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Christianity: Witnesses B‑class High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity B This article has been rated as B-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Jehovah's Witnesses (assessed as Top-importance).

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Traveling overseers

• (Section copied from Talk:Jehovah's_Witnesses#Traveling_overseers_appointed_by_GBJW)--Jeffro77 (talk) 10:59, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

The article Organizational structure of Jehovah's Witnesses should probably have two new subheadings under Governing Body, for:

• Organizational structure of Jehovah's Witnesses#Branch committees and
• Organizational structure of Jehovah's Witnesses#Traveling overseers.

That would make the place of those persons (role descriptions) more clear in the organizational flowchart. As is described elsewhere regarding JWs...

• Whereas a branch office may be under a corporation, branch committees answer directly to the GBJW.
• Whereas districts and circuits are under branches, district and circuit (and zone) overseers in significant respects are answerable primarily to the GBJW (the various branch office staff handles secondary workaday matters).

I'll try to get around to it, but am pretty busy IRL. --AuthorityTam (talk) 22:11, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is necessary to have branch committees in a separate section to branch offices. It should be adequate to indicate the line of authority in the relevant sections while maintaining separate sections. Having them as subsections of 'Governing Body' could imply they are part of the GB, unless the entire structure (including 'Congregations' etc) were adapted to a hierarchical heading structure, but that may result in an ungainly number of heading levels. On a related issue, I think that the Corporations section shouldn't be between Governing Body and other divisions subsidiary to the GB.--Jeffro77 (talk) 09:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Next step in the hierarchy

Let's see, Unbaptized publishers, Minors, Students, Associates ... I think we should be seeing a new section soon on "Unborn children of baptized Witnesses". From there it will be "Householders", followed by "Not at homes" "Do not calls", "Passers-by" and "Billions not yet contacted and who will die at Armageddon as a result". Where will this tedious and absurd detail end? BlackCab (talk) 23:00, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The Congregation subsections aren't really hierarchical, although each is listed in descending order of "privilege" and "responsibility".
The idea behind the new sections didn't originate with me.
See Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Jehovah's Witnesses#Jehovah's Witnesses and Family Members.
Editors may recall that a difference between an A and a B quality article is that the latter "may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher." See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Christianity/Assessment#Quality scale.
--AuthorityTam (talk) 05:19, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

There's detail and there's detail. I think it's getting a bit too damned detailed. The proposal for Jehovah's Witnesses and Family Members seemed to be aimed at creating an article critical of the disfellowshipping policy, so I'm not sure how the two ideas are connected. BlackCab (talk) 06:54, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of the article is not to provide all the jargon terms that JWs use for various levels of people, especially if those people are not even members. Nor is it necessary to elaborate on every context in which a particular JW term is used. It is also unnecessary to provide bleedingly obvious detail, such as the fact that 'violent people may be told they're not welcome'. I have trimmed and arranged the new sections accordingly.--Jeffro77 (talk) 09:01, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Regarding "associates"...to some extent, that's the issue: most denominations calculate "membership" from simple attendance rather than participation. It seems likely that JWs publish certain attendance statistics specifically so that academics and others can make more meaningful comparisons. What may be obvious to those familiar with the religion may be a point of confusion for a person beginning to study it. Regarding "children", I'm unconvinced that term is preferable to "minors"... The matter of children was just intended to be thorough, as is an explicit distinction between lower- and higher-graded articles.--AuthorityTam (talk) 21:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment of 'associates' for the same reason.

I don't have a strong preference for using either the word 'minors' or 'children'. But not, 'minor children' as it would be redundant.--Jeffro77 (talk) 08:44, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

In the United States, it is common for a parent and others to refer to her offspring as "my/her children" during their entire lives (that is, through the offsprings' adulthoods). The term "minor children" is not redundant in the context of this article section; aside from "publishers", participants in JWs' formal ministry must be BOTH 1) minor (younger than an accepted age of majority) AND 2) children/dependents of a "publisher". Because a "publisher" may have "adult children" or "minor children", the latter term is not redundant, and so I have reinstated the term "minor children" (rather than merely "children") in its initial instance in the relevant section. --AuthorityTam_{talk…contrib} 17:56, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

The context and general understanding of the term children is readily apparent, irrespective of broader colloquial use of the term.--Jeffro77 (talk) 07:02, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

City overseer

An editor alleged that Jehovah's Witnesses have discontinued the position and term "city overseer", but no source was cited to contradict the 2005 reference. Please do not remove the article's discussion of "city overseer" without sourcing the supposed change or building consensus here for that removal. --AuthorityTam_{talk…contrib} 17:56, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

'Theocracy'

I have removed the theological claim that the JW organisational structure is a 'theocracy', as it is a theological belief out of this article's scope. Analogous articles such as hierarchy of the Catholic Church do not make similar claims, even in the context of belief. The belief is suitably mentioned at beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses and in the main article, Jehovah's Witnesses.--Jeffro77 (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

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