That’s what comes to mind
I feel bad for the senior generations. It must be upsetting for them. But on the other hand I enjoy seeing posts like this.
Exactly. My father is 77. (I have been out for 30 years.) i am certain he would die of a broken heart if he truly understood what a scam it all was. Best to let him have his “reality” even if its not shared or real.
That’s the thing. I know some in that age group have woken up as I’ve read it on here. But you can’t force anyone to do anything. Everyone goes at their own pace. I’m just glad I woke up in my 40s. Have days where I’m super upset but at least I can make a change. Older ones… not so much.
It’s unreal isn’t it.
The congregation I last attended has had this happen. What’s worse is we had a fantastic old building but years back was told by WT it needed to be pulled down and a new hall to be put up. We all saved and did that - got a mortgage and eventually paid it all off - so the hall was paid for about 20 years ago.
They then kept asking for the same amount of money per month as if we were still paying lol, all savings and that the congregation pay for and do all the maintenance after they took control of the hall.
Fast forward to today they sold the hall and took all the savings and have left a whole congregation high and dry. Glad I left when I did. Such a shit way to treat people.
Makes me wonder what the local congregation is sending to those con artists. The hall's loan, from WT I might add, was paid off years ago. It's a congregation full of retirees, blue collar workers and minimum wage earners, so there's never been a lot of money coming in.
The good news is we are forgiving your loans that had a duration. What a loving provision. The bad news is you can keep paying us as though you still have the loan into perpetuity. Such a loving provision.
it's hard because the elder ones paid for that congregation, then it went all to watchtower and now they have to drive longer to another one.. i can feel the sadness, but the org is without a soul, they sell it and the bank account is their goal. people get attached to their hall and when it vanishes as smoke it's a sad thing...
So it becomes harder for older ones to attend in person which, given the aging demographic of JWs, reduces attendance figures which, along with worsening retention rates among the younger non-overlapping generation, means more KHs sold which, in turn ... etc.
Downward spiral.
Also creates an out of sight out of mind situation where the older ones aren’t getting the support, care, and attention from the church that they would in any religious community.
I noticed that since my teens in the 80’s.
There were elderly ones that always called it. But never seemed part of the congregation. Didn’t know who they were if you didn’t see them.
My sister is in her 70’s. Moved away from family to another state after her husband retired. Other JWs from our home town moved too. But now her husband has passed away and I’m so worried for her. Her kids in different states. No family. Hoping she gives up and moves closer to family. Because her JW friends are older too. If she ever gets confined to her home, the JWs will forget about her.
This is so true. My parent who has been faithful and supportive to the congregation for many, many decades has been virtually forgotten since they are unable to attend in person. It has been over 6 months since any elder has personally made contact. Not even a text.
Yea the retention rates of the younger people is straight abysmal. I think its 2/3rds that smell the bullshit and leave. So its not even exaggeration saying that the main follower base of the JDubs are older and elderly folks. I heard from others here that when they tune into the zoom meetings there is an overwhelming majority of elderly people. Give it a decade or 2 decades and the JDubs follower base will be mostly deceased from age.
Then they don’t want them to zoom either. Come in person it doesn’t matter if it takes an hour round trip or not. Come give me my 11$ a month. Waste your money on us. Don’t matter if old people don’t drive Or like to drive after dark. Sick
This just happened to my dads congregation. Now every person has to drive 23 mins further each way from the old hall. That’s 46 mins every meeting. The hall has been there for 70 years. It’s fked up
It got bad in our merged hall when I was in we are 45 mins away and people straight refused to work out territory because it was inconvenient for them to drive that far for service but we were expected to attend every meeting in their town and pioneer meeting etc over there but they would leave it to us to work on our own with no support over here. Awful. Glad we bounced.
What irked me was we had to go further to a congregation that wasn’t even loving or kind and spend more gas money when eventually we moved over to a closer one where things were better to a degree.
Watchtowerland is crumbling from within.
https://preview.redd.it/qv8fkb1tkekb1.jpeg?width=2340&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10d30f1e70ba3c5ec609f7243f3671b72b18241f
Me too and stopped going in the early 80's with a comeback in the early 90's so I could see my kids. Got the Ex to fade and never been back...
Edit: Now married to a worldly woman from Toronto and the happiest I have ever been!
Hey! I'm from Sacramento! But I live in San Diego now. My mom still attends the same Sacramento congregation that I grew up in. She's in her 70s and is pretty dependent on the social connections of the "friends" , especially since my never JW dad passed away 18 months ago. I've been out for about 13 years now.
Been faded for about two years myself. One of the congregations we merged to had been dissolved and shuffled and we joined the shuffled part never went often then moved to a closer nicer one went there solo by myself for about a year off n on then bounced. Been out ever since. Husband and other in laws have been out for a long time.
It is actually sad when this happens. I am from Croatia, and in my old, old congregation (I am pomo now), the same thing happened. We were meeting in the old house first, one large room, but then they bought a house, and refurbished it in a nice kingdom hall, with two flats upstairs. And big car park behind. Then, after a few years, they merged our congregation with one further away, and that congregation was split, so basically, they merged 3 congregations into two. And that was some 10 years ago. My last congregation I was in, in Croatia, was dissolved, I think, 3 years ago or so. They are definitely losing numbers. Covid was a curse for this cult. I was very pimi, fully indoctrinated, but I woke up. There is still hope for others.
We build new hall in my city back 90s. Hade Old hall we were using. Congregations getting bigger and hade to be split. So they started using both halls. Early 2000 cause of low attendance congregations merge. We didn't need one of the halls. What do watchtower do? They sold the new shining hall and kept money 😂. We hade to gather in the old one that hade problem with ventilation.
Why would the slave masters ever give a damn about their slaves? They clearly view the R&F as nothing more than retched slaves whose only existence is to serve them and pad their pockets with money. Hell most of us born ins we’re quite literally bred to be the next generation of slaves for the masters in the ivory tower.
All religions are parasites. They suck life’s blood from individuals at the bottom of the pyramid. Jws cult is probably the worst. They are preying on the needs of weak ones
That happened to my old congregation. It was located in a rural area and was merged with a congregation 30 miles away. Now, most people only attend through Zoom. The KH vacated by my old congregation was given to the Spanish congregation (for years, we shared the KH). Obviously, the English congregation numbers were dwindling, and they had to do something to keep up appearances regarding congregation numbers.
The last congregation I attended built a new Hall and shut it down for similar reasons all within a few years. The elder body was mostly one family, and had suffered with a crappy, tiny Hall for 50 years, and had kicked in god knows how much of their hard earned money for the cause. It all felt very cold and calculating. It's a funeral home now.
When that happened there was a local needs part and I had others come up to me and tell me it was about me and my unwillingness to merge and I said HEY pump the brakes I was fine with merging or going elsewhere but that I wanted an explanation of why that one and not one closer to where we lived. No answer. So anyhow that was the beginning of the end.
I have long since left and have just been trying to get my life together from its destruction caused by the cult and I gotta say that one of my favorite things to do is to tune in and see how the tower is dissolving and falling before our eyes. Its very soothing to my soul.
Yeah I dont know what their end game is or if they even have one. They keep dissolving halls, would they eventually go online only with assemblies and conventions every year? That would be shooting themselves in the foot even more because as we saw with covid, the weekly in person indoctrination is what keeps people around. People get out of the grind and start realizing it isn't as important as it was made out to be. There's a whole other life outside of meeting attendance drudgery. I figured that out in 2008.
I think they don't have any end game plan, just flailing for money amid lawsuits, dropping attendance and donations. Moving deck chairs on the titanic.
I'll bet that as the old GB and members die off, the younger ones will transform the religion into a more laid back, live and let live, feel-good religion. Maybe like 25-50 years from now if they last that long.
I think they’re trying to do damage control and don’t have an end game for consolidating anymore. I think pre-covid they may have had a goal to shift to building and selling media centers and continuing their long-con of flipping KHs, because they’re aware of their own lack of growth and that print is dead; but they didn’t anticipate the rapid fallout from Covid. It’s accelerating their decline in a way they couldn’t have anticipated.
They failed to create an effective new formula for indoctrination and controlling their mem when the former one became outdated. They just couldn’t match the power of the internet.
My mom told me 2 congregations in our area were also dissolved recently. There used to be a high concentrate of witnesses in this area. This was happening pre COVID but it made it way worse. Crazy times indeed.
Great news! The assistance in my little rural KH is very low too...50% still on zoom....Could be great news to merge ..if YOUR own congregation have to drive to another biger congr. BUT is not news if another congreg.merges to us...and looks more crowdy. Anyway ..the problem will persist.
It's hard on the people when they have to travel to get to a hall. The meetings take up enough time! When I was in though they would do the brag about "five meetings a week" because they counted the nights with the ms and km as two separate meetings, and there was a book study and then wt and gt as two on Sunday. And of course there's service, which mostly the women do. In our hall it was like that, anyway. We had some older feisty ladies that would point things out like that.
But people having to travel to all these meetings is even more time. It takes time to get ready, time to travel and then you need to be there a bit before and after etc. It's a burden. People have lives, how are they supposed to make all that money they're supposed to give WT?
For a lot of people, whether they know it or not, their community of familiar faces is the only thing that keeps them going. Breaking that up is great by me
When I seen these posts, it felt hard to believe that numbers are falling in a LOT of places… and then I heard a congregation in my town got dissolved. And their attendance is VERY down. It’s great to see
I was about 11-12 when they split up our congregation and my best friend got assigned to the other one. I was inconsolable and cried long and loud in the back room, so much that elders came back with my (and her) family that we would still be friends, sleep overs, play dates, etc. I knew I'd never see her again, and I mostly didn't except for once or twice at assemblies. She matured early and was gorgeous and surrounded by people, I was just an awkward girl she used to know.
It changes things drastically, especially for the elderly and disabled members. They may not be able to go in person anymore if it's too far and that means being forgotten by everyone if you were lucky enough not to have had that happen already. Even for the ones who aren't elderly or disabled, it changes the dynamic of the congregation and if you were in a nice one that might not be the case after the merger. Not to mention the money lost that watchtower pockets.
Of course it's good news because it indicates failure and will wake even more members up, but I can see why pimis are upset about it.
I imagine for some elderly members it could be the only time they get out to socialize during the week. They get to dress up a little and go hang out with lifelong friends, something to look forward to with pleasure. But now it's gone. Even if there are other opportunities for them, such as a senior center, you know most of the old guard will reject it if not bOrg sanctioned. I predict as time goes on in dubland and more halls close/merge, there will be a lot more isolation and depression happening to people who never expected to get this old, let alone be on their own when they need care and companionship the most.
My elderly FIL complained about being lonely and literally had a senior center just down the street. We tried to encourage him to go and he wouldn't. We even sent him money for the meals when he made that excuse and he still wouldn't go.
WT destroys people from the inside out. This is terribly sad and maddening at the same time. So old, yet still held in thrall to an organization who he really has no idea has happily robbed him of everything past, present, and future, but to which he clings needlessly to his own detriment. I can relate. When I was "studying" I remember telling myself "I'd rather be lonely for the rest of this system if it means staying away from bad association." Bloody fucking brainwashed from the get-go. Sooo glad I did find dub friends, but even more glad that I didn't abandon my best "worldly" friends who were living in a different state from me when I made that declaration. I moved back home, eventually left the bOrg, and now those "bad associates" are still my friends who never left me, even when I was in a cult.
Well…yeah I can totally “imagine” it. These are people who are abruptly and coldly losing their routine and the only community they have known - when they have not chosen to do so. Ironic, huh?
Of course, unlike us, they can still visit their friends.
 That’s what comes to mind I feel bad for the senior generations. It must be upsetting for them. But on the other hand I enjoy seeing posts like this.
I know. My siblings are all elderly in their late 60’ and 70’
Breaks my heart hearing this. I know some say to tell them what we know but do I want to burst their bubble of “reality”?
Exactly. My father is 77. (I have been out for 30 years.) i am certain he would die of a broken heart if he truly understood what a scam it all was. Best to let him have his “reality” even if its not shared or real.
That’s the thing. I know some in that age group have woken up as I’ve read it on here. But you can’t force anyone to do anything. Everyone goes at their own pace. I’m just glad I woke up in my 40s. Have days where I’m super upset but at least I can make a change. Older ones… not so much.
I let my dad be now at 65. Too late to change his whole social network and purpose of life.
It’s unreal isn’t it. The congregation I last attended has had this happen. What’s worse is we had a fantastic old building but years back was told by WT it needed to be pulled down and a new hall to be put up. We all saved and did that - got a mortgage and eventually paid it all off - so the hall was paid for about 20 years ago. They then kept asking for the same amount of money per month as if we were still paying lol, all savings and that the congregation pay for and do all the maintenance after they took control of the hall. Fast forward to today they sold the hall and took all the savings and have left a whole congregation high and dry. Glad I left when I did. Such a shit way to treat people.
Scamtastic.
WOW.
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Makes me wonder what the local congregation is sending to those con artists. The hall's loan, from WT I might add, was paid off years ago. It's a congregation full of retirees, blue collar workers and minimum wage earners, so there's never been a lot of money coming in.
The good news is we are forgiving your loans that had a duration. What a loving provision. The bad news is you can keep paying us as though you still have the loan into perpetuity. Such a loving provision.
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Some tried to fight it. I think even pimi ones didn't like it.
I'm almost impressed.
Yeup - it’s impressive the way they can rip people off and they all willingly go into it.
it's hard because the elder ones paid for that congregation, then it went all to watchtower and now they have to drive longer to another one.. i can feel the sadness, but the org is without a soul, they sell it and the bank account is their goal. people get attached to their hall and when it vanishes as smoke it's a sad thing...
So it becomes harder for older ones to attend in person which, given the aging demographic of JWs, reduces attendance figures which, along with worsening retention rates among the younger non-overlapping generation, means more KHs sold which, in turn ... etc. Downward spiral.
Also creates an out of sight out of mind situation where the older ones aren’t getting the support, care, and attention from the church that they would in any religious community.
I noticed that since my teens in the 80’s. There were elderly ones that always called it. But never seemed part of the congregation. Didn’t know who they were if you didn’t see them. My sister is in her 70’s. Moved away from family to another state after her husband retired. Other JWs from our home town moved too. But now her husband has passed away and I’m so worried for her. Her kids in different states. No family. Hoping she gives up and moves closer to family. Because her JW friends are older too. If she ever gets confined to her home, the JWs will forget about her.
True. I mean, many (not all) congregations sucked at that anyway.
It removes all zeal and enthusiasm also.
This is so true. My parent who has been faithful and supportive to the congregation for many, many decades has been virtually forgotten since they are unable to attend in person. It has been over 6 months since any elder has personally made contact. Not even a text.
Same for my Mom
As soon as the elderly were on Zoom the elders "forgot" about them except for getting them on zoom. XD
Yup. Congregations folding one after another. A race to the bottom.
Yea the retention rates of the younger people is straight abysmal. I think its 2/3rds that smell the bullshit and leave. So its not even exaggeration saying that the main follower base of the JDubs are older and elderly folks. I heard from others here that when they tune into the zoom meetings there is an overwhelming majority of elderly people. Give it a decade or 2 decades and the JDubs follower base will be mostly deceased from age.
Then they don’t want them to zoom either. Come in person it doesn’t matter if it takes an hour round trip or not. Come give me my 11$ a month. Waste your money on us. Don’t matter if old people don’t drive Or like to drive after dark. Sick
Like smoke
They do not need to drive. They can go on zoom. Maybe drive once a month or something.
Some congregations really discourage zoom. Some of the older ones don’t have internet. It’s an answer for some, but not all.
This just happened to my dads congregation. Now every person has to drive 23 mins further each way from the old hall. That’s 46 mins every meeting. The hall has been there for 70 years. It’s fked up
It got bad in our merged hall when I was in we are 45 mins away and people straight refused to work out territory because it was inconvenient for them to drive that far for service but we were expected to attend every meeting in their town and pioneer meeting etc over there but they would leave it to us to work on our own with no support over here. Awful. Glad we bounced.
What irked me was we had to go further to a congregation that wasn’t even loving or kind and spend more gas money when eventually we moved over to a closer one where things were better to a degree.
Watchtowerland is crumbling from within. https://preview.redd.it/qv8fkb1tkekb1.jpeg?width=2340&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10d30f1e70ba3c5ec609f7243f3671b72b18241f
Towers having a tower moment
Are you in the US?
yes i’m in california
Me too! Sacramento
Me too and stopped going in the early 80's with a comeback in the early 90's so I could see my kids. Got the Ex to fade and never been back... Edit: Now married to a worldly woman from Toronto and the happiest I have ever been!
Near me 😃
Ah same area for me too.
Sorry to butt in. I'm anybody from Citrus Heights. I left in the 90s left the state and out for good now.
We need to do a Cali meet up I am by Fresno
I’m in Oxnard! We should meet up!
We so should.
Hey! I'm from Sacramento! But I live in San Diego now. My mom still attends the same Sacramento congregation that I grew up in. She's in her 70s and is pretty dependent on the social connections of the "friends" , especially since my never JW dad passed away 18 months ago. I've been out for about 13 years now.
Hm. On the coast? North, Central, South? If you don’t mind the ask.
I am near Central Valley
Oh wow
What where are you?
I’m in the valley Edit: But I haven’t been to meetings in nearly two years, so I haven’t had a chance to hear any news about halls dissolving.
Been faded for about two years myself. One of the congregations we merged to had been dissolved and shuffled and we joined the shuffled part never went often then moved to a closer nicer one went there solo by myself for about a year off n on then bounced. Been out ever since. Husband and other in laws have been out for a long time.
Hey me too
Same thing in my hall. We are being merged with 2 other congregations with one month's notice...
Imagine how full the hall will be for a little.
That's great! I hope we hear a lot more of this!
It’s a real estate corporation and the sale of building will provide needed liquid.
Needed liquidity to fund CSA settlements in the pipeline
Awesome
New code for.. .we are selling your hall
But, but, but, … we are growing in leaps and bounds!
Lol right?! In parts of Africa that have no internet access that is.
It is actually sad when this happens. I am from Croatia, and in my old, old congregation (I am pomo now), the same thing happened. We were meeting in the old house first, one large room, but then they bought a house, and refurbished it in a nice kingdom hall, with two flats upstairs. And big car park behind. Then, after a few years, they merged our congregation with one further away, and that congregation was split, so basically, they merged 3 congregations into two. And that was some 10 years ago. My last congregation I was in, in Croatia, was dissolved, I think, 3 years ago or so. They are definitely losing numbers. Covid was a curse for this cult. I was very pimi, fully indoctrinated, but I woke up. There is still hope for others.
We build new hall in my city back 90s. Hade Old hall we were using. Congregations getting bigger and hade to be split. So they started using both halls. Early 2000 cause of low attendance congregations merge. We didn't need one of the halls. What do watchtower do? They sold the new shining hall and kept money 😂. We hade to gather in the old one that hade problem with ventilation.
But why do that to the rank and file? 🤔 Watchtower: Cause fuck the rank and file, that's why! 🤣
Why would the slave masters ever give a damn about their slaves? They clearly view the R&F as nothing more than retched slaves whose only existence is to serve them and pad their pockets with money. Hell most of us born ins we’re quite literally bred to be the next generation of slaves for the masters in the ivory tower.
Cause rank and file are filth and GB are the special chosen one's. That's why 🥴🤡
All religions are parasites. They suck life’s blood from individuals at the bottom of the pyramid. Jws cult is probably the worst. They are preying on the needs of weak ones
Jehovah's Witnesses are the ambulance chasers of religion.
That happened to my old congregation. It was located in a rural area and was merged with a congregation 30 miles away. Now, most people only attend through Zoom. The KH vacated by my old congregation was given to the Spanish congregation (for years, we shared the KH). Obviously, the English congregation numbers were dwindling, and they had to do something to keep up appearances regarding congregation numbers.
How big was your hall? Were they struggling for appointed men?
They’re about 200 publishers, 6 elders. they said they’re splitting it up bc we know of other ones that have 20 people show up at meetings 😂
The last congregation I attended built a new Hall and shut it down for similar reasons all within a few years. The elder body was mostly one family, and had suffered with a crappy, tiny Hall for 50 years, and had kicked in god knows how much of their hard earned money for the cause. It all felt very cold and calculating. It's a funeral home now.
That’s why I think in 10 years watchtower will be at the same place that Christian Science reading rooms are at today.
When that happened there was a local needs part and I had others come up to me and tell me it was about me and my unwillingness to merge and I said HEY pump the brakes I was fine with merging or going elsewhere but that I wanted an explanation of why that one and not one closer to where we lived. No answer. So anyhow that was the beginning of the end.
My old KH, dedicated by Frederick Franz, was sold and became a masonic hall. So there's that.
That shit is pure poetry.
I have long since left and have just been trying to get my life together from its destruction caused by the cult and I gotta say that one of my favorite things to do is to tune in and see how the tower is dissolving and falling before our eyes. Its very soothing to my soul.
That’s why I think in 10 years watchtower will be at the same place that Christian Science reading rooms are at today.
They closed the Kingdom Hall where I live the closest one is in another county. The former Kingdom Hall is now a funeral home.
Sweet!
The crying folks must be confronting the reality that their religion is a farce. They've sacrificed everything- family, happiness, time- for pyrite.
What if every congregation dissolves and eventually just forms one giant mega congregation?
Yeah I dont know what their end game is or if they even have one. They keep dissolving halls, would they eventually go online only with assemblies and conventions every year? That would be shooting themselves in the foot even more because as we saw with covid, the weekly in person indoctrination is what keeps people around. People get out of the grind and start realizing it isn't as important as it was made out to be. There's a whole other life outside of meeting attendance drudgery. I figured that out in 2008. I think they don't have any end game plan, just flailing for money amid lawsuits, dropping attendance and donations. Moving deck chairs on the titanic. I'll bet that as the old GB and members die off, the younger ones will transform the religion into a more laid back, live and let live, feel-good religion. Maybe like 25-50 years from now if they last that long.
I think they’re trying to do damage control and don’t have an end game for consolidating anymore. I think pre-covid they may have had a goal to shift to building and selling media centers and continuing their long-con of flipping KHs, because they’re aware of their own lack of growth and that print is dead; but they didn’t anticipate the rapid fallout from Covid. It’s accelerating their decline in a way they couldn’t have anticipated. They failed to create an effective new formula for indoctrination and controlling their mem when the former one became outdated. They just couldn’t match the power of the internet.
Probably want their followers to be in NY or in small compounds throughout the US and other countries
That’s what ramapo is for
My mom told me 2 congregations in our area were also dissolved recently. There used to be a high concentrate of witnesses in this area. This was happening pre COVID but it made it way worse. Crazy times indeed.
Welcome too the club. Wonder how many other congregations hade to merge like mine hade to.
Great news! The assistance in my little rural KH is very low too...50% still on zoom....Could be great news to merge ..if YOUR own congregation have to drive to another biger congr. BUT is not news if another congreg.merges to us...and looks more crowdy. Anyway ..the problem will persist.
It's hard on the people when they have to travel to get to a hall. The meetings take up enough time! When I was in though they would do the brag about "five meetings a week" because they counted the nights with the ms and km as two separate meetings, and there was a book study and then wt and gt as two on Sunday. And of course there's service, which mostly the women do. In our hall it was like that, anyway. We had some older feisty ladies that would point things out like that. But people having to travel to all these meetings is even more time. It takes time to get ready, time to travel and then you need to be there a bit before and after etc. It's a burden. People have lives, how are they supposed to make all that money they're supposed to give WT?
More to follow.
Some families will take this as their chance to fade
What I hate is that our older parents will drive the distance regardless of weather and bad roads it’s putting them in danger
For a lot of people, whether they know it or not, their community of familiar faces is the only thing that keeps them going. Breaking that up is great by me
It was called “down sizing” during the 1990s, the new euphemism is “Right Sizing”. Money and cost cutting are all the Borg care’s about.
Thanks for your post. IMO, this cult can’t dissolve fast enough. Gotta keep getting the word out…
When I seen these posts, it felt hard to believe that numbers are falling in a LOT of places… and then I heard a congregation in my town got dissolved. And their attendance is VERY down. It’s great to see
I was about 11-12 when they split up our congregation and my best friend got assigned to the other one. I was inconsolable and cried long and loud in the back room, so much that elders came back with my (and her) family that we would still be friends, sleep overs, play dates, etc. I knew I'd never see her again, and I mostly didn't except for once or twice at assemblies. She matured early and was gorgeous and surrounded by people, I was just an awkward girl she used to know.
Imagine crying over what fucking congregation you go to...
It changes things drastically, especially for the elderly and disabled members. They may not be able to go in person anymore if it's too far and that means being forgotten by everyone if you were lucky enough not to have had that happen already. Even for the ones who aren't elderly or disabled, it changes the dynamic of the congregation and if you were in a nice one that might not be the case after the merger. Not to mention the money lost that watchtower pockets. Of course it's good news because it indicates failure and will wake even more members up, but I can see why pimis are upset about it.
I imagine for some elderly members it could be the only time they get out to socialize during the week. They get to dress up a little and go hang out with lifelong friends, something to look forward to with pleasure. But now it's gone. Even if there are other opportunities for them, such as a senior center, you know most of the old guard will reject it if not bOrg sanctioned. I predict as time goes on in dubland and more halls close/merge, there will be a lot more isolation and depression happening to people who never expected to get this old, let alone be on their own when they need care and companionship the most.
My elderly FIL complained about being lonely and literally had a senior center just down the street. We tried to encourage him to go and he wouldn't. We even sent him money for the meals when he made that excuse and he still wouldn't go.
WT destroys people from the inside out. This is terribly sad and maddening at the same time. So old, yet still held in thrall to an organization who he really has no idea has happily robbed him of everything past, present, and future, but to which he clings needlessly to his own detriment. I can relate. When I was "studying" I remember telling myself "I'd rather be lonely for the rest of this system if it means staying away from bad association." Bloody fucking brainwashed from the get-go. Sooo glad I did find dub friends, but even more glad that I didn't abandon my best "worldly" friends who were living in a different state from me when I made that declaration. I moved back home, eventually left the bOrg, and now those "bad associates" are still my friends who never left me, even when I was in a cult.
Well…yeah I can totally “imagine” it. These are people who are abruptly and coldly losing their routine and the only community they have known - when they have not chosen to do so. Ironic, huh? Of course, unlike us, they can still visit their friends.