Hmmmm, fascinating subject. Before I left in October, 2003, I know personally that my congregation "lost" three elders within a few months; one older brother and his wonderful wife (she was a friend to me when I needed a kindly ear to listen to my "woes") moved to Florida for their retirement; their son, a nice guy but not someone who ever struck me as a "pillar of strength", who shocked everyone in the congregation when he married a woman from South America he met through some kind of Witness internet dating service (!!!!), resigned as an elder before the wedding; and a third, the husband of one of the women who was one of my bible study teachers, was df'd a few weeks before I mailed in my DA letter.
During this time, other than my DAing, I'm not aware that we lost any other members - other than the pioneer sister who was df'd at the same time as Brother ___; so that means there were 3 less elders to do the same amount of work that (not sure of the exact number, I never paid attention to that sort of thing because I never relied on the elders for anything; actually, I wanted them to stay the heck away from me) 8 men did before, for a congregation of about 120 people.
Yep, and there weren't that many younger ones coming up behind. Looking backward now, I think it was because the elders who were in my congregation were basically good guys and they wanted to appoint other good guys too, not just fill the ranks with warm bodies. But by now, perhaps they haven't had any choice. Or maybe the congregation has been halved. I know shortly after I started going to meetings in 1993 about 20% of the people who'd attended were sent to another smaller congregation because we were considered too large, or something like that. I didn't understand it at the time, but with hindsight I see now that the other congregation had imploded and the WTBTS was trying to salvage things by moving over a large chunk of people (including 2 elders and their wives) from our congregation to theirs. Get this - we shared the same kingdom hall!
