Getting Your "Time" in On Time

by OnTheWayOut 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  OnTheWayOut

  I spoke with a fellow ex-JW whose wife is still a JW. She was missing some meetings, but had to get to her first meeting of the month. She needed to turn her "time" in. The elders take on a temporary craze at the beginning of the month. "I need your time," they would say to everyone in their group. People could have dropped off the face of the earth in the last 30 days for all they knew, but now they had to have their "time."

  Phone calls from the hall on the first weekend of the month went like this somehow:
  
  "Sister Smith, how are you doing? We sure missed you at today's meeting. You say your mother-in-law passed away and you were out of town for three weeks? Sorry to hear that. I'm sure we could talk more about that later, but right now I need to gather your field service time. Maybe you could just give it to me over the phone. ...WHAT? You must have talked to some of your husband's relatives at the funeral. Can't you count one hour for that?"

  Many elders would ask the member to "estimate" their time because they had to have that slip of paper now.

  When I moved into the final phases of a fade, I stopped turning in the one-hour reports. I didn't want to be bothered by the elders trying to hunt down a report from me, so I turned in a report three months in a row with the word "ZERO" spelled out in the column for total hours. They never called.

  So let's hear some of your stories of how the pressure came to get your "time" in.
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  White Dove

  I padded mine out of desperation to make the quota, either for the national average or because that was the year I pioneered. I was usually on time with my "time."
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  garyneal

  I was picking up and cleaning up around the living room and found one of those time slips for counting time laying around. As I looked at it, I could not help but to wonder why in the world is this even important? I recall when I use to attend the IF baptist church that whenever we went soul winning (basically a fundamentalist version of FS) we never counted time or report time to any pastor, deacon, etc.. We just simply went door to door, discussed the Bible, and had a good time.

  Why is it so important that people actually track time that they spend out in FS? Does it really measure how 'spiritual' they are? What happens if a congregation reports low FS hours over all? Seems to me that this has the potential for fraud if you feel like your 'spirituality' and worthiness for life everlasting is dependent on this.
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  monkeyman

  "Not everything that counts is counted, and not everything that's counted counts" - Einstein
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  SirNose586

  "Not everything that counts is counted, and not everything that's counted counts" - Einstein --monkeyman

  I really like that quote. Yeah, the time crunch was ridiculous! You'd be ignored for awhile, but the moment you didn't count your time, you were a problem!

  And the way they tried to justify it was even more hilarious: "Certainly, since the apostles counted that there were about 3,000 souls added to the Christian congregation at one time, this means we need to count our time today." That was so lame. Really, they didn't even do a good job of counting. We know they were in a Greco-Roman world; they knew how to count! Why didn't they give an exact count? The number can be alleged to be a fraud otherwise.

  It's just proof that this is nothing but a works-based knock-off of Christianity.
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  nearlyfree

  The feild service overseer of our hall would ring me up every month - If i had no time to report he would say what about the time spent talking to my kids about Jah. I then started reporting 1 hour, though i didnt like doing that. Last time I spoke to him I said "Dont ring me - I will ring You if i have any time to report" I havent heard from him for 2 months!!!
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  lancelink

  I just told them that I didn't go out,

  end of story.
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  Open mind

  I was the Secretary with no assistant back when it was the Secretary's job to track down EVERY field service report. I'm pretty sure I never ignored a death in the family, but otherwise OTWO's dialogue was right on the money.

  Around the 5th of the month I would have to make at least 15 to 20 phone calls, and, while I always tried to be positive and courteous, I'd also chop off any attempts at conversation. It was a very bad division of tasks, IMO. It's better now that the responsibility is split between all the Service Group Overseers. Still stupid to be tracking time in the first place though.

  om
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  parakeet

  Having been The Most Reluctant Dub in the World, I made it a point as a teenager to avoid field service like the plague. I almost never managed to make even the minimum (at that time) of 10 hours a month. Every once in a while an elder would gently suggest I try a little harder. I did as they asked. I tried a little harder to ignore them and I succeeded.
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  WTWizard

  I think this is so they can at least have everyone make at least one boasting session a month. And, while they are at the Kingdumb Hell, they can hound the crap out of them to show up more and go out more in field circus. As for me, I always turned my time in when I damn well felt like it--toward the end, I would turn in more than one slip for more than one month at a time. That way, it would waste their time hunting for mine (which is not there), only to have it turn up later. Plus, it made it dangerous for them to turn in a fake time slip on my behalf.