Year Report for New Zealand out - 2% increase.

by skin 10 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  skin

  Can some one tell me why the last month of the service year (Aug 07) has an almost 10% increase over the other months of this year? July 07 had 12868 pubs, whereas Aug 07 had 13852 pubs. The same increase happened in the previous Service year in the last month. Thats almost 1000 extra pubs reporting time. Where are they during the rest of the year?
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  MissingLink

  I would guess that if the numbers look bad - the sheep counters will change the way they count.
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  Black Sheep

  The weather in August is better than in July.
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  sir82

  Here's what happens in August:

  The congregation secretary has to fill out a report that is sent to the Society in early September. The report shows the count of regular, irregular, and inactive publishers for the whole service year (September - August). It obviously looks much better if there are fewer inactives and irregulars. So what does the secretary do?

  He goes back over the records for the past year. He sees that Jane Publisher did not turn in a report for, say, February, and Joe Brownnose didn't turn in a report for March. So he calls Jane & Joe and gets them to make up remember their field service reports for those months. He repeats this for every publisher who failed to turn in some reports in previous months.

  So, in addition to the people who actually went out in service in August, there are several, maybe dozens, of reports from prior months included in August's report. It's not that "so many extra people went out in service that month". It's just the last chance to catch up on missing reports before that big, final September report he has to send in.

  It happens every August in every congregation, in every country - a "new peak". Of course it is not a "new peak" at all - probably 15-25% of the reports are for previous months.

  Of course the Society knows full well this goes on, but they don't care - it looks impressive.
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  WTWizard

  I wonder how much is the extra hounding to make SURE you get your time in ON TIME during the month of August above and beyond the usual hounding every month. They also do more aggressive hounding for those who do not turn in a slip.

  Then again, I wonder how many times are fake. I am willing to bet that, in many congregations, anyone that is irregular or inactive and did not go out in field circus in August will have the hounder fake a report for them. That will make them look good on paper. However, it is no more honest or good for them long-term than what Enron did in 2000 and 2001. We all know what happened to Enron--seemingly invincible, and they went belly up. Hopefully the Watchtower Society will do the same thing.
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  RealElder

  sir82 has it exactly right. It drove me nuts to do this since it cooked the books so much. Some pubishers would give me 12 months of records. Some years I would report more publishers for August than we had in the congregation!
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  skin

  So the same person gets counted 2X in Aug because an earlier report was missed. That would be OK for the year average, but not as the total # of pubs for that month.

  Wait an see, next months report will be back down to that of July. -10% or a lost of 1000 pubs. At least its Incouraging to see this all time new peak for Aug
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  skin

  Update for 2014. 0% increase for New Zealand.
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  DJS

  I'm not surprised. New Zealand has been showing up on the happiest countries list for a while, due to a combination of economic and social conditions, including the reduction in religiousness of the people. What do the dubs have that would appeal to them? And if the real numbers were revealed, the WT would likely be losing members quickly in NZ.
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  breakfast of champions

  And remember, 0% "increase" really amounts to a ~1.5% decrease when you figure in born-ins.