- I have NEVER heard of J.W.s doing their witnessing work over the telephone. I am about 99.99 % certain that J.W.s never use telephone calls for their outreach to strangers! Beware! Anyone doing that might be an impostor who is trying to rob your house or commit some other crime!
I have. Heard of JWs witnessing over the telephone, that is.
Except we weren’t total strangers, we started out as pen pals.
I started out as pen pals with a woman out of state who shared an interest in science fiction. Shortly after, we became long-distance “telephone friends” because she had a serious illness which made it easier to talk than write. She called herself a “Bible Christian” but the way she interpreted the Bible seemed to me as if it were her own personal eccentricity being influenced by the imaginative realm of science fiction, so over the years, I would respond with the Catholic view.
Her illness, by the way, was real … I called her up at a hospital after one of her surgeries and could hear medical machinery in the background, the echo of a hospital room, and of course I had been transferred to her room as well as given the room number by the nurse answering the main phone number at the hospital.
I had thought that never receiving a Christmas or birthday card from my friend meant that she was too ill to send one. Meanwhile, I remembered her at Christmas and on her birthday over the years.
Finally she revealed her secret and pushed me to convert. When I replied that I could still accept her as a friend as long as we each respected the other’s beliefs, she dumped me for several years … as I related in my first post here at CAF, wondering what was going on and how to deal with it, at the time I was dumped.
At that point, I was told that a JW who was severely ill or disabled could count telephone calls as “door-to-door” work, as long as they kept written records of the number of hours spent on the phone “witnessing” and sent in reports of these records to their elders.
One day after about two or three years she called me again out of the blue acting friendly, even though I’ve learned that JWs aren’t supposed to be friends with Catholics. Apparently, she likes me and is willing to bend the rules a bit to still talk to me once in a while even though I won’t bend from my Catholic beliefs. She hasn’t been too available this Christmas season … maybe worried that I’d want to get her a Christmas present, which holiday, like birthdays, she doesn’t celebrate due to her beliefs. And now that I know and she knows I know, these sorts of differences are kind of like the elephant in the room.
Anyways, yes, JWs can in fact witness over the phone.
But I’d be very, very careful
for the above-mentioned security reasons.
That’s an example of what I mean, a superb line you drop on them & they start mulling it over & over & over… Problem is, they are VICTIMS of DOUBLE-THINK; most non-christian world groups are.
. It was hard. She said she respected my belief and as long as I continue in a faith that is bible fact, that is ok. She also did say she would just ‘pop over’ to say hello next time she’s in the neighbourhood…mmmmm she hasn’t yet, but will be due soon I think.