by R.F. 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I just found out that from the DC I was assigned to that 17 got baptized this year. This was GREAT news to me.
That is a HUGE decline from previous years, with the average each year being about 50-55 at the DCs. I've noticed at the CAs and SADs the baptism numbers have decreased steadily over the years.
Is this sort of decline happening in many other areas??
I hope so.
Last year at our assembly there was only 1 baptized. (Born in it of course.)
When I was baptized nine years ago at that same assembly hall there was over a dozen of us.
The last assembly we attended was a circuit assembly, and NO one was baptised!! It was the first assembly I had ever been to my ENTIRE life when there was not one person baptised. It was weird hearing the talk with no one there to be baptised. They just gave the talk anyway, as a reminder of what our baptism meant to those of us baptised. It sure was weird though!!
Sincerely,
Lady Liberty
If you look at the following graph you can see that baptisms are down by about a third globally over the last ten years. In 1997 350,000 were baptised, since 2000 only about 250,000 get baptised a year.
I'm glad to have contributed to that "Stopped Publishing" statistic.
In my area, baptisms definitely are UP.
There were over 90 baptized at the Kansas City DC.
It seems to vary significantly from region to region, but overall as the previous graph shows, there is a definite downward trend in industrialized countries.
I'm hearing a lot of anedcotal stuff about most new baptisms consisting of young ones raised in the religion whereas traditionally among JWs, the major number of newly baptized ones were sucked in through the door-to-door work.
Our local dc is this weekend,so I'll probably get the baptism figure
sometime in the next week or so.
I know that baptisms have been falling in this area for years, and
have consisted mainly of the kids of jws. I haven't heard of anywhere
in the UK where there has been a rise in baptisms recently, so perhaps
yhey are running out of jw kids to baptise, or the blackmail isn't
working so well. Either way, any fall in the number joining is always
good news.
The real increase, that is non JW kids is in Africa, they have built heaps of KH their past few years due to the dynamic increase, as the last year book said. So in the western countries been flat, and as said mainly jw kids and through imigration of countries like China, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and some island states.
