Here's the reason for the 3% jump in publishers for the past year (page 4)

dinah

That's cos if immigration EVER does crack down the WTS will be there for them.

Productive moral citizen, yadda yadda yadda

From personal experience, Hispanic immigrants are persons that come from a culture that absolutely believes in the existence of God. They are engulfed completely by such believes as a supreme Creator, the devil, demons, witchcraft, spells,etc.. They learn these things from the entire village almost unconciously, as if by osmosis; no-one even thinks about the possibility that there may not be a god. Kids learn about God and other bible related matters from their mates, on the street corners, or wherever kids mingle. There really aren't many grownups taking time to teach these young ones about the bible.

But, when they come to America hey, here's someone, at their door, ready and willing to teach them some things about which they already believe, yet never studied. God, Satan, witchcraft, spells, everlasting life, right there in the bible. Now they don't have to learn it from fellow workers or schoolmates, they have a real teacher who is willing to provide them with their own copy of the bible.

I don't believe they join up because they have more time on their hands, no, now they can study and learn about that which they have always believed, believed without a doubt. Had they been reared in a society of scientists, perhaps their core beliefs and weaknesses would be different.

My thoughts on this matter, from my personal experience.

MissingLink

I thought it was worth mentioning that 30 countries either had a zero or a negative (growth ?)

I was thinking about this. Take for example Poland. It lost about 1000 members. But this was less than 1% so the report shows 0%. If all of those 1000 jws moved to Ireland (and a LOT of them did), then that would be a 20% increase! This is because of our small population in comparison to Poland. I know this doesn't account for the toal 3% growth, but it explains why numbers are rising in some educated areas where you'd expect them to be dropping.

Soledad

Absolutely. I used to note this all the time in the congregation that I had attended. The increase was purely due to immigration. I can only think of 1 family, in 20 plus years, that came in from door to door work. The congregation that my mom now attends continues to grow with Portuguese speaking immigrants from Brasil and parts of Africa, not so much from Latin America anymore. Even among Hispanics the congregations don't seem to grow as much as they used to. The kids are being raised here in the US and they leave once they reach a certain age.

Black Sheep

I notice that the Cook Islands have negative growth, despite the amount of effort my family puts in to boosting it.

The Cooks have very few immigrants.

Gill

My parents mentioned after they had been to their district convention that there was a section for '3000 new Polish brothers' who had recently joined the cult. These came from a large part of the UK.

PoppyR

I dont think it's the whole picture but definitely a glimmer of it.

In the UK we have a huge immigrant population, I have a friend who is a qualified teacher and earns so little in his home country (Hungary) that he can work here on the minimum wage doing manual work and support himself and send money home too. It's mostly European such as Polish, Russian and Albanian.

We have publishers learning Albanian and I heard the other day one of them, (not even a pioneer) has 15 studies.

Imagine the picture painted though, you arrive in a strange country, are not altogether welcomed by it's people and suddenly you can join a group of happy, friendly people speaking your language.

Dont discount the baby boom though, remember the WT is far behind, when I had my children (14 years ago) it was much frowned on, now more and more couples are realising the end is nowhere close and are starting families late in life. This would account for publishers just coming up now.

Poppy

M.J.

Yes, there were plenty of spanish speaker baptisms this year in my neck of the woods.

In some regions in the US the Spanish congregations outnumber the English. In other regions they are gaining ground.

That said, I live in a region with a very significant population of Mexican immigrants. I calculated the baptisms at the last local Spanish DC at about 1.6% of the attendance. But it looked pretty impressive considering the large number of people there. Even factoring in baptisms at the other assemblies, I think the Spanish-speaking baptism rate is probably well less than 3% in this area.

I know that in the English district, there seems to have been much fewer baptisms, accounting for a much lower percent increase.

So overall I think the 3% overall growth is higher than what was seen around here. It would be interesting to see a state-by-state breakdown.

I'm not sure if I totally buy into the numbers. But of course I don't know how much accountability is built into their method of reporting.

steve2

Dont discount the baby boom though, remember the WT is far behind, when I had my children (14 years ago) it was much frowned on, now more and more couples are realising the end is nowhere close and are starting families late in life. This would account for publishers just coming up now.

The baby boom hypothesis works only up to about age 16 or so when the children born and raised in the religion begin to seriously drift away.

Some time back - late 1980s - I did some calculating of all the children who had been born in local congregations in the then past ten years. Out of one local congregation of just under 100 publishers, the children born in the ten-year period was close to 90! Given that there were then 11 congregations in the circuit, you do the math. These numbers alone would have by now led to almost doubling the sizes of the congregations, quite apart from children who were born before this ten year period or after. This doesn't even take into acount people who are converted to the rleigion from the door-to-door work.

Instead, what do we see in New Zealand? Years of negative or zero growth of active publishers, with a 2% increase this year better explained by the huge influx into foreign language congregations. Adding to this is the anecdotal evidence that very very few children born and raised in the religion become active adult members.

jam

there are strong ties too the catholic faith from those that come from latin american. I have notice also there are strong family ties.What i have seen is , there are families experiencing division due to their newly found faith. This thay can see, it divide families.

Here's the reason for the 3% jump in publishers for the past year