Welcome LP. Glad you are awake before you get consumed into dubdom.
konceptual99
JoinedPosts by konceptual99
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36
A new member
by LP97 ini'm a 17 year old from scotland.
can i just say this site is absolutely brilliant.
finally found people with open minds and free thought that doesn't just consist of "well the wt told me this so it must be right".. my story is that i'm just like any other child of a jw...brought up into a life of indoctrination where "the world's" thinking is automatically wrong.. that is until i was 14 - a light turned on in my head.
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53
Sept 1 service meeting mystery revealed
by Saltheart Foamfollower inthe letter has appeared at last - just for uk.
it is a money grab for the new bethel which has been approved.
there is a video to be shown - just watched it - brief summary of uk bethels, why current one is too small, why we need money to build a new one.
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konceptual99
Good job Saltheart. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were one of my fave reads in my teenage years btw....
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The long weekend of B.S begins - UK.
by quellycatface inisn't going to be wonderful??.
not being there..
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konceptual99
Oh - I forgot to mention the other landmark announcements.
They actually made TWO apologies from the platform. One for the disasterous way they handled the infirm and those with special needs on Friday. The other was for the chaotic way they organised people queing for shuttle busses to their hotels. Delegates who had paid thousand of pounds had to wait 2 hours to get on a bus then spend an hour driving 3-4 miles.
That was a first that I can remember.
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6 branches subsidize the rest of the branches.
by hoser ini went to the meeting this morning and we had some guy from overseas bethel give the public talk.
6 countries subsidize the rest.
he said in some countries all the donations that they get from contributions don't even pay the electricity bill for the branch buildings so money has to come in from these 6 richer countries.
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konceptual99
I think both theories are true. They are turning assets into cash for a number of reasons, including getting more assets. In the short term they have plenty of money. The question is what the projections are like? How sustainable is the current cash flow? As I have expressed elsewhere today I don't think the WTS is going to run out of money anytime soon but I am sure that the projections for the next 20-30 years do not make fun reading for Letts and co.
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Fudging the Numbers: Is the WTBTS in decline?
by Coded Logic init's no secret that the wtbts has a cash flow problem.
over the past three years they have closed 20 of their 116 branches.
they have sold off most of their properties in and around ny (including some kingdom halls), drastically reduced the # of printed pages for the watchtower and awake magazines, reduced the printing of books and other materials, increased the number of single page tract campagnes, installed cc machines at their assembly halls, and are now seizing of controll of property assets from local kingdom halls using renovation projects.
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konceptual99
This topic has been analysed many times on this forum. My reading of the situatuon is that the WTS has gone through the same process most large corporates have done over the past 20-30 years as the use of technology has changed the landscape as far as doing business is concerned.
At a corporate level they have downsized. Part of this is because technology allows them to do more with less. Part of it is numbers. There is growth but mainly from poorer parts of the world. There are strong indications that those in richer nations are giving less. It would also can be assumed that those donating as a percentage of the number in a location is reducing. The funds have further to go.
The WTS has been able to realise funds from capital tied up in assets such as property. They are doing this in Brooklyn and around the world. This does give them a big injection of working capital but they can only do this once for a given asset. Of course, further investment is happening (e.g. Warwick) but they have to have operating bases and cannot forever buy, develop and sell on the scale they have at the moment.
However, the change to how halls are funded is interesting as this allows them to once again grow an asset base. In countries like the UK where each congregation is a seperate charity there are some protential issues here. In another thread about a special local needs upcoming in the UK I thought it might signal some begging for the new branch build at Chelmsford however someone made this point about the rules around charities and property ownership. It could be that the WTS will change the structure of congregations in England and Wales to make this property grab more straightforward.
The reductions they are making in literature production are part of the downsizing and cost savings. I am not convinced that all of this is being driven by cash flow projections - it could still be an element of the dog wagging the tail rather than the other way round - however the net result is the same: they need less money to operate and therefore can mitigate the effects of reducing income over a longer time.
The other aspect to consider is the WTS is driven by numbers. They NEVER comment on negative figures, only ever promote positive numbers. They will do everything they can to spin the numbers to present decline as growth. Have you noticed the lack of emphasis on the amount being printed nowadays? All the hype at Twickenham was about the number of languages the web site is in, how many people attended in the UK, how many hours are being done (never contextualised of course) etc. The only mention of printed material was when one of the printing overseers was interviewed and they talked about brochures and that they had printed enough to make a stack X number of times the size of The Shard (the tallest building in Western Europe).
For the moment the proselytising in poorer nations will keep the growth as a net gain for some time, perhaps decades. The publishers figures is fudged in the sense that it always presents a peak, not an average but is not the important one. It is still possible to extrapolate information by comparing figures to historical numbers and by slicing and dicing reports to take into account location for example. There are posters on here who have done sterling work.
It is obvious from their efforts that the WTS is not really growing in a sustainable way. It does not really reflect an organisation being blessed by God. It is not preaching in a meaningful way to the vast majority of the world's population. My personal opinion however is that reports of the death of the WTS have been exagerated. It can go on for years, not just financially but also with the duping of millions of people. It will take something of huge magnitude to hasten any decline. I don't even think that a very public peodophile scandle would do it unless it could be proven there was a GB sanctioned cover up of epic proportions.
1-2% growth in western nations has been the case for years. Even decline would not shake most people just so long as the overall numbers are growing.
The biggest risk to the WTS is education and awareness. The hype of this summer and it's conventions will die down and people will be back to the same old same old. The changes going on do keep people on their toes but you cannot change everything or do things quickly without consquence. I live in hope that more and more people will wake up but the WTS have proved masters of managing congnative dissonance.
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The long weekend of B.S begins - UK.
by quellycatface inisn't going to be wonderful??.
not being there..
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konceptual99
Not everyone has been sucked in by it. I know one MS/Pioneer who walked out of Twickenham before the end and swore he'd never go to another meeting.
Wow! Is that someone you know? What were his reasons?
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The long weekend of B.S begins - UK.
by quellycatface inisn't going to be wonderful??.
not being there..
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konceptual99
Savour the atmosphere here...
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106
The long weekend of B.S begins - UK.
by quellycatface inisn't going to be wonderful??.
not being there..
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konceptual99
I think there were more than you think. There were several I spoke to with a healthy dose of cynisism about the adulation, adoration and emotive hype of the whole thing. I am sure that if people felt more free to express their opinions there would be more criticism of the society than one would imagine now.
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6 branches subsidize the rest of the branches.
by hoser ini went to the meeting this morning and we had some guy from overseas bethel give the public talk.
6 countries subsidize the rest.
he said in some countries all the donations that they get from contributions don't even pay the electricity bill for the branch buildings so money has to come in from these 6 richer countries.
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konceptual99
Yet the new book released at the convention makes a point of sayiing the will never send letters soliciting funds, tithe or pass collection plates. Mmmm...
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Smiling at a Disfellowshipped JW instead of Completely Ignoring him
by ProfCNJ ini was driving our car going to our assigned territory for our sunday field minsitry (was with jw 2 sisters) when i saw a disfellowshipped jw riding his motorcycle heading towards us.
the guy was df'd around 2 months ago only (won't delve much on his case).
approximately about 10 meters, we saw him smile.
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konceptual99
Said hello and how are you to a DF'ed person I saw at Twickenham. Used to say hi to guy who was coming back to meetings as well.