by mikeflood 13 Replies latest watchtower bible
New WT October 2023....first an article remembering 1923....they make changes, the had a "prayer, praise and testimony weekly meeting".
After an study article about obey, specially paragraph 18.
I have a wild guess, next year, just one weekly meeting for the Borg.
You could be right Mikey ! and eventually do away with all K.H's , sell them off, make a fortune and go entirely on-line in a few years ?
and just keep a few assembly halls--and charge a huge attendance fee.
If they abandoned The midweek meeting, how would they push the flock to grow out in service?
Midweek meeting is where they read off all their announcements, including disfellowshipping announcements. Seems pretty unlikely they'd want to read off names of those DF'ed at a meeting ostensibly for the "public".
Could they really grow and survive if they met once a week via teleconference?
On the other hand, a two-hour Sunday meeting as the only meeting of the week would probably be very welcome. Preach on Saturday, meet on Sunday, avoid the stress of mid-week meetings. That is not the worst way to spend your time as a JW.
I can't see them ditching the midweek meeting.
As BluesBrother says, it's their main meeting for 'training' the congregation in the ministry. Announcements are not a problem, they could be moved to the weekend, but there's no way they could have a talk, WT study and a training programme for ministry all in a single 1.5-2 hour meeting.
They won't drop the public talk and even if they cut the WT study to half an hour, you can't fit much into the remaining 30 minutes.
One meeting a week won't be enough to keep the PIMIs engaged - it's likely to increase the attrition rate.
Also, what about the twice-yearly CO visits? They have to fit his talks in somewhere too.
The weekend meeting is traditionally the 'public' one, while the midweek is the 'internal procedures' kind of meeting, so the org will probably still feel both are needed.
The only thing they might do is reduce the midweek meeting in length, maybe drop the book study. I think there's a lot of wasted time in that meeting anyway, with the unnecessary preview and review segments, the opening talk and filler items in the final section. Lately they've been cancelling regular items and showing the monthly GB video updates in that last part of the meeting too, and usually a few weeks after it's been released. What's with that? The thing is already online, and sometimes it's out of date by the time it's played at the meeting (like the recent video on preparing for the Memorial which was played at a meeting after the Memorial had happened! Duh.)
Reduce the whole thing to 1 hour max, and let the bros get away earlier for home in the evening. That might win some points with the R&F.
If they reduce down to one meeting a week it should help to increase their attendance numbers, at least temporarily.
It's interesting that it talks about meetings in 1923 having sessions called testimonies and the article says
On Saturday, August 25, Brother Rutherford delivered the talk “Sheep and Goats,” in which he clearly identified the “sheep” as righteously disposed people who would live on a paradise earth. He also introduced the resolution “A Warning.” This resolution denounced Christendom and urged honesthearted ones to separate themselves from “Babylon the Great.” (Rev. 18:2, 4) Zealous Bible Students earthwide would later unite in distributing millions of copies of this resolution.
This may be a clue as to what is in those secret boxes they sent out to the Congregations to be opened on the first week of November.
Resolutions
There's nothing like a good resolution to stir up those obedient sheep.
If they abandoned The midweek meeting, how would they push the flock to grow out in service?
there's no way they could have a talk, WT study and a training programme for ministry all in a single 1.5-2 hour meeting.
Both have the potential of being true. In their We Looovvee Yueww mentality they could announce that, "the governing body is pleased to announce they have approved the decision that just ONE meeting per week will be held Sundays for three hours with the current two scheduled meetings being combined. That way brothers you can go out in service on Sunday mornings and meet back at your assigned group location for a simple lunch you can bring with you and enjoy up building association with each other and relating the fine experiences you had in your mornings activity and then enjoy your lovingly prepared three hour meeting in the afternoon. We know you will appreciate this loving new arrangement."
A meeting a week does not mean on a sunday. They could use every single night and the weekend, more reason to sell redundant halls.
