Pandemic doesn't stop ministry for Jehovah's Witnesses

TOLEDO — Jon and Lily Adams have lost track of the numbers of letters they've posted. "It's a lot," Mrs. Adams offered with a laugh. She and her husband settle in to write letter after letter at their home in Maumee on Fridays and Saturdays, the days they dedicate to ministry through their kingdom hall. Before the onset of the pandemic, they were joining members of their congregation in fanning out across the neighborhood; these days, they're sharing largely the same message in a more socially distant medium. "Usually I start off by explaining that I'm not able to come and speak with them in person because of everything that's going on with the pandemic, but I still wanted to share something with them," Mr. Adams said of the individualized letters he's been writing. "We address that in all the problems that we are facing, the Bible gives us hope for the future," his wife added. "With everything that is going on, it's sad that people don't have any hope." In lieu of the face-to-face interactions that are integral to their ministry, Jehovah's Witnesses have been writing millions of letters to their neighbors and acquaintances across the United States. At the kingdom hall on Richards Road in Toledo, where three of the area's 20 congregations gather, Mark Smith estimated that Jehovah's Witnesses have posted between 700 and 1,000 letters since the onset of the pandemic. They're checking in, offering a word of encouragement and sharing the faith that they suggest others might also find a source of help and hope in these unusual times. "Congregants are really getting into writing letters," Mr. Smith said. A local media representative, he's among those who have shifted to the written word during the pandemic. "Even though we're not going door-to-door anymore, we're still covering our territory." Local Jehovah's Witnesses would have been gearing up this week for the first of two regional conventions that had been slated for Toledo, which has hosted such gatherings annually since 2005. But they're instead staying home as conventions are staged virtually this year, in a shift that reflects the seriousness with which the organization is approaching the pandemic as well as the way its restrictions are reshaping their experiences in ministry. In addition to barring adherents from door-to-door and other forms in-person witnessing, the organization has instructed that the doors on kingdom halls remain closed for now across the United States. Officials are monitoring the situation, but do not yet have dates in mind to reopen. Robert Hendriks, U.S. spokesman for the Jehovah's Witnesses, said their rationale comes back to two guiding principles – their belief in the sanctity of life and their love of neighbor. "God views life as sacred, so even though we long to be together and long to have meetings and even long to do our public ministry, clearly that wasn't in line with that principle," he said. "And the second and closely related principle is love of neighbor," he continued. "We love our brothers and sisters, we love our neighbors, we love our communities. We love cities like Toledo. And we realize that meeting publicly, going from door to door, standing on street corners, no longer was in line with that principle of loving our neighbor." Their annual conventions are important, he said. Approximately 7,000 attendees were expected this year to fill the SeaGate Convention Centre, first for a convention in English and then for one in Spanish. But when they weighed that importance against their concern for life and neighbor, Mr. Hendriks said, cancellation "became a much easier decision." This year's convention program, themed "Always Rejoice!", is being released in six translated installments, which will continue to run through Aug. 29-30. For more information, go jw.org. In some of their more recent letters, Jehovah's Witnesses like Mr. and Mrs. Adams have been including invitations to log into the weekly installments. It's comparable to the printed fliers they would have been handing out in person in the lead-up to the convention in a typical year. Mr. and Mrs. Adams said they were already writing letters to some extent even before the pandemic, as a way to expand their ministry. Mr. Adams, for example, was already in the habit of spending some time at a keyboard each day before he left for work. Mr. Hendriks described letters as a form of alternative witnessing, and echoed the local couple's experience in saying that Jehovah's Witnesses were already writing them to a much lesser extent before the onset of the pandemic. That's particularly in cases where the writer was elderly or housebound, for example, he said – or perhaps where a neighbor's guard dog dissuades the preferred knock on the front door. But that was "a very small percentage of our ministry," Mr. Hendriks said. Today, he continued, "that has just exploded." In the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, where face-to-face interactions are similarly a key part of ministry for young adults, the pandemic forced a similar shift in approach. The church hastily brought home thousands of missionaries from overseas assignments in the spring. As many have begun to continue their missions in their home countries, church officials told The Associated Press in June, it will be with a new focus on online proselytization. Facebook, Zoom and similar digital outlets are expected to reshape efforts going forward. "The leaders of our church have been asking us: What are we learning from this pandemic that will help us become better, become more efficient," said Brent H. Nielson, executive director of the church's missionary department, told the AP. "We've learned that finding people, teaching people online is much more effective than trying to meet people in person on a bus or on a street corner or somewhere else. This will change what we do, I think, forever." A hand-written letter is an alternative that tends to catch a receiver's attention, Mr. Hendriks and Mr. Smith said. The objective in their letters isn't so much to recruit new members as it is to share their faith, suggesting however subtly or overtly that the reader might benefit in this season of their life by turning to God and to the Bible. Mr. Hendriks describes it as "looking to express our love to people and to open up a solution to them that has helped us, and maybe they haven't considered it." At the world headquarters in New York, he's heard stories of letters that have resonated with the receivers. In Toledo, where Jehovah's Witnesses have been methodical in reaching addresses across the city, as well as continuing communications with those they had already met through their door-to-door ministry, Mr. Smith has seen it and heard it, too. He thinks of one congregant who received a positive response from a family. She didn't know it when she sent her letter, he said, but the family that received her letter had just lost a loved one to the coronavirus. "There are those out there that this letter hits them at exactly the right time," Mr. Hendriks said. "It's amazing some of the experiences that we've had around the United States that have really proved the effectiveness of this." ___ ©2020 The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) Visit The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) at www.toledoblade.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.