Again post and it gives me hope.
LITS
The effect we are having on the Watchtower is HUGE
by jwfacts 140 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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sir82
the Borg sees it as well.
I absolutely have to agree.
They obsessively collect collect and collect numbers. They know the average number of hours each of the 3 pioneers on Butumba Butumba Island spend in field service each month, and they know the average attendance of the Theocratic Ministry School for the month of July 2009 in the Herpaderp congregation in Butterfinger Idaho. They don't report "1.5 billion hours spent preaching" but instead "1,518,467,893 hours spent preaching".
What's the point of collecting all this detail if they don't pore over graphs like the one above?
Unfortunately for them, original ideas on how to fix the problem are about as rare as intelligent political discussions on the internet. So they wring their hands, and keep writing the same stuff (albeit in 3rd grade English, rather than the 8th grade English they used to write in), and keep following the exact same format for meetings, field service, assemblies, elders meetings, you name it, that they've used for the past 70 years...and somehow hope "maybe it will work better this year".
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sizemik
sir82 . . .
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein -
the-illuminator81
I wonder if they also track the effectiveness of their new bible study books.. like the bible teach book? Because if I look at the graph, that book isn't helping.
I think another avalanche effect is in families where more and more of the relatives are da'd, df'd or inactive. If your parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles etc. etc. are no longer going to the meetings the fear of shunning is a lot weaker.
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NewChapter
Something else just occurred to me, and you guys probably already discussed this in a thread cuz I never think of anything you haven't already discussed. I think that growth is even slower than it appears because of the 15 minutes service for the sick and elderly. If I understand this right, the borg gets it's numbers by how many people turned in time that month. No time, no count. I don't remember the year "Jehovah so lovingly" gave the option of reporting 15 minutes for the sick and elderly, but before that they had to add up their time until it equaled an hour and THEN submit it and be counted. So some of that number may be people that historically only got counted 4 times a year. Now they get counted every month. It's an artifical hike, because they were always there, but not counted. You'd think their numbers would have increased quite a bit, but they continue to decrease, even with that slight of hand.
NC
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EntirelyPossible
While it is encouraging, be sure to not mistake correlation for causation. Even at that, as a percentage of the population, they have been growing faster than the population of the world and in in 2010 roughly matched at 0.001 as a percent of the population. For instance, in 1987, they were 0.0006% and in 1999 they were .00094% of the population.
But, growth is still slowing. It may just be that it is normalizing with population along with the internet or any number of things.
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Old Goat
I’m passing on someone else’s reasoning, and I’m not sure I’m doing it well. In a fairly lengthy conversation with a Witnesses historian (He’s a “true believer” and thinks I am too), he likened the “apostate” presence on the Internet to three former periods of Watchtower history. He said that in the 1880s-1890s there were at least eight and maybe more competing magazines debating and trying to “expose” Russell’s theology. Watchtower readers also read these magazines. The same situation happened again with the divisions after Russell’s death. In the 1950s the same place was filled by some prominent and some obscure Apostate-written books.
He believes that the opposition fueled changes and “refinements.” While it created tension and disaffection (He named cases but don’t expect me to remember them. Many of the names didn’t click.) it drove doctrinal development and social change among Watchtower readers. And he said that “authoritarian figures such as religious leaders are not prone to self-examination; sometimes outside pressure accomplishes what wouldn’t otherwise happen.”
At one point I asked him if we weren’t supposed to “hate” apostates. He raised his bushy eyebrows and said, “They don’t generate enough emotion for me to hate them.” He sees us as a kind of Emory Cloth or filter. If I understood what he was trying to say, he thinks apostates have made the Watchtower rethink, reassess and change in some degree former practice. He thinks many who would have pursued baptism and then would have left don’t get baptized at all.
The conversation was long and rambling, but I think that’s the gist of it. In his view we’re part of an inevitable and continuing disaffection. He talked a lot about why people become anti-Witness crusaders, quoted some sociologist about justification. So there you have it … We’re part of an inevitable historical movement, part of normal religious tension that arises with any aggressive, Biblo-centric religion. I feel so special now -
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cantleave
Thanks JWfacts - great analysis.
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sir82
I wonder if they also track the effectiveness of their new bible study books.. like the bible teach book?
I think they do.
1995 was when the "Knowledge" book came out, replacing the "Live Forever" book. As the chart shows, publisher growth dipped significantly. New baptisms dropped from about 350,000 a year in the mid-90's to about 250,000 a year by the early 2000's.
The numnuts in Brooklyn, as I noted above, are too nitwitty to realize the problem is the 3 things (and more) that are noted above. Their thinking was "Oh, our new book must be defective".
So they released the "Bible Teach" book in, what was it, 2005 or 2006? They had previously waited about 14-15 years between study book revisions, but this time it was sooner - 10 years or so.
And since then, the growth rate has inched up slightly, from 1.5 - 2% growth to 2.5 - 3% growth, and they're dancing for joy like their hair is on fire.
They're convinced that "the new book is a marvel!" and "Jehovah is blessing the work!" Once again, they are too nitwitty to realize that the slight uptick is due to economic uncertainty - in times of stress, people turn to religion (among other things) for a sense of comfort & hope. All religions are enjoying a bump up, at least in the US, and the rising tide is lifting the WTS boat as well.
Once the economy improves (as it inevitably will), and the growth rates dip down to the 1% range again, there will be more hand-wringing and late night governing body meetings, and, after months and months and months of deliberation, they will reach the conclusion....
"Hey! We know how to fix it! We need....a NEW STUDY BOOK!"
We need a face-palm emoticon here.
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Terry
The best target audience for JW's is the willfully uninformed.
There are people who do not keep up with anything going on the world beyond sports.
The barely read anything containing factual information either. Fashion, cooking, gossip may fill the void.
The data base in the uninformed person's mind is largely a pot pourri of hand-me-down opinions, second hand urban myth, local consensus and family prejudice.
These people are easy prey IF you can catch their interest with something sensational.
Like what? Oh, I dunno--how about THE END OF THE WORLD??