Cart Witnessing - Thrilling! Productive! Epic! Er.....um, well, not so much.....

sir82

Talked with a pioneer recently, she was recounting her first experience with cart witnessing.

She brought the subject up, was going on & on & on & on about how wonderful the experience was, and how great, and how she enjoyed it so much, and it was so wonderful, and oh Jehovah's blessing, and on and on and on.....

A few questions to her revealed what really happened:

-- A JW who owns a small restaurant in a strip mall allows JWs to set up their cart outside his restaurant

-- The restaurant is tucked pretty far out of the way, not prominent at all

-- "So, did you talk to anyone?" "Well, no...oh wait, when we were packing up, one guy came over to ask what we were doing there."

-- "But I could see people's lips move when they walked past our sign! I could see them sound out 'what....does...the.....Bible....really....teach...' It was so encouraging!"

So, it turns out the "wonderful" morning consisted of 3 hours of watching a handful of semi-illiterates walk past their sign, and probably a dozen or so words spoken to a curious bystander. 0 spiritual conversations, 0 literature placed, 0 effectiveness of any meaningful sort...

Oooh, but 3 easy hours for each of the pioneers manning the cart!

Just utterly insane. Words fail me.

DesirousOfChange

But it saves money on gas when compared to driving around aimlessly in all corners of the Cong territory knocking on doors that no one answered yesterday or the day before or the day before.

Doc

Watchtower-Free

Heaven

sir82, that's hilarious!

Their mediocrity is underwhelming.

tim3l0rd

I like it. It's an easy way to pass time. I don't get yelled at. I don't feel like I'm harassing anyone by knocking on their door. I don't have to spout out something that I no longer believe.

Every time I see one or am manning one, I can't help but think of those guys that hold the "Going Out Of Business" signs. :-D

BluesBrother

Oooh, but 3 easy hours for each of the pioneers manning the cart!

Exactly ! & three good reasons for doing it :

1] It keeps the r & f busy in "the ministry", keeps them together when they would otherwise be doing other things.

2) It is so dead simple that even one of their own can do it - no more training at debating with a h/h or having to remember a "presentation"

3] It keeps the name in the public eye, advertising the website and, you never know, somebody might come along because of it....

There is a cart site in this town and from the public building opposite you can see them sitting , wrapped from a cold wind and drinking a coffee from the stall nearby - just waiting for someone to pass by .

Whatever happened to the maxim to "Make time count, rather than just count time"?

steve2

Cart witnessing - the place where way more coffees are consumed than literature placed, and JWs get to spend more time chatting to each other and posting on facebook than speaking to the public.

Who wouldn't praise it??

Hey- whose complaining - for every JW doing cart witnessing, there's one fewer going door-to-door! Please JWs - wakeup. Don't.

Witness My Fury

Nothing could make me do that, street witnessing was the pits and i avoided it at all costs and thankfully the carts came after I quit. It sounds to me the general consensus among dubs is that it is "easy" ministry time and that is the reason why some want to do it.

Man up and quit.

oppostate

I second the idea that it just helps to put their name, their Brand out there to be seen. JW logo certainly gets more exposure in those 3 hours than in the same time knocking on not-at-homes.

So advertising the Brand (not Branch) and giving the publishers a quiet nice little assignment.

NVR2L8

I spend a lot of my time on the road and travel internationally so I had the opportunity to observe the carts in San Diego, Dallas, Seoul, Toronto...and I have yet to see JWs talking to anyone except for other witnesses stopping by to say hello or to replace those guarding the cart...you just can't call this success. It like having two people guarding a small billboard.

Cart Witnessing - Thrilling! Productive! Epic! Er.....um, well, not so much.....

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