Reporting “field service time” is a well-known practice among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Each month the individual Witnesses reports his or her time spent in the public ministry as outlined by Watchtower.
What is not commonly known today is that a few decades back Watchtower had Witnesses report this activity on a weekly basis. Here is what the weekly report form looked like:
Experienced old-timers among the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses remember those days and the tedious clerical work of keeping up with all those reports from individual “publishers”[1]
The time-consuming activity of tabulating all those weekly reports was made worse in those days because of the then practice to create and maintain large display boards showing the annual congregation activity on a month-by-month basis.[2-4]
Marvin Shilmer
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References:
1. Publisher is a term used by Watchtower to designate individuals who are deemed qualified by local elders to be acknowledged by the congregation for their time reported in the public ministry as outlined by Watchtower.
2. Informant, published by Watchtower, January 1943 p. 2.
3. The following image from page 3 of the memorial flier for former governing body member Theodore Jaracz shows one of these displays in the background:
4. The Watchtower, January 15, 1955, p.41:
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