What kind of Congregation did you attend ?

by av8orntexas 14 Replies latest jw friends

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  transhuman68

  My hometown cong was a small rural one- but we were very spiritual- think of the church in the movie ‘Footloose’. If you played up on Saturday night, you would hear about it from an elder on Sunday morning! Eventually almost everything that was fun was banned, and the cong has shrunk to 2/3 its peak population.

  The last cong I went to was a real culture shock though; much bigger, bayside suburban, and totally out of control- a sister’s suicide attempt, a brother involved in some ongoing criminal activity, and a sister leaving her husband for another woman- it was all madness, and my brother & I would drive at 90 mph down the highway to the Hall: maybe we were part of the problem, LOL.
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  Amelia Ashton

  This is my experience.

  I was always told that Jehovah's Witnesses are the same all over the world. They are not!!

  It makes sense to me now that people are what make a congregation what it is, not doctrines. Yes the doctrines are pretty much the same but the people from different countries and cultures make the congregation what it is.

  The major differences I found were Spanish witnesses do not have a problem with swearing. Even the c word is acceptable. That was a shock the first time I heard it from a brother, I can tell you! He called his wife one.

  Dress code was much more lax. Brothers would wear sandals with socks (yuck) if they were not on the platform. Short sleeve shirts and no jackets were also allowed. No ties on field service! That was strange. Much more coffee and shopping whilst on field service.

  Parties were fantastic. Lots of provocative dancing, salsa style but would not have been tolerated here in UK.

  Disfellowshipping still happened but not the shunning. They still associated with us away from the KH.

  Gossip was rife. No secrets at all. Lol

  Very loud disagreements amongst bros and sisters but that is the Spanish way. Loud, short and over very quickly.

  Sisters were able to dress very minimalistically when it was hot. Sometimes visitors were surprised at how short the skirts were and shoulders were always bare and undergarments invariably showed. Quite often the under garments were a bikini as we would be going to a pool party or the beach straight after.

  UK congs are formal and stuffy and the people are cold compared to the Spanish.
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  Azazel

  broom stick up the arse type of congregation.
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  Amelia Ashton

  When someone here in UK complained meetings are boring an elder replied "we don't come here to be entertained" That pretty much summed up my old cong!
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  IsaacJ22

  My old Hall was English speaking and huge. Over 250 people went there. But attendance was low, so while rumors spread that the Hall would be split year after year, it only happened recently. The area I live in is nothing but a string of small towns every 7 miles, each with a population of 1000 or so. The Hall was conservative and pretty authoritarian, though I've heard of others that sounded even worse on boards like this. No annointed were present at the time I attended, but they had one before I started going. The elders hated her. It was not a good place to be, even by WT standards, if you were a sister. Or a teenager whose parents weren't in "the truth," as was my situation.

  It was the kind of Hall where people were scandalized if you showed up with a suit jacket that didn't match your pants. You would not be allowed to give talks this way and would be asked, at minimum, to at least take off the offending jacket if you were going to do mikes or read passages from the text. Note that I didn't even own a suit when I started going, so I was real popular right from the start.

  The Hall was generally regarded as belonging to the man who had been its PO for many years. He left that Hall some years ago, though there were rumors that he was going to be removed or something if he didn't. Looking back, I now realize he had a tendancy of grooming people for positions of authority. I suspect many Halls operate this way, so that a certain tone is set. If someone like the PO favors certain people with certain traits, then most of the elders will be people he approves of with opinions he agrees with.