Why on earth did you give them your phone number? Just tell them “no thanks, please don’t return”. Talk about making a big deal about an extremely minor situation!
Jesus expressly charged all his followers to preach the gospel. Some Christians take that more seriously than others. I suppose the Disciples got kinda rude sometimes.
YMMV. I don’t find them any more rude than any others who knock on my door. Trying to be a good human being myself, I respond in kindness and say I’m not interested.
Your friend is doing them a disservice by not being straight forward with them. She would waste their time rather than be honest.
Please don’t be rude in order to get rid of them. They may not realize how rude they are being if they have been brought up to do this “missionary” work which is required of members of their church. Just be friendly but firm and close the door and walk away. Or let your girlfriend deal with it while you have a real life elsewhere.
The First Amendment Center’s website used to have information about the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the early part of the Twentieth Century. It got really nasty. If it’s still there, I will come back with a link. I wouldn’t invite them in either, but I don’t think I could be unkind to a group that has gone through what they did.
Posted in error.
Read it again – she gave them her OLD phone number, rather than her current one.
She decided to be a liar rather than simply say “not interested.” How cute.
I’ve never let any JW in to talk–just politely turned them away at the door. Smiling vaguely. Pretty much the tactic I use on any door-to-door solicitors.
If people are rude to me, I’m quite capable of being rude back at them. But I don’t waste my sarcasm!
I know, I was just saying she didn’t give them her number so they could call her back.
Most of the time when they come around, I don’t even bother answering the door.
Slight hijack…
Does this ever really work for a JW?
I am hard pressed to imagine anyone who by adulthood has not pretty firmly established their personal views on religion/spirituality (whatever that view may be and including atheists).
Of all the things to sell door-to-door I cannot think that “selling” a new religion is one of them. This is not something where they talk to you for 10 minutes, give you a pamphlet and poof…you’re converted. Perhaps they just want to let you know it exists and encourage you to find out more but it has to be a rare person indeed who is in spiritual limbo who will have their eyes “opened” to a new religion they were unaware of and will then eagerly seek it out because someone randomly knocked on their door at 8a on a Saturday morning.
I’d imagine their success rate via this method has to be spectacularly low.
Maybe the bad advertising they get for being the annoyance on a Saturday morning provides a sort of positive bump to attract new converts. Sounds weird I know but in advertising it is known that some bad ads actually work well. Ask any Chicagoan the number to Empire Carpet and every single one will be able to repeat the number from the stupid jingle from their cheap ads. Perhaps JW is similar like that. Otherwise I am seeing no upside to them except a helluva lot of effort for near zero gain. I would think their efforts could be more profitably spent doing something else (go build a playground or something to earn goodwill for instance).
Listen to them speak. Identify their personal core assumptions. Ask a simple question directly about that assumption. It seems the door-to-door people are not in the habit of questioning their own beliefs.
E.g., I asked one fellow why he kept saying he was “saved”, being as how that was for god to decide, not him. He stopped talking, gaped at me for a bit, and then abruptly turned and scurried away.
Or tell them the truth.
If you cannot even pretend to be polite, leave. Yeah, you may not agree with their theology or their tactics, but your roommate invited them into your home and you are COMPELLED to either be polite or not be there.
Be rude to them? Question their beliefs? Were some people here raised in barns? :mad:
I don’t get all the reticence to engage the JWs when they come to witness.
You can have a lot of fun rebuting their claims and arguing for your own point of world view. A lot of you do it quite successfully on this message board in GD.
So what’s the problem ?
Yes, of course.
You may want to read a few more biographies. You don’t need to imagine a person who doesn’t have a firmly established religious/spiritual viewpoint at the age of 18. You can read about their lives in detail at any public library. In fact a more productive task might be for you to name five famous people who actually did have a firmly established view on religion/spirituality at the age of 18 (and who lived to the age of 40). The only one I can think of offhand is the Dalai Lama. All the others, from Gandhi to Darwin to Lennon to Lenin to Hitler all underwent changes in their religious viewpoints after they became adults, and indeed throughout their adult lives.
Based on the biographies I’ve read and the people I’ve known in my lifetime it is in fact very, very, very rare for a person to have a firmly established view of their sprituality by the time they are 18, and it’s common for a person to have no firm religious belief by the time they are 30. No hard data, and hard to imagine how you would collect it, but my WAG would be that at least 50% of people undergo a major religious transformation after the age of 18 and a further 30% undergo a major change in their religious viewpoint as it relates to the same religion.
I can’t really see why this is surprisng when it should be quite obvious (and supportable by facts) that the majority of people undergo a major transformation of their political beliefs after the age of 18. Religious beliefs are no more immutable than political beliefs.
I can only assume that you are making the assumption that transformations of religious beliefs are sudden, dramatic events based upon some sort of epiphany. Of course that’s not the case any more than it is the case with political views. As people age and are exposed to new ideas their priorities shift and their belief systems tend to shift with them. People drift towards atheism or towards Catholicism for example. They don’t wake up one morning with a divine revelation.
Even in cases where a person notionally remains faithful to one religion throughout their life, they generally don’t have fixed religious beliefs at a18. What normally happens is that an 18yo will be of their parent’s religion by default rather than active choice, simply because most religions aren’t particularly restrictive and most teenagers aren’t sufficiently interested to fight it. They then go through a period of self examination in their 20s and 30s where they usually experiment with at least functional atheism if not other religions, and then they find that their birth religion suits them best. But do not confuse notional continued membership of that religion with the person retaining a fixed religious viewpoint throughout life.
Of course not. No more than Obama thought that even a swinging voter would watch an TV add for 30 seconds and poof…they’re converted.
Marketing aimed at changing anyone’s system allegiance is never intended to produce a conversion on the spot (Jack Chick excepted, he really does seem to believe this). Rather these sorts of campaigns are aimed at two things: 1) Make people question the system they are currently allied to and 2) provide an alternative to those people who are looking for one because they are questioning the system they are currently allied to.
Once again, I’m puzzled that you don’t believe his works. You presumably are happy to believe that all those campaign volounteers who knocked on doors and rang people before the election weren’t wasting their time. So why would you possibly doubt it doesn’t work for selling a religious belief system.
Of course the results aren’t as spectacular because people don’t have to decide whether to keep or change their religious belief system by November as they are with their political belief system. But in terms of ways to get the swinging voters to move to your camp this would have to b the single most effective system I can think of.
How do you define success rate?
In terms methods to net in strangers to your belief system I suspect that it would have the most spectactularly high success rate possible. That’s why politicians put so much value on this method.
In terms of getting people to actually convert to this specific religion it probably is less than .001% annually. But the odds of anyone converting to any given religion is probably less than 0.0000001% annually, so even by that metric it is a spectacularly high success rate.
You do realise that this is a religion? That the gain is spiritual/next worldly? Because this is like saying that all those Catholic missionaries in Indonesia working in hospitals or schools are putting in a helluva lot of effort for no gain. Of course they are. That’s the whole point. They’re not using the money made or the number of converts as a way to keep score. It’s a religious calling, not a poker game.
Is that based on anything? I mean, is their any evidence at all that more people would here the message through this technique?
They don’t come around here much anymore. Maybe it’s the dog, maybe someone here was rude to them. When I answered the door, however, I was quite happy to talk with them for a bit, and to let them know that, yes, I think it’s wonderful to believe in God and how happy that made me. I didn’t have to beg for them to leave. All I said was that I was very happy where I was and I was not looking for anything else. I took their magazine and we wished each other a good day. Only took a few minutes and no one took offense. I’m with those who have already suggested just being kind but truthful in saying you don’t want them to visit anymore.
When I was church-shopping 20 years ago I looked into their church, but I stalled on the blood donation thing. I figure if there’s anything in me, or about me, that can save someone’s life, I have a responsibility to offer it.
Does spamming ever work? Maybe not on most people, but if one casts a large enough net, they will eventually land a fish.
There are lots of people who are lonely and unhappy (and if they are truly unhappy, they may well be questioning their spiritual beliefs, even if only unconsciously). This is pretty much the conversion demographic. For them, having ‘friends’ come talk to you is very welcome; a short, friendly conversation can lead to more conversations, invitations to attend prayer meetings, etc. For someone with little social interaction, this can be a big incentive. For people whose lives are not going the direction they would like, the idea of new friends and an optimistic view of the future can be enticing. I don’t see them as attempting to make full conversions in 10 minutes. The idea is more to befriend, then convert.
I would definitely say the success rate is extremely low (especially if you count the backsliders), but they don’t really get points for success, they get points for trying.
I did say “adulthood” which you took to mean “18”. I am assuming if you own a home you are probably over 18 and more likely to be more established in your religious beliefs. A JW on a college campus may indeed make sense. A person in a given community with a house of their own is more likely established.
As for biographies I am not sure how much you can extrapolate them to the world at large. Those are relatively few people who have biographies written about them BECAUSE they are among the relative few who did something remarkable enough to want to read about. I am also curious how profound a change people made in their religious views once well into adulthood as opposed to refinements.
Certainly some people have experienced major religious changes in their lives once well into adulthood. My, admittedly anecdotal, experience is that all the people in the neighborhoods I grew up in never changed. They all went to the local church or synagogue (or whatever) and did so forever. There are 6 billion people in the world. Lennon changing is not evidence of a common occurrence.
Again with “18”. Fine…I’m with you. I think it may well be fairly common for young adults to figure out their beliefs once away from home and on their own.
Once you own your own house for a JW to knock on the door I think you are a bit further down the road to knowing who you are. You likely attend your local church (or not) and are settled in that.
Again, my experience of my neighbors is never a one opted to go JW because of them knocking on their door. Maybe it happens somewhere but I have lived in many places and cannot think of one instance of it occurring.
Important word up there is “drift”. It is a sloooow process usually as people refine their religious views. For a JW to approach someone at the right moment to be open to their message has to be pretty rare and lucky. More rare since not only does the person need to be open to hearing some proselytizing they need to be open to it at the moment the JW’s knock on the door (maybe they have to feed the kids or go to work or go to the store or a favorite TV show is on or whatever). Chances are slim.
Fine.
Except telemarketing has a VERY low success rate. When was the last time you saw a door-to-door magazine salesman? A door-to-door vacuum salesman?
Most of these things have gone the way of the Dodo. Telemarketing exists because it can achieve results but it is a numbers game. Call 10,000 people and make 10 sales. In some cases that money’s out.
The door-to-door stuff is not done anymore because it is highly inefficient (local kids selling cookies or popcorn is different).
Political campaigns are different. There is a short term choice to be made and people are shopping the candidates. Equating it to being useful applied to religion is apples and oranges. People don’t sell vacuums door-to-door because people canvas door-to-door during a campaign.
This was partly my question. I do not see it being successful but if someone has numbers great.
I personally would define it for this as, “Is this the best use of our resources?”
Imagine taking all those people and building a playground or cleaning a park or any of a huge variety of things that build goodwill. Have a rally in a park, have the JW members bake cookies and cakes and make lemonade. Encourage people to come by and chat while having free nibbles. Whatever. I would think that would get them more face-time AND goodwill than banging on doors randomly.
Based on anything? Yep. See the missionaries bettering the communities they are in with hospitals and schools and such. Look how successful they are. If knocking on doors and just telling people they should consider “X” religion worked then that is what they would be doing.
Actually, I would say the roommate is being rude by wasting their time. And she did ask for the OP’s help.
The most polite thing to do (short of actually converting) would be to state, directly and clearly, that no one in the home is interested and that they should leave and not return (the word ‘please’ is optional, but it probably wouldn’t hurt). This is what the roommate should have done at first, but many people (especially elderly people, for some reason) do not feel comfortable simply being blunt. Hence the foot in the door.
No one is under any compulsion whatsoever to be polite to strangers in their own home, no matter who invited them. Especially if the person who did invite them no longer wants them there.
Arguing about theology and questioning beliefs is exactly what the missionaries were intending to do in the first place. If you feel that this is rude (and I do), well the missionaries started it first. Turning the tables is certainly fair play, but it’s a waste of time (unless you really enjoy this sort of thing). You will not un-convert them, nor will you cause them to begin to question their own beliefs. Most door-to-door missionaries have been well schooled in common objections/rebuttals, and will have stock answers handy. They should also have been trained to handle rejection and, if they actually take it personally, they are not ready for door-to-door proselytizing.
That passage appears to apply just to publicly doing good deeds and giving to the needy, not public witnessing/proselytizing. I’m sure most denominations draw a distinction between them.
Interestingly, I did notice a big contradiction between verse 7, which says don’t repeat your prayers, and verses 9-13, in which Matthew turns around and tells good Christians to repeat the Lord’s Prayer each and every time… 
I was kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one. I have to do my part to keep the peace in this house, otherwise I’m looking for a new place to live, which I can’t afford. There were probably a dozen ways I could have handled the situation better, but hindsight is 20-20. Most of the potentially useful responses to this thread came in after I’d already left the computer to go talk to our visitors.
I did my best this time to make sure the JWs will need to get a return phonecall before they attempt to visit again; a return call that’s unlikely to be made. If she does make that return call, well, she’s on her own next time.
*** Ponder
Given that I am (are there any Millerites present?) unimpressed by their theology, or the people presenting it, I have to defer to my wife here: Invite them in, offer them a cold drink because they are obviously parched, listen politely, and buy a Spanish version of Awake! (¡Ayuda!) to keep ones hand in the language. These are not people trained in theological debates. They cannot handle anything but stock retorts. In my experience, they are neither theologically adept nor particularly bright. The Christian (yeah, that cuts out many of you) response is to be mildly and generally supportive while GENTLY guiding them back to whichever theology to which you prescribe. If you succeed, that’s points for you in Heaven, (or NOT, depending), and if you fail, you can either be holy and gracious and seek another encounter, or you can blow them off, pointing to either their eternal damnation or a vague state in which you simply stop caring about their fate. Make your choice, though it might not matter. :eek:
My first response would be just to tell them firmly and politely that you are not interested. If, for whatever reason that doesn’t work, or you don’t want to do it then…
Meet them is a little clothing as you feel comfortable. Still wet from shower in an almost inadequate towel. If you are a guy, maybe a towel that covers you while you are standing by lets things slide out when sitting. For a lady, one the just barely covers.
Make them feel like they are intruding…