Four congregations need to merge into two just to get some decent numbers. A sister from my old hall called me a few weeks ago to let me know that the congregation was moving to another hall. When I asked why they needed to move she said it was due to the fact that meeting attendance had diminished a lot in the past two years.
The drop must have been significant because all four congregations used to be huge for example Congregation #1 was the one I belonged to, they had 23-27 regular pioneers and about 7 aux. pioneers, book studies were huge over 20 ppl ( the society asks that book studies be between 15-20 max) and you also have to add the 102 publishers,meeting attendance was always really good.
Congregation #2 had about 100 publishers but was less "spiritual" and had only about 10 pioneers but they also always had good attendance.
Congregation #3 was just like number 2 but with less pioneers, now we have congregation #4 which was HUGE, they have a huge Kingdom hall and I remember going to a meeting there and having a hard time finding a seat, one of the elders told me they had over 150 publishers! And now attendance is so bad for these four congregations that they had to merge them into two.
The sister was really upset because she said a lot of the publishers did not want to have to move to another hall, many of the older sisters went to the elders and explained that their spouses ( who are not jws) would not be willing to drive them to a hall that was 20 min away from their old hall because of the cost of gas, they are also older women and it would be really hard for many of them to walk to the new hall and lets be honest in SoCal it gets really hot during the summer how the hell do they expect these women to walk to the meetings in the summer heat?
The sisters threw a fit and finally the elders agreed to have the congregation vote on whether to move or not, well before the vote was to happen Elder D went in front of the congregation and said that the society REALLY felt that they should move to the other hall, well we all know that when the society says jump you don't question it you just say "how high?" so everyone voted for the move.
Personally I don't care where they go to because I have no plans of ever going to another meeting but I love alot of these women and it hurts to see them be put in this situation, I know that they will crawl to the meetings if they have to because they believe so strongly in the society but why should they have to kill themselves to get to the meetings?
Lola