current u.s. federal judge is one of jehovah's witnesses - see more at: http://www.jw-archive.org/post/114109639783/current-u-s-federal-judge-is-one-of-jehovahs#sthash.pz6qywnk.dpuf.
Not to be a contrarian, but if serving on a jury is a conscience matter, why wouldn't being a judge be a conscience matter, too? A judge doesn't always act as a finder-of-fact, although he does in a bench trial.
Federal judges are also appointed, not elected, so it would seem to be more of a civil service type of a job, albeit an immensely prominent one.
hello everybody, i was wondering if anyone has been guilted or emotionally blackmailed into attending the memorial this year.
something along the lines of "if you loved your family you would at least attend the memorial".
i myself haven't attended in 5 years.
I have family visiting this weekend. They'll likely mention it.
I live over an hour away, so I can always use the "I'll attend at the local congregation" excuse. That might be enough to satisfy them.
i seldom hear of people getting df'd anymore.
years ago it seemed there were a few per year in a congregation.
More and more people are realizing that they can simply fade.
There might be something to this. When I left, I kind of felt like a defendant trying to flee the country before his criminal trial. I might be able to escape the law for a while, but it'd eventually catch up to me. Except "the law," in this case, the elders, didn't seem to care.
The elder body was tired and overworked and didn't have the desire to go chasing after the flock. From what I can tell, this is a recent phenomenon. I don't think the average elder body, say in the '70s, would have let me slip away that easily.
i seldom hear of people getting df'd anymore.
years ago it seemed there were a few per year in a congregation.
I agree with the "it varies from congregation to congregation" comments.
When I stopped attending, I received one courtesy call from the presiding overseer who made it clear he had no intention of prying. It was evident he was simply going through the motions and checking a box. I don't think we wanted to be burdened with the additional work that would result from discovering any "wrongdoing" on my part and I can't blame him.
Contrast that with an elder at a neighboring hall who acted like a private detective. He was known to conduct stakeouts to smoke out evil fornicators, a real prick of a human being.
I've lost touch with what's currently going on in that world, but disfellowshippings were still quite popular in my area as recently as the early '00s. It was hard to fornicate in secret within such a small, tight-knit group.
march kingdom ministry insert is about how the field service meetings will be shortened from 10 to 15 minutes down to 5 to 7 minutes.
they want the publishers to report more hours.
in my experience the problem isn't the length of the meeting for service but pioneers and publishers dogging it after the service arrangement.
I used to attend a Spanish-speaking hall. Most people would show up at least five minutes late for these things and many were 20 to 30 minutes late.
When I pioneered I tried instilling discipline by concluding on time, but it was a losing battle. People would continue to arrive 15+ minutes late as we were leaving and it would slow everyone else down.
What a terrible waste of time.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
