by JWOP 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I'm just curious: Since the WTS did away with book studies in members homes, how does the field service meetings go now? Do people still meet in members homes, or are all FS meetings now at the Kingdom Hall every day? Or do they now have some other arrangement?
Just wondering.
Tami
They meet at the KH except on Sundays mainly because KH being occupied by meetings through out the day. I do not believe there's any particular rules on this. They still have service groups with assigned publishers and a leading elder. I guess it's up to the group or assinged elder or vary from KH to KH.
Bascially everything is the same except they don't held home bible study anymore.(at least that's the way where I am at)
In this area,the field service grous are assigned like book studies formerly were,in people's homes,and there is a Kingdom Hall group. Once a month,everyone meets at the hall on a Saturday,and use the morning to offer Bible studies. During the week,and Sundays here,field service is at the hall.
I hadn't thought about it since it's been a while. So are there groups or is it just a free for all?
Hello JWOP,
In our area here in Australia, each elder is assigned a Field Service Group. The Society recommends that each group be made up of 16 publishers max. The idea of maintaining the groups even though there is no bookstudy anymore is so that the elders can shepherd those in their group. They generally meet at the home of one of the members of the group, but there are always one or two groups that meet at the hall. The congregation combines once a month.
My experience with the group I looked after was that while I had 15 members, we only ever had a core group of three or four actually come out. Shepherding never gets done as there is no time or energy. The best most publishers get is the 'privelige' of working with the Group Overseer every now and then and getting asked 'So how are things with you sister?' . All in all pretty shallow and far from the rosy picture of what was painted when the arrangement changed.
Around here there are still groups. but instead of meeting every Tuesday night and calling them "book study groups" they meet only Sat AM and call them "service groups"
Most of the time we met at the Hall. In the city, sometimes the elder coordinating it had everyone meet at a conveniently located café. The branch found out about this somehow and put an end to it since we were in an inappropriate place for prayer and daily text reading. If you have people actually willing to go on the street for you and advertise your product, I think you ought to be thankful for that and let them do it the way they find most convenient. But this is not an organisation that values ad hoc arrangements.
We had field service groups meeting at homes. Usually it would be two groups per meeting place. They replaced book study group with the name field service group. It is the same premise. My mom and stepdad still hold one in their house.
we were assigned to a field service group that met at an elder's home. the trouble was, he had 7 people in his family, we have 5 people in our family, and only one other couple was assigned to our group. So no matter what, you knew who you were going to have to work with in service - there were 6 children and 8 adults, one of whom had Alzheimer's and one who rarely went out in service due to his work schedule. It was always a nightmare and I eventually stopped doing field service entirely because I just couldn't stand the bickering daughters and the constant complaining from the elder's wife saddled with providing full time care to her mother in law (the Alzheimer's patient)
reminds me of when the CO killed the sat bookstudy. All it did was cause two groups to miss bookstudy every week.
