Everyone was ooh-ing and aah-ing - not mindful of the fact that in the mid-90's the baptism rate was around 350,000 per year.
Nor were they mindful of the fact that it was 31,237 LESS than the previous year.
2010 - 294,368
2011 - 263,131
George
Memorial attendance DECLINED by 2.4% in the US from 2011 to 2012!
by sir82 36 Replies latest jw friends
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St George of England
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slimboyfat
I may be wrong but I think the 2011 memorial was on a Sunday. Attendance for the memorial always seems to be higher when it lands on a Sunday. Perhaps because uninitiated members of the public attend who may confuse it with a regular sort of Easter service you get on Easter Sunday.
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redvip2000
If last year's memorial was on a Sunday and this years was during the week, then this is not surprising. We all know that all JWs will attend this, but for many others the fact that it's not on a weekend, will mean that they will not accept the invitation to go. Although i do think that the numbers for the memorial will start to shrink as well.
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MidwichCuckoo
Slimboyfat - I may be wrong but I think the 2011 memorial was on a Sunday.
Yes, last year's (2011) Memorial was definitely on a Sunday (I know, I was there). Very odd that I never got invited to this year's though. In fact, it was not mentioned to me at all.
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carla
"The Memorial is the "highlight" of the year - everybody & anybody remotely related to JWs attends: UBMs, studies, faders, DFs, etc."-- not this ubm! no family will go with my jw either! I did a good job anti witnessing before he could snag anyone to tag along.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Memorial attendance was down because many stayed home to watch the newest episode of Sparlock--the Warrior Wizard.
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DT
I think another factor may have been the ridiculous invitation they had this year. It asked some kind of question about how you viewed Jesus and then invited the person to come to the memorial to get the answer. If I were still in, I would have been too embarrassed to offer it to people. I'm sure that some of the witnesses felt the same way. Why spend time inviting people to the memorial when the Society can't take the time to produce an invitation that makes sense?
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
DT,
Was this the deal-breaker invite?
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/221916/1/2012-Memorial-Invitation-PDF
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Quendi
I don't think that the day of the week has any significant impact on Memorial attendance. If someone has a Watchtower Library CD, the figures for attendance going back to 1950 can be correlated with the day of the week for the observance. I think that the basic pattern is a yearly increase in attendance regardless of what night the observance falls on. This year's decline has to worry the Governing Body and its lieutenants although it may not surprise them. There has been no significant growth in the English-speaking congregations in the United States for some years now, and I wouldn't doubt that a finer analysis of the attendance figures in this country would substantiate this. Foreign language congregations probably saw increases compared to the English language ones.
But we can't go by what has happened in one year and turn that into some kind of projection about the future of the WTS. One data point is woefully insufficient for that. Let's see what happens over the next several years before we draw any conclusions. Nevertheless, this year's decline should at least make some people ask questions about the overall health of the organization. For if this is truly indicative of some serious failure, then turbulence lies ahead. I'd also be interested in the worldwide figures for both attendance and partakers.
Quendi
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