Posts by neverendingjourney

91

Epic Discussion ( Confrontation ) with JW Cart People about WT Child Abuse

by flipper in

so i had about had enough of reading jw's excuses online about wt child abuse and the candace conti nightline abc video about her case.

this is a really deep burning topic to me as i'm sure it is to many of you.

so today the gloves came off.

neverendingjourney

Every now and then I used to run into someone who'd been waiting for us to knock on his door, the kind of person who'd studied up on JW doctrine and relished the confrontation.

I always wondered whether it was worth their time and effort, all the study and memorization on the off chance they'd get a JW knocking on their door who wouldn't run away at the first hint of "apostasy."

These carts change the dynamic. It's now a lot easier for those who are so inclined to seek out the witnesses and confront them. Just based on my experience, I'd guess a large percentage if not an outright majority of people who approach the cart witnesses do so under some pretense, not because they have any actual interest. If I were still a witness I'd just as soon be out door to door where at least you can run away. There's nowhere for the witness to go if someone confronts them.

14

Disfellowshipped for Tattoos??

by Lynnie in

are getting tattoos a disfellowshipping offense?

i know several jw's that have them but i always thought they were totally taboo.

what do you guys know about this?

neverendingjourney

I heard of a weird situation some 20 years ago where this guy was publicly reproved and a month or two later the elders rescinded the reproof, literally read a letter saying so and so should not have been publicly reproved.

In a situation where elders have broad discretion to even DF someone over loose or brazen conduct, whatever they're calling it nowadays, how the hell does that happen? One of the weirdest things I encountered as a JW.

Any thoughts?

85

jw.org cart days numbered?

by jookbeard in

reading a report of an elder in a friends cong has been hiding and spying on the pioneers who seem to have a practise of dumping the cart and finding a local coffee shop, i've noticed that they do this in my local high street as well but this week they seemed to be all huddled around the cart, they've clearly been warned, a vast percentage of the time i see they seem to be more interested in fiddling with their mobile phones and gossiping, is just seems these carts are a means for the pioneers to turn in "easy time" i wonder what sort of figures show how much literature is being taken by the public?

i bet its very minimal.

naturally the gb would say they are a phenomenal success , we clearly know they are not.

neverendingjourney

Back in the mid 90s when I used to do street witnessing I'd place a ton of magazines. It was carried out in the downtown area of a major city. The magazines were extremely popular with the homeless, who, as I later discovered, used them as rolling papers for their tobacco. You'd also see them lining a lot of their cardboard box homes. The placements looked great on the monthly report, though.

This isn't an attempt at humor. It's a true story.

6

The Walking Dead cocktail party reminds me of... me

by undercover in

jw
friends

as fans of the walking dead know, our heros have found sanctuary (or have they) at alexandria, a seemingly normal safe zone from the walkers/rotters/etc.

this past episode had rick's 'family' invited to a 'welcome to the community' cocktail party, hosted by deanna, the leader of the community.. having entered alexandria, we're starting to see the different levels of ptsd in our little group.

rick, carol, and daryl trust no one.

neverendingjourney

That's a good analogy.

I'll never forget one of my first jobs in the professional world when I was 22 years old. A pair of female co-workers who were 7-10 years older than me graciously invited me to a baseball game with them. One was married; the other had a boyfriend. They caught me off guard in the morning and I said yes.

Of course, a man could not be alone with women or else an orgy would surely break out. I spent the rest of the day panicking trying to come up with a good excuse to back out. I made up some stupid story and told them I couldn't go after all. They rarely asked me to do anything ever again.

Knowing what I do now (I'm in my mid 30s and have been in professional work settings for over a decade), these women were just being nice and trying to make the new guy feel like part of the team. I've often found myself on lunches or traveling alone with women and it's never led to sex. Even the thought of it is absurd, but I had been indoctrinated to such a degree where I felt it was the natural consequence of such an outing. In fact, when I left the witnesses I was quite disappointed that getting laid wasn't as simple as that. Seriously.

I must have come across incredibly awkward in my interactions with them, like I was from a different world.

7

How, exactly, does Watchtower's literature publishing bring them money?

by Island Man in

i've heard is said many times that watchtower is a publishing company bringing in money from the proliferation of its literature.

how exactly does this process work?

i know that jws are encouraged to tell the householders of the donation arrangement to support the worldwide work.

neverendingjourney

It's about economies of scale. Each edition of the WT has a distribution of something like 40 million copies. The fact that they operate at that scale and they use free labor means the cost to print one copy is very, very low.

Even if the sheep donate 10 cents per magazine that's probably enough to cover costs. The exact amount needed to break even is obviously unknown to us, but we have every reason to believe it's very low.

That being said, with the advent of the digital age it's clearly a dying model. They're going to have to find a new source of income and I suspect that'll be real estate development.

29

The "preaching work" is just laughable!

by cookiemaster in

the "preaching work" they're so eager to brag about is just laughable.

they say their number is an indication of god's blessing.

oh, please, give me a break!

neverendingjourney

The line of reasoning I used to buy into said that God extended Armageddon to provide more time for people to "learn the truth." That's what the preaching work was all about: God's love.

Eventually I realized that the passage of time was just increasing the number of people God would have to kill since only a tiny fraction of the world will ever become Witnesses. The growth in the number of non-Witnesss far exceeds the growth in the number of Witnesses.

The more loving thing would have been to bring Armageddon decades ago when the number of non-Witnesses was hundreds of millions less than it is today.

54

New "donation" arrangement begins to FAIL

by Tech49 in

jw
friends

so here we are, almost a year into the "new" congregation donation arrangement.

and its beginning, as was predicted, to fail miserably, and to have direct negative consequences on the poor sheep.. let me give you a little experience, directly from our congregation of about 80 publishers.

back in may, after reading the letter about the "new" arrangement, the elder body decided to "donate" the extra funds on hand to wt, as directed.

neverendingjourney

They weren't ever gonna get the full amount of the pledge. I suspect they knew that.

Still, this gives them a useful hammer to whack the sheep over the head with. They aren't begging for money, you see. They're reminding them to fulfill their "voluntary" oath.

17

I've been invited to go on a habitat for humanity build

by hoser in

jw
friends

i've been invited to go to central america for a week on a global village project.

.

are there any possible issues that the congregation might have with me doing this?.

neverendingjourney

It's definitely a religious charity. If you're trying to avoid trouble with the elders, you might want to make sure they don't find out.

From Habitat's mission statement:

http://www.habitat.org/how/mission_statement.aspx

Mission principles

Demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ.
We undertake our work to demonstrate the love and teachings of Jesus, acting in all ways in accord with the belief that God’s love and grace abound for all, and that we must be “hands and feet” of that love and grace in our world. We believe that, through faith, the miniscule can be multiplied to accomplish the magnificent, and that, in faith, respectful relationships can grow among all people.

44

It's Over Johnny....The Demise of Jehovah's Witnesses

by ctrwtf in

jw
friends

i think i've mentioned before that from time to time my commute on the bqe takes me past the old factory buildings and the soon to be former headquarters building.

i was struck the other day with how shabby they've become.

even 25 columbia heights, still currently occupied, its facade is filthy.

neverendingjourney

I think a vastly underrated factor in the religion's decline is the governance-by-committee structure they instituted in the 1970s.

What this religion needs is bold leadership. It needs to reinvent itself and head off in a new direction, but you're simply not gonna get that kind of change when it requires a 2/3 supermajority from a ultra-conservative group of geriatric men. Instead we see the malaise and gradual decay that's quite evident today.

28

"Scientist Discover Atheists Might Not Exist..." "This is not a Joke!"

by JWCart in

crofty can you please break this article and main points down for the average individuals to understand, i found this article and thought of you, thought you might be interested in this topic too.

i don't fully understand it, can you please help us, you are our "resident expert" on this topic!

will you please break it down for us as to what it means and how it affects us brains?

neverendingjourney

My problem isn't with the science. It's with the way it's sometimes sold to the public. I put the word retraction in quotes because it was no such thing.

Science worked as it should but the stories the public saw were that a once in a generation discovery had been made followed a few months later by a "scientists were wrong yet again" headline. I would argue scientists should know better than to trumpet research before peer review is concluded, but the pressure to grab attention is all too often a driving force.