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(I found no copyright rules on this and it has a button to send it to others so I am assuming it is ok to reprint here.)
envoymagazine.com/backissues/1.4/jul_augstory1.html
How to Become a Jehovah’s Witness
By Kenneth Guindon.
Here they come, walkin’ down the street. They get the funniest looks from everyone they meet. Hey, hey, it’s the Watchtower, and they’re not monkeyin’ around. This former JW explains how the world’s most effective door-to-door conversion machine is targeting you.
It’s early 1956, and I’m seated in a long, narrow building in Venice, California, that used to be a laundromat. It still looks like one. The walls are bare of decorations, painted some nondescript pastel color. Small windows near the ceiling let in some sunlight, but the main light comes from the rows of fluorescent lights that hum and flicker above my head. A podium is perched front and center on the stage at the far end of the room. It’s really just a well-furnished, drab little box of a meeting room, but everyone around me calls it the Kingdom Hall.
That was my first visit to what Jehovah’s Witnesses respectfully call “The House of Jehovah.” A large banner hung over the stage proclaiming a Scripture text I can no longer remember. Other than that one prop, there was no other evidence that Jehovah had anything to do with the place. Being raised Catholic, I understood “going to church” to mean prayer and worship, so my first visit to the Kingdom Hall was an experience very different from what I was used to. I had been invited to attend the lecture and remain for a “Bible study” using The Watchtower magazine. The Watchtower, a slickly-produced, full-color magazine, is the official source of the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the official name for the Jehovah’s Witness religion). Balancing my Bible, a notepad and a copy of The Watchtower on my knee, I waited expectantly for the meeting to begin.
[Moderator note: Click link above for full article.]
envoymagazine.com/backissues/1.4/jul_augstory1.html
How to Become a Jehovah’s Witness
By Kenneth Guindon.
Here they come, walkin’ down the street. They get the funniest looks from everyone they meet. Hey, hey, it’s the Watchtower, and they’re not monkeyin’ around. This former JW explains how the world’s most effective door-to-door conversion machine is targeting you.
It’s early 1956, and I’m seated in a long, narrow building in Venice, California, that used to be a laundromat. It still looks like one. The walls are bare of decorations, painted some nondescript pastel color. Small windows near the ceiling let in some sunlight, but the main light comes from the rows of fluorescent lights that hum and flicker above my head. A podium is perched front and center on the stage at the far end of the room. It’s really just a well-furnished, drab little box of a meeting room, but everyone around me calls it the Kingdom Hall.
That was my first visit to what Jehovah’s Witnesses respectfully call “The House of Jehovah.” A large banner hung over the stage proclaiming a Scripture text I can no longer remember. Other than that one prop, there was no other evidence that Jehovah had anything to do with the place. Being raised Catholic, I understood “going to church” to mean prayer and worship, so my first visit to the Kingdom Hall was an experience very different from what I was used to. I had been invited to attend the lecture and remain for a “Bible study” using The Watchtower magazine. The Watchtower, a slickly-produced, full-color magazine, is the official source of the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the official name for the Jehovah’s Witness religion). Balancing my Bible, a notepad and a copy of The Watchtower on my knee, I waited expectantly for the meeting to begin.
[Moderator note: Click link above for full article.]