behind the curtain: literature offer for the month (page 2)

OzGirl

Yes, I thought that they were just clearing out old stock.

And it felt odd to be expected to offer the very latest issues of the magazines each week and yet every so often, you would have to offer the older publications at the door.

CloseTheDoor

The literature placement has always seemed very random to me. Makes sense now that it would simply be stock movement. Not surprising.

Zoos, this page gives some additional information on how the Org has changed the belief in the resurrection back and forth over the years. http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/resurrection.php

Driving Force

If I can remember rightly from my time as literature servant, all publications produced before 1986 should be removed from stock in the congregation and be destroyed.

We have always been able to offer just about any piece of literature we wanted to, as long as it was published by the "Mother" (a.k.a. "Organization"), and as long as it wasn't anything too old (for example: Russell's or Rutherford's books). However, if you wanted to offer only the Bible to householders, it wouldn't be very long before you were questioned about your motives by an elder or an overzealous nosy pioneer sister. Most would be peer pressured into going along with the "suggested" literature offer.

I have often only offered Bibles, certain tracts and brochures. But it is difficult to have a quantity of Bibles and carry them in your service bag. Plus the literature counter only stocks so many at a time.

If you've ever read the old "Kingdom Ministries" from back in the 20's, 30's, and 40's, (called "Bulletin" and "Informant"), it is easy to see how it was all about movement of printed matter. It was even more obvious in those days.

Half banana

Yes Magnum, I remember as a pioneer dutifully placing hard back books which I realised would be of no benefit whatsoever to the householder. Watchtower literature is bad enough for JWs but to anyone not indoctrinated it is bewildering and irrelevant.

Divinely guided! what a scam...

John Aquila

Hey Magnum

You brought up some memories that make me shiver and cringe. I’m picturing in my mind walking the neighborhood streets on a Saturday morning peddling orange colored books with crazy names like “Everlasting something” which even I didn’t read most of the time.

It was so freaking embarrassing doing that while at the same time watching normal people going to breakfast with their families and just enjoying the weekend.

I believe I’m in some type of denial that I was a book peddler for years.

Hell I could have been a freaking surgeon like my uncles wanted me to be. But noooo____ I wanted to be a book peddler.

DJS

Magnum

Ditto. I felt exactly the same. I thought it was a greedy grab for $ to get rid of an overstock of old material. I also thought it was driven largely by narcissism and ego - look how smart we are (or at least the top guy in the cult Fred Franz with his type/anti-type nonsense). I wonder if they continued printing this tripe; I suspected at the time that they did, which disturbed me. Like you, no one in the field was going to benefit from it.

Ding

What about the fact that the old literature contained a lot of "old light"?

Why would the organization distribute that if it was concerned that people be taught the truth???

_Morpheus

@driving force- yes that is true but it was only a few years ago that they directed that.

cha ching

It's funny, I always knew it was about 'moving literature', but I guess I thought "it's good to get things off the shelf" and "it's bad to throw away perfectly good books" (didn't you feel guilty when you trashed all the old WT's and AW's that had just gotten way over your head after 10 or 15 years, and you knew there just weren't enough laundromats to distribute them, or enough time in a century) "It's not good to waste things, right?"

Thank you Magnum, for that perspective.... it SHOULD have been about helping people....plain and simple.

behind the curtain: literature offer for the month

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