Why do Jehovah’s Witnesses preach from house to house?

by mankkeli 34 Replies latest jw friends

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  Band on the Run

  Jesus, and later Paul, did not knock on doors! If Jesus knocked on doors and tents, his short ministry would have accomplished nothing. They went where crowds of people would be - markets. Within this past month, I read Ehrman and Crossan both describe Paul's strategy. He set up a small business that would drawn his target crowd. During normal business conversation small talk, he would start mentioning Jesus. People would have run if he preached forcefully at them. Talking with someone is very different than talking at them.

  Within the past day, a similar thread was active. I don't understand why the Witnesses don't use mass communication. People despise the intrusion of privacy that knocking on doors entails. In the beginning, many businesses knocked on doors. Businesses no longer just knock on doors. Technology offers so many ways, unimaginable in my youth, to target and reach people. I don't see what the WT does with its assets. Bethel may be nice for the leaders but they don't live the way Donald Trump or Michael Bloomberg do. Another poster said knocking on doors keeps people occupied. It allows control over individuals that would not be present with tV or radio. When my mom was young, the Witnesses had a successful radio station. The main DJ became more popular than Rutherford or Knorr. Witnesses loved the station. End of station.
• 

  WontLeave

  He advised against going house to house..

  This is not true. Not to defend JWs, per se, but as a lover of truth, this argument irritates me. It's as misapplied and misrepresented as the worst example of JW "Bible-based" propaganda. Jesus wasn't telling his followers not to go from house to house preaching. He was telling his followers not to waste time changing their base of operations while they preached in a town. He instructed them to find a home willing to put them up and feed them while they preached in the city and to eat and sleep there until they were ready to move on to the next city. If nobody could be found to house them or accept the message of Jesus, then the disciple was to "shake the dust from his feet" and move on to the next town.

  Please, people. Let's not sink to the level of the Watchtower and ascribe false claims to the Bible. There is nothing wrong with knocking on doors, in itself. The problem is, the Society has JWs knocking on doors to keep them busy and to avoid coming off any of their money. They don't even mail magazines anymore. Publishers have become the Society's courier service. Door knocking has nothing to do with getting the message out. Meanwhile, the false prophet Harold Camping, can find millions to spend on advertizing so he can go from totally unheard of to everybody knowing about May 21 (and the embarrassment that followed) within a few months. Also, Mormons are making a huge Internet presence and have been advertizing on TV for decades. But will the Society ever part with a penny? Don't hold your breath. They're stingier than some of the most glaring examples of money-grubbing cults. Even Scientology will spend money to get its message out, but Bethel can't bear the thought of any of their money getting back into the hands of "worldly people".
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  DocBob

  Toward the end of my 5 years as a regular pioneer (also the first 5 of the 10 years I served as an elder), it dawned on me that the door-to-door work was more about "rallying the troops" that it ever was about witnessing or gaining converts.
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  mouthy

  Well just shows you how dopey I was( am)
  I always thought I was there at the door to help get them
  into Paradise....I preached more about the NEW EARTH than
  anything else...
• 

  GLTirebiter

  Why is the organisation so keen? Because it reinforces your 'otherness' from everyone around you.

  One of the "I am Mormon" commercials just came on TV. Contrast those ads to the way the Watchtower spreads their message.

  Mormons emphasize the ways they are like the rest of us, the ways Mormons are average folks--not their peculiarities, the ways in which they are "no part of this world". Also, the commercials help them make contact with those people who are interested in their message as easily as possible. Using mass media is an effective way to identify potential converts, and to improve their reputation among the population at large.

  This ad campaign seems a much better use of resources than printing Watchtower and Awake magazines that go into the trash bin unread, spending longs hours hoping to find one person willing to listen to you, and annoying the neighbors so that they will be unfriendly to you and prejudiced against your religion.

  Considering these two different approaches and their results, it is reasonable to conclude that the Watchtower wants the Witnesses to be seen as different, and to emphasize the differences between them and everybody else. That's why it is an effective loyalty test, as I said in an earlier post.