How the Shrinking of the Awake! has Affected Many!

by God_Delusion 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  sabastious

  That article is hilarious. This really had me rolling:

  “We have depended on the Awake! magazine for so many years and so this news is alarming to us. I’ve owned my pet shop for over 33 years and in that time I’ve seen the Watchtower Company print these bi-monthly magazines for 30 pence, then give them away for free, then reduce them to a monthly print, and now this. A 16 paged Awake! magazine simply won’t cut it for us”, said O’Shea Jackson, owner of the Kingdom Pets store in North London, England.

  “We will just have to encourage more Jehovah’s Witnesses to leave their magazines in the store. A lot of them know what we do with the magazines, but it seems like they’re happy with us taking them off their hands.”

  

  -Sab
• 

  steve2

  When I was new to this and a spiritual puke, quite a number of us would go over the mags and review them for placing in service.

  Yes, this was certainly my observation: New ones in the organization were much more likely to read through the magazines and - yuk - zealously cite whole passages. These new ones certainly showed up how 'unread' many of the older ones were. Yet - just as skins turns to dust over time - these new ones became "old ones" and - no surprise - themselves became part of the growing number of the 'unread'. Call it "sinking boredom", or if you want to impress, "spiritual ennui".
• 

  Disillusioned Lost-Lamb

  I use to try to read them but just couldn't keep up the routine, they're just so gawd awful.

  I don't know many who actually read them thoroughly either; there's a reason why you can hear crickets chirping during the service meeting whenever they have parts that review the mags, or even the months placement. Sure you might get a few colorful comments, but the reason why hands aren’t flying up is NO ONE has read them, and chances are at least half in attendance hadn’t looked past the cover or even opened the mag until that night.
• 

  exwhyzee

  Toward the end I could hardly bear sitting through the meetings so I would sometimes slide an Awake magazine inside my Watchtower on Sunday just to pass the time reading Watching the World or some article about "Coping with Sinus Trouble" or "Cheeses of the world" which was preferable to plodding through the current study article again. This might be easier to to accomplish with a thinner Awake.
• 

  Bella15

  LOL @ "since we're discussing the Afake here," AFAKE ... what a proper name .... can't stop laughing and I am at work ... quit it people !!!!!
• 

  Quendi

  Actually, I always found Awake! more palatable and reader friendly than The Watchtower ever was. I'll also admit that I learned quite a few useful things from the articles. I bought into the lie that reading both magazines would enable their readers to gain the equivalent of a college education even when I was a college student more than 35 years ago. Needless to say, I know better now, but that doesn't mean I think that Awake! was completely useless.

  Back in the day I read both magazines cover-to-cover, but as the years went by I did so less and less. I would finally read only those articles I planned to feature in the field ministry but I was also flexible enough to talk about any topic the householder wanted to discuss. Oftentimes that meant not using the presentations recommended in Our Kingdom Ministry and flying by the seat of my pants--something that I was actually pretty good at.

  But before I was disfellowshipped and stopped reading WTS literature, I began to notice that the magazines were becoming less and less interesting to read. The topics were dull; the coverage was simplistic and perfunctory; and they tended to appeal to cultures I couldn't identify with. So it was very easy to stop reading altogether. But that trend was across the entire WTS spectrum including DC releases. I'm sure the letters and reports the WTS receives from active Witnesses and traveling overseers convinced it that nobody was going to object to a downsized Awake! since many weren't interested in its content anyway.

  Quendi
• 

  Found Sheep

  I like the article! Funny!!! But! I read every freeking word! I wouldn't place one till I did and being a piosneer I read them all NOT NOW!!!
• 

  Farkel

  If you've read 10 Watchtower magazines, you've read them all. After that, it's the same crap repeated over and over and over.

  Farkel
• 

  steve2

  Quendi, you raise an interesting point about the magazines appearing more simplistic in content and perfunctory over time. That could well be a justified perception.

  I remember reading the hefty tome released in 1963 entitled Babylon the Great has Fallen God's Kingdom Rules. That book was several hundred pages in length and to a young inquisitive kid it was absolutely engrossing. It provided a reasonably in-depth historical account of major events (sure, skewed to fit the Watchtower's cranky chronology). It didn't treat readers like uneducated idiots. It discussed complex issues and provoked in me a fascination with Biblical and secular histories. Okay, so memories can play tricks on one's mind. Maybe if I read that book now I'd think what a load of rubbish. Yet at the time the book had me riveted and fired up.

  Nowadays, there's no equivalent publication to excite interest. Every publication is pitched drearily at a basic reading level, the writing simplistic, repetitive and oh-so-creepingly bland. Smiling faces predominate. Can I be forgiven for missing the starkly violent pictures from earlier decades showing churches rent in two and the wicked men, women and children getting their comeuppance, fear engraved on their soon-to-be-killed faces. Oh such stirring stuff for theatrical souls like me! (I don't get you Americans lily-white abhorrence of such pictures. Way to go! say I)

  Importantly, the people who matter - the rank and file - ain't complaining about the simpleton's diet...I suspect because they're not reading that much to realize.. or even care.
• 

  mP

  @farkel

  ive often wondered how the writing team come up with WTS, after many years it must feel like dejavu...because all messages seem the same.