Puff really captured it... both the hellishness of bethel, and the friends and good times I found there.
As I look back, I think it was when enough of my friends left or were told to leave, that it all became just too unbearable.
What was it about Bethel that woke you up?
by cognisonance 95 Replies latest jw friends
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redvip2000
I used to go swing dancing in manhattan around that time. It might be the same club you are referring to. It used to happen during the first sunday of the month, and the entire place would get full of bethelites and other JWs. It was somewhere in midtown, but i just can't recall the name and it wasn't really a club, it's more of a small live music hall.
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Black Man
Anyone remember the video rental sting operation they ran in the 1990s? There was this video rental store (can't remember the name, but it was on Montague Street across from the Bossert) where many Bethelites would rent videos/movies from.
Anyhow, Bethel had this rule that you couldn't watch R-rated movies or you could get kicked out (mind you some of the greatest movies are R-rated = Godfather, Schindler's List, etc).
Anyhow, they were able to regularly obtain the rental receipts from the video store and any Bethelites checking out R-rated movies or worse were sent home. I remember them doing this 'sting' for at least a couple years.
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puffthedragon
BlackMan, I thought it was called Clarkes or something, maybe it was Montague Street video, but yeah, I was warned about that place, they would rat out their customers to bethel office. So sad to live in fear like that.
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Black Man
puffthedragon:
Yeah, I think it was Montague Street Video.
Like someone else mentioned, I got myself a Post Office Box with a quickness, because they would go through your mail. And they would ESPECIALLY go through your record/music collection. Remember getting called into Bethel Office once regarding questions about my music. If they found that you had rap, you were immediately dismissed.
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cult classic
PuffTD,
Yes you are right. You are constantly reminded what a privilege it is to serve at Bethel and you'd better have a damned good reason if you leave voluntarily.
Well, someone tell me please why is it that when you send in your 30-day notice, you just get a canned letter about leaving. And an info packet on how to get government assistance.
NOTHING from Personnel trying to get you to reconsider. It was a source of disillusionment that no one tried to convince us to stay. We wouldn't have. But if it's such a paradise I would think it would be important to retain the volunteers as much as possible. Kind of like recruiting for new JWs. Once you're there, they don't care if you stay or not.
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cult classic
Clarks is the diner on Clark street. I remember the video place but not the name.
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Chaserious
Awesome thread. Thanks to all who posted - I didn't know a lot of these things about Bethel. My father was at Brooklyn in the 70's before my siblings and I were born, and now that I think about it, I always asked him what it was like at Bethel, and he never really had anything substantive to say. He would say it was a good experience, and he would talk about some of his friends from Bethel, but I can't remember a single thing that he ever said he enjoyed other than (in my words) being the closest he came to getting the college dorm experience.
I also lived in Cobble Hill this past summer and I would go jogging in Brooklyn in the morning and would usually run through the promenade. A few times a saw young Bethel-looking guys walking all alone along the promenade, kind of sad looking, gazing out over the river. I wondered if maybe they were new Bethellites from somewhere far from Brooklyn talking a walk before or after morning worship, wondering what they had gotten themselves into.
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jwfacts
- A Bethelite friend of mine became an elder, whilst he was committing adultery. It was later discovered that this had been going on for 7 years. This proved to me that God's holy spirit is not involved in Watchtower congregational appointments.
- Some of the people. Rather than being a beacon of love, many had huge egos, or excelled in judgementalism. For instance, whilst very new there I called an elder there by his commonly used nick name. He physically slammed me by my throat against the wall, and screamed at me that he would kill me if I ever called him that again, and that his name is Br Sparnz-Marair. (I'm pretty certain that is the wrong spelling.)
- The procedure was archaic. Basically a print factory that just prints a few million items in Australia, there were several hundred people working there, once you have cleaners, cooks etc etc. You could have paid a professional printing firm less then it cost to run the place to print if for you, and it all could have been done with 10% of the staff at Bethel. It seemed Bethel was just there as an ego stroking excercise and way to justify brothers putting in free labour, providing free property and to have something tangible to attract the donations.
- It was like a cult commune, with all the meetings, rules and lack of money.
- It was run less reasonably than any normal job I had had. For instance, I used to run a District Convention cleaning team. My Bethel overseer would not let me finish work two hours early on the Wednesday to organise my pre-convention cleaning team. I never had such unreasonableness with worldly managers when needing time off for conventions.
- Most people hated living there. There was a young super boring, super spiritual brother there that appeared to be the ideal bethelite. Even he told me how much he hated it. Br Mouritz, when trying to convince me not to leave, admitted that Jehovah did not design humans to live in a Bethel-like arrangement, and there won't be Bethel's in paradise, but "hang in there, because the new system will be here soon."
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puffthedragon
jwfacts, (Randy right?) I forgot to mention how impossible it was to get any time off without using vacation time! Its ludicrous, any other job I have ever had, if I need to take off, I take off! Paid, or unpaid, that's not the point, but if I had stuff to do, my boss would let me check out early. With bethel, unless you had an in-house appointment, you couldn't leave early for nothing! They monitor your sick days, and if you have more than a certain (low) threshold, two elders will come to you and ask if you wanted to work or leave bethel! I fought depression and missed like 8 days in a year sick and got a visit from two bethel elders, one who couldn't pronounce my very easy name. Much less reasonable than any secular job I have ever had. And back then we had to work most Saturdays too.
They let us off one hour early for the memorial and everyone acted like it was such a huge loving arrangement to get one bloody hour off! I sneak out of work an hour early twice a week and my boss knows it but as long as I get my job done he doesnt care!