Memorial attendance DECLINED by 2.4% in the US from 2011 to 2012!
by sir82 36 Replies latest jw friends
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TheOldHippie
The day of the week definitely is important in some countries, the more wealthy ones. If it is at the beginning or end of the Easter week, people are at home, but if it is in the middle of it, people are vacationing. With "people" I here mean those turning up once a year, at the Memorial, and perhaps a couple of times more.
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TheOldHippie
Bahamas - Bermuda - how many US JWs have vacations there at Easter time? Or is the participation mainly local?
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InquiryMan
good point tOH
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sir82
Blondie's chart shows worldwide attendance - does anyone have similar numbers for US only?
Based on Blondie's chart, there have been other recent years in which there was an overall drop from the prior year, such as 1996, 1998, and 2005.
So it looks like a decrease is not as rare as I had thought.
However, there does not appear to have been a drop for 2 successive years, at least in the recent past.
So I guess we have to wait until next year's attendance count to see if a trend is developing.
I would tend to disagree that day of the week makes a big difference, at least for a Sunday vs. Wednesday. Few "fence-sitters" would be motivated to end their typical relaxing Sunday and head out to a "church service" on a Sunday night at 8 or 9 PM - at least that's how I would feel!
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elder-schmelder
Are the drops in the past, from the new generation understandings?
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WTWizard
I hope the decline is real. That seems to be the wimpiest "holiday" I have ever read about or heard of--not to mention that, for a Christian religion, the observance seems awful Jewish to me. Why else do they reject the Jesus they claim to abide by? And, as if that wasn't bad enough, they don't even do a proper Jewish holiday (or a proper pagan one, for that matter--they reject Astaroth as much as they reject Jesus).
People may be more inclined to attend these wastefests when they fall on Sunday. But the witlesses always make special arrangements for getting the day off no matter when it falls. It is like the Jewish Yom Kippur, Christians getting Christmas, or Muslims getting Eid Al Fitr off. No matter what, they are going to find a way to get that day off. Which is nice to see the dropoff beginning--hopefully more people are seeing what a waste of time it really is to go and waste 45 minutes before passing a plate of stale crackers and a glass of spoiled grape juice (no one partaking).
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slimboyfat
I would tend to disagree that day of the week makes a big difference
Well you would be wrong. Where I think it makes a difference is with Bible studies and aquaintances who get dragged along and would be more likely to agree to go to Sunday evening religious event than midweek.
Nevertheless it is a fairly big drop over one year.
However the trend for the past however many decades has been for the memorial attendance to increase faster than the publisher number, as the nebulous cloud of vague adherents around the organization grows more than the committed hard core.
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Quendi
I strongly disagree with your conclusion, slimboyfat, that the day of the week has a great impact on attendance. Witnesses put on a full court press for this occasion, going out of their way to get Bible studies, family members, faders, and others to come. They make no effort on behalf of the disassociated and disfellowshipped as I well know, but they do for everyone else. They many times bring these people themselves, not counting on them coming on their own. So they will arrange transportation and other assistance.
Where the day of the week may have an impact is on families with school-age children. If more than one congregation is using a kingdom hall, some families--Witness and non-Witness--may choose to attend the earlier observance to make sure their children are in bed at a reasonable hour. If the ceremony takes place on a Friday or Saturday night, then those concerns aren't as important to these families.
As for the contention that this 2.4% decline is a big drop, it is all relative. After all, we're talking about a decline that is less than one in forty. That's hardly a big fraction. As I stated before, we would need to see declines over consecutive years to start thinking that maybe this religion is circling the drain. The data for worldwide attendance shows that over the last decade and more there has never been consecutive declining years. What would we conclude if this year's data shows an increase in the worldwide attendance even though American participation dropped? I doubt we'd be talking about negative impacts on the organziation. And we can be sure that if more people in the U.S. attend in 2013 than this year, the WTS will trumpet this "increase" loud and clear, but it will only be a real increase if the growth next year is greater than the decline this year.
I was one of those who rejoiced at the report of this decline and hoped that it signaled serious troubles ahead for the WTS. That is still my hope, but upon soberly reflecting on this development I have realized that I can't rush to judgment in this matter. We need more time to allow a trend to clearly manifest itself before we start drawing conclusions. As a mathematician, I've learned how deceptive some patterns can be, and that what seemed so obvious at first on closer examination turned out to be something entirely different. We may be dealing with the same thing in this case, so let's be patient and allow the truth to emerge on its own.
Quendi
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redvip2000
I retract my previous answer..
If there has been an consistent increase over the years regardless of the day of the week, this this decline would be significant especially two years in a row.