Question Box

◼ Who should fill out coupons and Internet requests?

Our publications often contain coupons that can be filled out and sent to the branch office to request literature or a visit from Jehovah’s Witnesses. In addition, our Web site www.watchtower.org can be used to request a Bible study. These provisions are helping many to learn the truth. However, problems have resulted when publishers have used these tools to make arrangements for their relatives or others to receive spiritual assistance.

Some who have been sent unsolicited literature from the branch office have complained, feeling that our organization is harassing them and has them on some sort of mailing list. Publishers who have received a notice to call on someone who did not personally request a visit have found themselves in an awkward position when the individual expressed irritation. Therefore, requests made on our Web site or by means of coupons should come from interested ones themselves and not from publishers in behalf of others. When such requests are identified as being sent in behalf of someone else, they are generally not processed.

How, then, can we assist a relative or an acquaintance spiritually? If you would like him to receive literature, why not send it directly to him as a gift? If he has expressed interest and wishes to be visited by Witnesses but you do not know how to contact the elders in the local congregation, you should submit a Please Follow Up (S-43) form to your congregation secretary, who will review it and forward it to the branch office. However, if the interested one is confined to a prison, a jail, a substance-abuse facility, or a state hospital, you should not contact the branch office in his behalf. Rather, you could encourage him to contact the brothers who visit the facility or to write personally to the branch office.