Watchtower Meetings: Catholicism and Collapse?

by metatron 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  metatron

  If you are an old timer (with a good memory), you can clearly see the downward trend within Witness meetings.

  For example: at one time, the Theocratic Ministry School had a Written Review that was turned in and graded and handed back like any exam! Now, I observe the School talks done at the last minute by people grabbed to fill in - and the talks themselves require little or no effort , at that.

  Who comments? Kids with one word answers. Sister Crazy, who wants to answer every paragraph while the rest of the audience is passive.

  What do we end up with? Witnesses who are like Catholics! - You know, the ones who never miss Sunday Mass, in their jeans and windbreakers, who use birth control, ignore Vatican rules but still insist they are "Catholic"!

  So, now we have Witnesses who zealously attend but do nothing. They don't open their wallets, either.

  These people have the Governing Body by the b*lls. Congregations are loaded with them and no amount of nagging will make any difference because they've become immune.

  I have to laugh. You are watching the meetings fall apart, year by year, into utter passivity.

  metatron
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  Falling apart, yes.

  Further on your point. The written review used to be handed out at the meeting. Nobody knew what it asked ahead of time. After they stopped asking someone else to grade yours, they switched to letting you grade your own. Didn't want to embarass the members.
  They changed that to putting it in the Kingdom Ministry so that the members could look up the stuff ahead of time. That way, they would get the cult indoctrination points. They still took the review at the hall, but then they answered from their notes from before the meeting. That way, everyone could look smart.

  Well, they now skip the pretense of an exam during the meeting. If you all studied at home, let's go straight to your answers with an oral review. Now it's just parroting WT answers just like the Sunday magazine study or like the bookstudy.

  Even though the WT magazine study is still an hour, there's no time with those questions to stray much from the canned answers. You could have all children giving their short answers and still take the whole hour with their load of reading and questions.
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  Olin Moyles Ghost

  Good points, meta. When you think back over the past few decades, it's interesting to see how easy it is to be a Witness these days. It's all being scaled back and dumbed down. In general, the progression has been something like this (feel free to correct me if I have mistakes in here):

  - 1960s: week-long district assemblies, hour-long public talks, 100 hours per month to be a regular pioneer or "vacation pioneer", no reading of paragraphs in WT study, TMS written review graded by TMS servant

  - 1970s: 4-5 day district assemblies, read paragraphs during WT study

  - 1980s: 4 day district conventions, pioneer hours cut to 1000 per year (83 or so per month), 60 hours per month to auxiliary pioneer, public talks cut to 45 minutes, written review graded individually

  - 1990s: 3 day district conventions, pioneer hours cut to 840 per year (70 per month), auxiliary pioneer hours cut to 50 per month, infirm/elderly can be counted as "regular" with as little as 15 minutes of activity per month

  - 2000s: public talk cut to 30 minutes, book study eliminated, written review replaced by oral review
• 

  sir82

  Not to mention the quality of the talks themselves - even the ones given by the elders.

  We had a 10 minute part on the Service meeting last week, based on the "Organized" book, given by an elder.

  The schedule was out more than a month in advance - he had plenty of time to preprare - if he had wanted to.

  What his talk consisted of was his going up to the platform, reading directly from the book for a sentence or 2, paraphrasing a sentence (skipping or adding a word at most), then read directly from the book, then rearrange the words of the next sentence slightly, then back to the book, etc.

  The whole talk - 10 minutes - of that.

  He read a couple of scriptures, had no idea how that applied, then went back to the book.

  He either completely forgot about his assignment and "prepared" it during the school, or he just didn't give a #$% and just winged it.

  And stuff like that is not uncommon. I couldn't even begin to count the number of talks I've heard where the speaker has utterly no clue about what he is presenting - he just rephrases the source material, in such a way that you can see he doesn't understand one word of what he is saying.

  What "wonderful spiritual food" is enjoyed at meetings! Oh how essential they are!
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  Bangalore

  I guess there might be even more dumbing down in the years ahead.

  Bangalore
• 

  I quit!

  From what I can see lot of Witnesses are just bored to death with the whole thing they just don't know what else to do so they stay. Or they stay because they are afraid of what will happen to their lives if they leave. They've lost their motivation. Unless the Watchtower can figure out how to get them all worked up again like they did about 1975 I think interest in what they have to say will continue to decline and they will have to continue to lower the bar.
• 

  metatron

  And what does the "Sons of Bernie Madoff" Governing Body do in response? They nag and nag and nag - and then downsize and dumb down some more.

  But this can't go on.....

  Eventually, even these incompetents realize that the organization is mostly dead weight. Lumpenproletariat who occupy space.

  Now, the half hearted Catholics still open their wallets - for bingo, for schools, for charities - even with pedophile priests, they feel they get value for their money.

  But Witnesses? The Theocrats are awakening to the fact that much of their cult - is useless.

  Selling off Branches? Assembly Halls? Dumping magazines? No surprize. See what else happens.

  metatron
• 

  Beware of false prophets

  On the one hand I have to point my finger and say what hypocrites the Watchtower is for saying that they are so important and that everyone needs to keep on the watch, not fall asleep, etc, etc; and yet they are providing the very example of the lack of value of their BS (probably for lack of money and lack of ability to come up with enough new BS). On the other hand, I am SO HAPPY to be seeing a decline since I've actively joined the ranks of Ex-JW and know what has changed in the borg since I made my exit about 13 years ago. As sad as it is that people are still trapped and blind, and that there are some new ones getting trapped, it's great to see the current trend of the WTS, and it's great to know that putting stuff out there online is helping wake people up!
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  NeonMadman

  I guess there might be even more dumbing down in the years ahead.

  I haven't been to a meeting in 10 years, but from what I read on this forum, I'm not sure how much dumber they could get.
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  NewYork44M

  This reminds me of what was said about the Soviet Empire. Workers pretended to work and the USSR pretended to pay its workers. As long as no one noticed that the emperor had no cloths, things went along just fine.