2014 Watchtower Publisher Statistics (page 3)

Simon

The Kingdom halls are over flowing with pedofiles and not a safe place to bring your children according to all the latest news.

That seems to be a very extreme claim to make - do you have anything to back it up?

Is child abuse becoming the 'Benghazi' of exJW's?

OneEyedJoe

I'm curious about what warrants these additional congregations in the first place. With 275,581 baptized, this amounts to an average of 2.38 additional publishers per congregation (using the 2014 number of congregations, or 2.42 using the 2013 number of congregations). This certainly isn't enough to warrant all these new congregations. It's not as if large numbers of people are being converted in a local area to the point where new congregations are being formed purely out of new converts.

Looking at it another way, it makes a little more sense:

dividing the newly baptized into the newly formed congregations gives us 173 new cultists in each new congregation. Of course, the effective growth would have to take in account the number that stopped publishing to get the true net growth. Once you do that, you're down to about 106 new ones per new congregation, which is a pretty typical congregation size.

One thing that's for sure - the big J definitely isn't "speeding up the work" and the need for new KHs has dropped significantly in the past couple years. This stands in direct contrast to all the cult's raving on about how many new KHs are needed in order to drive up donations.

Crazyguy

With most of the new baptism s being born in theres no need for new seats and the so called need for kh is a big fat lie. I wonder why the number of ones leaving dropped way off in 2009 and hasn't gone back up much since then?

OneEyedJoe

With most of the new baptism s being born in theres no need for new seats and the so called need for kh is a big fat lie. I wonder why the number of ones leaving dropped way off in 2009 and hasn't gone back up much since then?

Baptisms of born-ins still have to come from somewhere - even if the number is solely indicative of the birth-rate of JWs, they still need to split congregations to make room as families grow.

With the 1500 or so new congregations, they'd only need about 300 KHs assuming they can get full utilization of them. Of course, this also assumes they were already at capacity, which probably isn't the case. I guess there is probably some additional need for new KHs on top of that due to the churn they're experiencing - there's a lot of growth in developing countries, and none in the 1st world (any growth there is almost certainly from immigrants). This actually compliments their business model quite handily because it means that they actually do need to build more KHs. What they don't mention is that they're pocketing the money from the KHs sold where there's decline, but they're not spending that money to build the new ones where they're needed.

Regardless, the need for new KHs isn't anything near what you get the impression it is from all the letters and articles that come out of them. The need for donations for these new builds is even more misrepresented.

watson

Wondering if we can get the stats for the US only. Mature country, great internet access.

joe134cd

I live in a first world country. In around the time I walked out the door (in a congregation of 100 pubs) there were 6 people who walked and 3 more disfellowshipped. 4 of those 6 were a family of converts (good steady people I might add, and they will probably never return). Since I have left I have heard of 1 other who no longer goes plus another 3 who more or less are also inactive. So you could say with in the space of about 2 years they have lost nearly 10% of the congregation. As far as I know the 3 that were disfellowshiped have since returned and I am not aware of any new converts or people moving in.

freddo

I do hope that 2014 is the high water mark. You know with all the hoopla about the 100th ~~Birthday~~ Anniversary celebrations and now all fading away to a new year and no armageddy.

A high peak in August 2014 coinciding with the international conventions and a final twitch of enthusiasm before more samey old meetings.

A high memorial peak as this "may be the last one ever" subliminal message.

More money grabbing.

A guy can dream eh?

Brokeback Watchtower

That seems to be a very extreme claim to make - do you have anything to back it up?

Not really it was a hyperbole. But say there is 1 pedophile every 3 or 4 congregations that for sure would be worthy of such a statement with no exaggeration, I'm sure the number of pedophiles operating incognito is in the thousands in which case such a statement would not be that far from the truth.

Crazyguy

Oneeyedjoe, you make a good point growth is going to happen but out side of a few third world countries it looks a though most growth comes from born ins. And if you look at the numbers of this past year they say 275+ baptisms but 106K missing so that leaves 169,581 newbies. But lets take out the third world growth and what we have left is kids already filling seats since birth that now are baptized so no real need for any new halls except where these third world countries are.

Bingo great news no real growth and no new halls in any modern country that's why they are pushing more people to share one halls.

It looks as though the internet is working to shut these creeps down, the numbers probably go up in times of distress or at least stay the same during these times but when the world is Ok the numbers of ones leaving increase. Lets hope these numbers go way up now that 2014 is over!!

Viviane

I would live to see these numbers for the past five years as a per capita number. I can whip up a spreadsheet to show that if anyone has raw numbers for the JWs.

2014 Watchtower Publisher Statistics

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