Jehovah’s Witnesses to knock on fewer doors

Church says members don’t have to track time spent proselytizing

Jehovah’s Witnesses are well known for proselytizing door to door and handing out their literature on city streets.

Less known to the general public, their adherents have been required for the past century to make regular reports to their congregation’s leaders on how many hours they put into such ministry.

Those hourly reports were a key metric for a congregation’s spiritual vitality and a factor in deciding who rose to leadership. Former adherents tell of pressure to meet these quotas and guilt when they didn’t.

But in a historic shift, that practice ended this month.

For the first time since 1920, leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses have removed the hours-reporting requirement for rank-and-file adherents.

“Our ministry involves much more than counting time,” Samuel Herd, a member of the denomination’s Governing Body, said in announcing the policy change to applause at the October annual meeting of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, a legal entity central to the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ work.

Herd said the Governing Body is “confident that you dear ones will continue to render wholesouled service,” motivated not by obligation but devotion to God, whom they call Jehovah. But he acknowledged leaders would have to adapt.

“You will have to know the flock well,” he said. “Evaluating a congregation’s spiritual health or a brother’s qualifications to serve [in leadership positions such] as an elder or ministerial servant will not simply be a matter of computing averages, time spent in the ministry, literature placements and so forth.”

“This is one of the biggest changes I ever remember” in the organization, said former elder Martin Haugh of York Haven, Pa.

Removal of the hours requirement applies to “publishers,” or rank-and-file adherents involved in active ministry. They will now only need to file monthly reports saying whether they’ve conducted any evangelistic activity and Bible studies, without specifying hours.

Those who sign up for more extensive service, known as “pioneers” or “missionaries,” will continue to record their hours.

Skeptical former adherents, however, are speculating different motives are at play — that adherents’ ministry hours have dropped so noticeably, particularly since the pandemic.

When numbers were growing, “it was always brought up at meetings or in their publications to show the growth of the organization,” said Mitch Melin of Washington state, a former adherent now working to bring awareness to what he calls the “darker side” of the organization, such as its control of Witnesses and the practice of shunning certain members.

He speculated that “if they’re declining, it might be embarrassing to show” the numbers.

Jarrod Lopes, a spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses based at their world headquarters in New York state, disputed this notion. He said ministry time had been increasing yearly until the pandemic, peaking above 2 billion hours worldwide.

Former elder Haugh, who left over what he saw as the denomination’s mishandling of sexual abuse and other matters, said the hours requirement was once central in adherents’ lives.

“It showed you how loyal you were to Jehovah by how much time was put in,” he said.

Haugh recalled how a regional supervisor yelled at elders if their congregation’s performance lagged. Haugh said marriages broke up over spouses’ different levels of commitment, and people who were judged as failing at ministry would spiral into depression.

“Now they don’t have to have that stigmatization that they’re not putting in the hours,” he said.