnessing a blast...
  well, not the witnessing part,
  just being with them

  when it was the saturday drudgery
  (we hosted the BS for 10 years)
  of dragging the kids out....
  that was pure hell....
  for everyone.....