Just want to say thanks to Bhunter who kindly put my scans up on the forum! I wasn't too sure how to do it, but much better now everyone can see them!
Cheers
Poppy xx
SERVICE REPORT 2005 : WATCHTOWER FEB 1ST 2006
by BluesBrother 307 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Simon
"This good news of the Kingdom WILL be preached in ALL the inhabited earth for a witness to ALL the nations"
Yeah, unfortunately this was written by some backward nomad without knowledge of the planet. Everyone knows that the population is increasing way faster than they are preached to. Unless people stop giving birth then there is no way that everyone would ever get 'the message' and have a chance to be 'saved' (from their doctrines) which means ...
God will kill little kids and babies and blame them.
Nice god !
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purplesofa
Hey Observador,
Where did you get that picture? I recognize the prefixes to be from the Judsonia/Searcy Arkansas area but do not recognize them to go with the picture which would have been the Bald Knob Kingdom Hall that did sell about a year ago.
purps
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alamb
I am shocked every time I see the figures for Japan. When I was a pioneer, (80's early 90's Approx) we were always directed to their statistics and they were nearing 90,000 pioneers when the hours were 100 per month. That isn't near where they are now. Information is power and the research is more available, I suppose, to keep new ones from being duped.
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Dansk
YEP, a regular 0% increase IS stable, I would say
Ian
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observador
Purple,
this is from northern Rhode Island (area code 401).
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Check_Your_Premises
The reports from elders, COs and DOs is true... they really are loosing people faster than they are coming in. If they had more coming in than leaving then the number of Publishers Increase would be greater than the number baptized.
Well you don't have to be baptized to be a publisher. So an increase in baptizims doesn't mean an one to one increase in publishers. Right?
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David2002
Poppy,
Regarding your comment:
"81,675, so again, out of the 247,631 baptised, they lost... nearly 166,000.."
The Publishers figure include both baptized and non-baptized members that report their formal preaching activity. So it would be incorrect to state that there was a loss of 166,000 since many of them may have already been counted as non-baptized publishers. In many cases non-baptized publishers are counted for 2-3 years prior to being baptized. These may include children of Witnesses as well as those who are studying with the Witnesses. The number of publishers does not include those new publishers in training which do not report their hours. So the number is very conservative. True the overall global increase was small, just 1.3 percent. But you got to remember, again, that the Witness way of counting members is extremely conservative. If you ever counted the number of individuals regurlarly attending the Kingdom Hall Bible meetings, in most cases the attendance figures would at least double the number of average publishers. This is still the general trend. Unlike others churches, which count members that attend meetings once a year, or count those who once came up to the podium to "accept the Lord" (but may have eventually left the church), the Witnesses only count the members that are actively preaching.
- David
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David2002
Observador,
Actually, in the US and other countries, they have been building more KHs. In cases in which KH's have been sold (which as happened in Florida and Colorado), the local brothers needed to do so in order to buy or build a larger KH. Meeting attendance continues to exceed the number of publishers in the US as well as in other countries. This means that most likely larger percentage increases are on their way. Even i the US, the 1,035,000 maxium number of publishers was larger the 1,019,000 max of last year. That max was reached during the last part of the service year which may indicate a larger growth trend in the US during the year 2006. (The reason the annual report shows a "0" percent growth rate for the US is because the growth of the average number of publishers, which was about 995,000, was less than 1%. It appears that if the growth is less than 1% in a given country, then 0% percent growth is listed. However, in the US case, there appears to be a greater growth trend for the US, since the 1.035 million figure, from what I understand, was reported later in the service year.)
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observador
David,
your point about the criteria JWs use is well taken. At any rate, though, there was a decrease because, by the same criteria, that 1.3 percent increase was what 2.4? last year.
Anyway one cuts it, they're in troubles. If the criteria is the same, they're decreasing; if the criteria is changing, they're dishonest.
What is worse is that, in my opinion at least, they're both decreasing and WT is dishonest. Here's why: think about this 15 minute rule which was non-existent about 2 years ago. Think about this whole host of rules about when to count a non-baptized member as a "publisher", which was also non-existent as far as I know not so long ago.
They keep getting ever more creative about how to count someone...
...and I won't be surprised if they drop the whole statistics section in the Watchtower if those numbers don't improve soon.