Are Baptism numbers going down?

slimboyfat

Trending down a bit over the last 15 years or so.

Julia Orwell

Whoops, hit some button before typing my piece. My bad.

I saw this news article from Victoria, Australia, about the latest DC held there :http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/1776702/delegates-descend-on-bendigo-for-baptism/?cs=80

Of 3000 people attending, 7 got baptised. Seven! We used to get that many or more at the SADs and CAs with about 800-1000 people.

Does anyone have any other figures that may indicate baptisms are going down? I extrapolated that figure above for the JW population of Australia, and came up with 140 people baptised nation wide over 23 DCs this year. I remember years ago you'd get heaps more than that.

Now I'm not very good with maths and figures, so feel free to give a better estimate.

slimboyfat

There were 8,300 at our recent convention, and 60 baptised.

Julia Orwell

Now that's a much better result and much more usual in my experience. Maybe the Bendigo one was an anomaly.

smiddy

JO, I just sent a comment to that BA paper saying , words to the effect, JW`s dont beleive the bible only what is current in the WT.whether they print it or not who knows. I suggested a google search to see all their flipflops regarding beleifs.It`s always good to plant a seed , you never know how it will grow.

Thanks for sharing that peice

smiddy

Julia Orwell

No worries. Those comments at the bottom of articles can get JWs to think. It was actually reading some of those comments by exes that made me aware of the history and practices of the JWs even though I'd been in over a decade. I myself looked for the comment field but it didn't come up for some reason.

sspo

And take a look who gets baptized....children and not many from the field.

WTWizard

Only 7 from a Grand Boasting Session? I remember one Grand Boasting Session in the late 1980s where 8 got baptized just in my congregation at that session alone. (Unfortunately, I was one of them.) I believe that was the most ever, and I never saw more than one at a time since (since 1993, mostly insiders and people that had blatant psychoses and/or severe mental retardation).

westiebilly11

more a case of harvesting their own rather than outsiders coming in...

Are Baptism numbers going down?

Share this