by Tenacious 61 Replies latest watchtower scandals
The expenses for this ONE-DAY assembly totaled $11,000.
What ? a pretentiously deceiving and lying organization.
This is Jah's own solemnly chosen organization unlike any other, so bare in mind when your criticizing it.
This organization runs very much on impressed guilt and judgmentalism , even upon money matters.
@bohm
"500$?! how is that even possible, my uber-jw in laws by all accounts donate at least 100$ per convention and likely more. The entire family alone would likely donate more than 500$ total"
Is it possible that what they say and what they do are two different things? Real spiritual people don't talk about giving large donations.
Indulgent corruption has been the main stay for the organization for very long time now, the recent statement by one of its GB members for children to give up their candy money to the WTS., is inductive of its corruption.
In a real sense JWS have been paying to be lied to, influenced by fear, guilt and shame.
Interesting comment from the Assemb Overseer about the Branch raising the "expense" per publisher from $3.50 to $10.50 to reflect the equal balance for the Branch "as a whole." I wonder what that means exactly? At first glance, I took it to mean that English speaking congs. need to pay more to offset the lesser means of foreign lang. congs., who, as we all know, are far outpacing them in growth. Spanish congs. have many impoverished attendees and could probably never afford to pay the "suggested" or whatever cost per pub.
But--I don't know. It would be interesting to know more about this...
Let me add too, that, even though it's been years since I had to attend an assembly, it was ALWAYS like that--a stratospherically high expense report and a reported deficit. This, too, was for an assembly hall that had been in use for years and years and HAD to be paid for by then (Surrey, BC, Canada). It had a full-time caretaker who was in "special service" (read: minimal monthly allowance aka Bethel-rate) and any major repairs were done by brothers for free, naturally. I could never figure out why it cost thousands of dollars to pay for lights, water and heat for one or two days. And, yes, of course those things are kept on all the time, but this assembly hall was used every single weekend, plus there were two or three KH in the same building, whose publishers would also be paying each month. Crazy, crazy.
This is how they announce the biggest possible deficit:
The largest contributions come in at the end of the day. Now that assemblies are 1 day only it is common to only have counted the morning contributions to include in the report that is read from the platform. Those will always be pitiful. Depending on the circuit they often find it prudent not to include the lunchtime contributions which would make a big difference. Since these are counted after lunch and the report has to go to the overseer before the mid-aft announcements it's easy to excuse operating in this way. But when the announcement is made that “at this stage in this convention we have a deficit of $$$” that's why it's often a high percentage of the total “expenses”.
Now in terms of the actual expenses, yes for sure they are loaded as much as possible. But here is the way they are made up and why, even though the building is paid for, it's not just $100 to open the doors and turn on the lights:
To begin with it would be an error to think of the expenses in terms of one day of use. Things have to be maintained year round even when not in use, and periodically there will be reno's (yes, I know the labor will be free but there are still expenses). So think instead of the cost for a weekend being the expense of running the whole hall and keeping updated, replacing appliances, etc, for 10 years and then calculate as:
(Total for 10 years) divided by (10 x number of assemblies per year)
... in order to get a real cost. Okay remember I acknowledged that it is loaded, but it's not peanuts either.
One of the biggest additional items is the amount that they resolve to send into “mother” at the start of the assembly. This cannot be a conditional amount, so they make a guess in advance as to how much they can send without experiencing a deficit at the end and add that to the bill. Once committed this cannot be undone, even if it causes a deficit at the end.
On top of that will be added things like circuit contribution to a circuit apartment if there is one, CO and visiting speaker expenses, and any other ancillary costs that they resolve at that convention.
I don't know the basis for the new huge hike. The explanation publicly given was BS to be sure. The costs were already spread evenly. If there was a truly plausible and palatable explanation then I'm quite sure it would have been given, but I don't think even the regular elders understand it beyond this vague idea of restructuring.
I have heard that with this change several assemblies ran into deficits after the final tally this past year. Congregations had to top up the account afterwards. It used to be very rare for this to happen, but it seems to be becoming more common. Personally I think mother got too greedy and this will be an ongoing problem. But on the other hand if they can keep pushing and persuade the die-hards at all levels of wealth to increase the contributions as they are obviously trying to do, maybe they'll be able to pull it off.
The issue they are starting to face is that members are being asked for money every which way with monthly donations and handing over the kingdom hall accounts. It is little wonder that when you are being squeezed for cash so often that at an assembly the call for yet more money is ringing a little hollow. Time was when accounts reports and the very occasional talk about donations was all you heard now it seems that Caleb videos targeting the young plus multiple financial arrangements and talks seem to be dominating the program like never before.
It is money more than doctrine that may be the straw that broke the camels back. Older witnesses still remember the Russell quote about god looking after the organisation and if they sought donations then it would be a sign that God had withdrawn his support.
Older witnesses still remember the Russell quote about god looking after the organisation and if they sought donations then it would be a sign that God had withdrawn his support.
Although I resent being in the class of "older" and of "witnesses", I am very much aware of Russell's quote. The constant begging, even by the GB, would be a clear indication that Jehovah has withdrawn his support.
When the GB meets on Wednesday mornings, they should wondering why it has happened too. Also, why are they losing so many court cases when in the past, they won almost all the court cases?
Doc
500 divided by 1700 = $.29 per person
They need to be congradulated! The kids arn't even giving up their ice cream money like the video suggests.
