Quality of newer membership

by Lostandfound 55 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Lostandfound

  On a previous post mamacita29 pointed up the low quality of new JW converts.

  Is the quality falling even more as the society use lower than low meeting, talks, broadcasts etc.

  When I was active initially the organisation and standards seemed totally different today. I have seen hard working intelligent elders fall by death or exhaustion. The younger generation that came along never really grasped responsibility hence shortage of good elders, never mind the watered down to almost nothing quality of meetings. It is not the same religion I first joined and I wonder what others think of the continuing erosion of quality, both members and content. Are the new recruits from the dregs of society or are intelligent ones still joining. I feel a lack of local leadership will lead to the collapse of org, aided by the Marx Brothers of the Governing Body and there less than convincing presentations. When the GB hid behind a publishing empire they seemed suitably distant and spiritual, now they lead an organisation in crises and lack of authority. Hundreds of ex bethelites released into the wild, and not having a good story to tell.
• 

  Wasanelder Once

  From the time I was a kid the literature was very psuedo-intellectual with tomes like "Babylon the Great Has Fallen" and "The Finished Mystery" both in the early 60's. When the Truth book appeared I was 11 years old and it seemed as if it was just condensed, not simple. The reality is that the mass conversion tactic of the "Truth" book became a downward spiral. It has become dumber and dumber to the point where the brochures are pamphlets and the magazines are tracts. There is no longer any intellectual appeal so the recruits are pretty much simpletons without an income seeking to belong to the "happiest people on earth". The odd intellect is probably attracted by a desire for power.
  
• 

  Clambake

  We use to have a guy come to the hall in Sweat Pants and a Hockey Jersey. He looked like a wrestling jobber from the WWF of the 80s.

  He obviously was mentally ill. No one would talk to him but he kept coming for about 4 months.

  If go around knocking on doors , what do you expect ?
• 

  DesirousOfChange

  But they will "spin it" as Jehovah drawing to him the "ordinary and unlettered" men.

  

  SPINMASTERS

  Doc
  
• 

  All for show

  I am mid 30's. I remember as a kid being intimidated - that answering and service was so hard and serious. In my mid/late teen years I noticed service was about the breaks and meeting answers were easy and lame. My older family members complain how simple and pathetic the literature is. They justify lack of quality that people all over the world are reading the same thing and its for all the 3rd world country JWs to understand.

  In fact most can't go to meeting because they just can not stand listen to the drivel. Boring horrible speakers, lame lessons, and the same 3 chosen/exemplary people are allowed to comment. YES- they obviously do not let certain bro/sis comment, you can tell the body doesn't like them. There is a newly baptized sister....mid 20's dumber than dumb. She was raised around Jw's - Quit her part time job to pioneer- has no car and depends on others to pick her up. She is used as an example. barf.
• 

  crazy_flickering_light

  The study -midweek and sunday- gets worser and worser. Think about the CLAM. Main part is a how-to-offer-company-stuff. Not much about the bible. Bookstudy is also trash. Nothing like the revelation-book (trash but you have to think), it's only about what have or could be in a very boring way.

  Skip to sunday: the talk is horrible, the new scripts for the talk mainly the same: love, morality and follow the bOrg. The WT-study was year before fixed to different things, like prophecies, details and so on, at this time only love, how great is the bOrg and follow the bOrg.

  And the new one mostly nuts. Sorry, but most people they not born in and not baptized until they 18 or older can use a computer and run away.
• 

  sir82

  Thinking about the less-than-handful of newly baptized converts in our congregation, and the less-than-handful of "progressive" studies that currently show up to the meetings....

  Well, no one will have to miss a meeting due to flying to Sweden to accept their Nobel prize.
  
• 

  stan livedeath

  its working just fine. a steady drain of the talent--leaves behind the brain dead who will believe anything if it guarantees them eternal life on a paradise earth. only snag is--they dont usually have much money.
• 

  freddo

  In the 60's, 70's and 80's the folk coming in were solid hard working tradesmen, technical bods and salesmen with "stolid" families. Even a few professional types. Convinced by the triple whammy of 6000 years chronology, 1975 and the biggest convincer of all "the generation that saw 1914 would not pass away".

  "The generation" teaching kept those of the 1960's going. It made sense. Along with vulnerable housewives whose non-witness hard-working husbands put up with their fantasy of seeing their dead loved ones.

  Their kids who stayed became the semi-born in elders of the 70's, 80's and 90's. And their husbands' (dead or alive) pensions and common sense kept the old sisters and widows plodding round the doors.

  The early 90's was the last of the "this made sense" time - the Berlin wall came down, (peace and security) the generation was nearly gone, surely Armageddy was upon us!
  

  But it wasn't.

  The big "generation" change in late 1995 is the catalyst for when the downward spiral started. For a few more years people could keep the old and the new generation teachings in their heads together. The deceleration would have been quicker after 2000 had not 9/11 occurred to give a little boost for a couple more years. This finally petered out in 2014 when no-one could hold a real generation lasting more than 100 years in their minds.
  

  Those that come in now are increasingly lonely old people (who rarely become publishers) and the mentally ill, vulnerable and frankly useless. I see them - no jobs, single abandoned mothers, unwashed - homeless - on benefits - on drugs.

  The quality working classes and thinkers have not been coming in round our way for over fifteen years. The odd ones (very odd) who have seem to rise quickly and burn out quickly - there is always a character flaw that brings them down.

  The internet being in your pocket from pre-teen upwards spells doom for any quality coming in to jw's.
  

  I just wish the crash would be fast rather than a very slow crumbling away.

  
  
• 

  joe134cd

  I can give a good example that high lights this. There were a couple attending the meetings for a few months. He had his own business as a builder and she had a senior position in a government department. Basically a very nice, upper middle class, couple who would of been a credit to any organisation they joined. I remember them saying they were going to have a talk to their former pastor about what they were learning. Never saw them again after that. Fast forward a couple of years, (I'm fully awake) and I approach them in town and ask them why they stopped coming to the meetings. Turns out they didn't get as far as the pastor. All it took was a Google search. The reason I was given was (1) the internet (2)sex abuse.