At best, all you will establish is that comparison of JW 'growth' rates is not directly comparable with growth of other groups.
Argh... I can't go back and edit that badly worded sentence. Stupid editing time limit.
There are more Jehovah's Witnesses in Portugal than there are Scientologists in the whole world
by cedars 83 Replies latest jw friends
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Jeffro
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Jeffro
Members reactivating happens every year. You can't assume it is a one off phenomenon
The example indicated hypothetical changes within a single year. Though something that happens yearly is indeed a "one off phenomenom" for that year, I did not suggest that similar changes don't happen each year.
Again, feel free to provide different figures for comparison with XYZ.
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Jeffro
slimboyfat:
Members reactivating happens every year.
slimboyfat, does have a valid point here. But not really the one he wants to make.
Long-term 'inactive' JWs who remain 'inactive' don't affect JW statistics.
JWs who are 'inactive' or 'irregular' for part of a 'service year' also don't impact negatively on annual growth. (In fact a JW who fails to report in one month and submits a late report with their report for the next month is counted twice for the number of 'peak publishers'.)
A JW who is 'inactive' at the start of the 'service year' but then does any preaching in that year impacts positively on growth.
But a JW must be previously 'active', and then become 'inactive' for an entire service year to impact negatively on growth.
Fact is, not counting (non-'publisher') children or 'inactive' people as 'members' gives JWs a 'buffer' for citing 'growth' without an actual increase in membership.
You can bet that if the way they count their statistics wasn't giving the most favourable impression of growth, they'd change the rules.
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steve2
You can bet that if the way they count their statistics wasn't giving the most favourable impression of growth, they'd change the rules.
Actually, you could be questioned on this as well Jeffro: In countries in which there are census-based questions about religious affiliation, the census gathered numbers of JWs are almost always well-above the Watchtower-gathered numbers of JWs - sometimes by close to a third higher.
For example, in New Zealand's last census - 2006 - average publishers were in the 11,000s but census-gathered numbers were around 17,000. Of course, the census question allows the inclusion of children in the affiliation question.
Whatever angle you put on this matter, the JW count of active publishers is a lot more conservative than counting all who attend meetings as witnesses or all who identify as affiliated with the organization.
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Jeffro
steve2:
Actually, you could be questioned on this as well Jeffro: In countries in which there are census-based questions about religious affiliation, the census gathered numbers of JWs are almost always well-above the Watchtower-gathered numbers of JWs - sometimes by close to a third higher.
Duh. I directly stated that their method is aimed toward inflating growth rate rather than membership:
Fact is, not counting (non-'publisher') children or 'inactive' people as 'members' gives JWs a 'buffer' for citing 'growth' without an actual increase in membership.
Having small membership goes toward their persecution complex, whereas purported growth is intended to support their claims that 'god is blessing their work'.
If the Watch Tower Society went for maximising membership in JW statistics, their growth (as already clearly stated) would be minimal, and negative in many places.
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cedars
GoodGuyGreg
Even if they pulled the actual number 40% out of their asses, I definitely find it plausible that the ratio of convertees from informal witnessing to children of witnesses being in the vicinity of 60/40, with a (very) small share of new members being caught by their doors.
Thanks for the extra info, but I definitely think they pulled it out of their asses. There's no way 4 out of 10 newly baptized ones were coming in from informal Witnessing when I was an active Jdub. It was more like 8 or 9 out of 10 were friends or (mostly) family, with an extra 1 or 2 out of 10 the product of "some form" of preaching activity.
Cedars
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slimboyfat
Jeffro why can't you understand that whatever measure JWs use for membership, as long as they are consistent in the measure that they use over the years, it doesn't make a difference to the growth rate.
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Jeffro
slimboyfat:
Jeffro why can't you understand that whatever measure JWs use for membership, as long as they are consistent in the measure that they use over the years, it doesn't make a difference to the growth rate.
Apparently you don't understand that what you are saying is not consistent with comparison of JW growth with that of other groups.
Earlier you said:
However you measure active Witnesses, I reckon the way they count members is stricter than most other religions.
Please go away until you've decided what you're actually comparing.
Blue text indicates actions that increase reported membership.
Red text indicates actions that decrease reported membership.
Shown above, even when the net result is only a gain of 1 member, the JW-reported growth rate is higher than the XYZ growth rate. For exactly the same number of actual people.
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slimboyfat
JWs have a stricter measure of membership than most other religious groups. That means their statistics offer a conservative estimate of their membership at any given time. That's a synchronic comparison of membership with other groups.
On the other hand, the strictness of the membership measure makes no difference to the growth rate. The consistency of the measure rather than its strictness is what matters when performing a diachronic analysis of membership of any group, JWs included.
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Jeffro
slimboyfat:
On the other hand, the strictness of the membership measure makes no difference to the growth rate. The consistency of the measure rather than its strictness is what matters when performing a diachronic analysis of membership of any group, JWs included.
Ah... you're just bad at math.
