Scale of 1 to 10. How did/do you rate the meetings!

by Truthexplorer 28 Replies latest social humour

• 

  wannaexit

  2 extremely boring
• 

  onightdivine

  Inasmuch as I'd still "prefer" to attend to maintain "good standing" in this increasingly paranoid org, no.. the speaker and WT conducter can easily figure out my feelings.

  It's usually:

  
  

  or
  

  
  
• 

  NewYork44M

  I have never attended a meeting with the advantage of an internet accessible iPad. I can imagine that this piece of technology enhances the toleration level. So, my score is based upon my pre-internet days. I score a "very boring."
• 

  Village Idiot

  Truthexplorer: "Each congregation needs a Jimmy Swaggart to shake things up a bit"

  There was one talk in my congregation where the speaker was very animated and he actually tried (failed) to get responses from the audience to his points. In fact the audience reacted in an embarrassed way. I heard that he had been a Baptist minister before becoming a JW (I remember - 1970s - that he got exuberant about Christendom allowing pedophilia within its clergy).

  Then, on the opposite side of the spectrum, there was a speaker who spoke in monotone. You get a sense of something very wrong with him within seconds. Within a short minute you are crying out to Jehovah for this meeting to be done.
• 

  Village Idiot

  onightdivine, how many in your congregation suffer from Bitchy Resting Face or its male equivalent? You might find them to be fellow apostates.
• 

  onightdivine

  Village Idiot:

  I don't look around that much when a talk or a Watchtower indoctrination sessiob is on-going. I'm still afraid my face says it all that all other people can notice lol.
  
• 

  Giordano

  Back in the late 1950's early 1960's I used to sit in the Book study or KH with the study book or WT and with a pencil start at the first line of text on a page we were studying and look closely at possible entrance sites. The goal was to drop down to the next line and with only one word to drop off of, left or right, keep working your way to the bottom of the page and liberation. No cheating allowed after all time wasn't a problem.

  People would always mention how studious I was at the meetings bent over the publication pencil working away.

  I only managed in five years to get down to the bottom once but the challenge was more simulating then any meeting I ever attended.

  Until it was me giving the public talk which was called The Bible and Juvenile Delinquency........... I was 17.....seemed like a subject I knew something about. I'd seen James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause......... so I was an expert.
• 

  Brokeback Watchtower

  I won't consider boring a good word to use for my meeting attendance it was more like drilling teeth with out novocaine, especially after learning the truth about the truth it was unbarable and pure torture.
• 

  Village Idiot

  ohnightdivine: "I'm still afraid my face says it all that all other people can notice lol."

  Just sit in the back row.
• 

  Magnum

  In all seriousness and honesty, I'd say 1. I would say zero, but you didn't give me that option. The teaching was usually lacking, if not outright wrong. The appointed brothers in my congregation often didn't understand the material.

  I couldn't even listen to the TMS parts. Many of the sisters were too much into acting. I didn't go to see corny, amateur acting. I was interested in learning and being stimulated. The TMS student parts by brothers were delivered by individuals who were clueless and usually couldn't care less.

  The public talks were usually boring, illogical, lacking in flow of meaning, etc. The Watchtower Conductor often had no idea what was going on (didn't know how scriptures applied, etc.).

  I read my Bible most of the time. Sometimes I studied Greek. Sometimes I just daydreamed. The main problem is that I could have learned so much if I had been allowed to use that time as I wanted to. The meetings cost me so much, for example, in time that they should have been really beneficial. A two-hour meeting cost me almost four hours considering before and after time, transportation time, dressing and undressing, etc.

  I did enjoy the Book Study when we were studying the Revelation Climax book and the Daniel's Prophecy book, but I guess that's because I was conducting the lesson and made it interesting. When I started my gradual fade, I had to sit through the studies of those two books with another conductor and it was painful. He was totally clueless.

  When I was still really in as a JW, I really cared about "worldly people". I really wanted them to learn "the truth". In harmony with that, there were some I wanted to invite to meetings, but I just couldn't because I was embarrassed by the meetings. I felt that taking these ones to meetings would damage my chances of teaching them "the truth".

  I actually had a number of sincere sisters express similar concerns to me (they were referring specifically to the public talks.)