-0:6 negative growth 2020 service year

Fadeaway1962

Phttps://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&pub=syr20&srcid=share

Plus another increase in memorial partakes number etc

Harry

A increase in Memorial attendance numbers ........really ?

And the social restrictions imposed onto religious gatherings had no consequences for the JWS religion and its memorial event. .....really ?

slimboyfat

Excellent, thanks!

I doubted they would publish figures this year.

Whichever way the figures went, it’s hard to argue this isn’t a unique set of circumstances, and comparison is very difficult.

Nevertheless the first global decline in over four decades is newsworthy, and significant declines in many western countries.

Magnum

Yes, the circumstances are unique, and I feel sure they will use that argument. However, it seems that they were headed to negative growth, anyway.

slimboyfat

A few observations:

Around half the service year covers a period before the pandemic hit.

Peak numbers are down a lot more than average numbers. (Stands to reason, since the peak occurs in August, when the pandemic had begun, but was in somewhat of a summer lull in the north.)

Memorial attendance has probably the biggest drop ever.

Many developing countries show larger losses than western countries this year.

Baptisms are down significantly.

Most astonishingly of all, to me, is the fact that bethel staff have increased in number, as has the amount of money Watchtower spent. With all the cutbacks, how is that even possible?

All told, it will probably be five years or more before we can in any way assess the true impact of 2020 and/or identify any return to something resembling “normal” trends.

Jeffro

Events of 2020 may certainly contribute to some of the decreases. Yet partakers at the 'Memorial', the one figure that's 'meant' to go down, has still had an increase of more than 3%.

I notice that Britain is down more than most other countries. It is worth bearing in mind that the Britain branch endured a particularly challenging and distinctive combination of factors hitting JW activity in 2020.

Around a year before the pandemic began, JWs in Britain were informed that new data protection laws meant that publishers should no longer keep records about the public of any kind: no not at homes, no house numbers, names or details of return visits, or any other personal information. How did JWs manage to continue ministry under those restrictions? With some difficulty. Not at homes were largely abandoned and return visits became haphazard and less frequent. Some JWs simply broke the rules and kept records anyway. Some found “ingenious” ways to circumvent the rules, such as taking pictures of the doors of return visits, instead of “writing it down”. It’s not clear if these alternatives were within the letter, never mind the spirit of the new rules. But probably the majority of JWs in Britain responded to the new rules by massively reducing the number of return visits, and only going back on really memorable or promising calls. Not having to keep track of not at homes was welcomed as a huge relief.

Then the pandemic hit in early March 2020. Not only did JWs in Britain have no record of their return visits, but initially they were instructed by the branch not to write to them even if they could “remember” addresses, because advanced agreement from the householder was required in order to use any addresses. Since virtually no JWs had specific agreement from members of the public to use their address for correspondence, public ministry came to almost a complete halt. The only ministry that was advised by the organisation was to write to family members and close contacts to give a Witness on a personal and informal basis. Devout JWs dutifully wrote to all their unsuspecting relatives, which took a few weeks at most, then they wondered what to do next. Telephone witnessing has also been ruled out in Britain as against the rules, so that wasn’t an option.

So JW ministry was in a pretty dire state of inactivity within weeks of the lockdown in March. Publisher numbers and “hours” on the ministry probably plummeted faster in Britain than anywhere else.

The GB monitored those developments and panicked. Faced with a dilemma, they decided to break the data protection rules in order to stem the decline in publishers in Britain. But they didn’t put the change in print. Instead they sent informal, verbal instructions via the branch, circuit overseers, and elders that JWs were to resume ministry by means of letter writing to members of the public. This instruction was not written down and publishers were expected to “use their own judgement” and take the risk on themselves of breaking any data protection rules in order to fulfil the instruction. This caused something of a debate among JWs who were initially confused about what to do. Comments included, “what exactly are we allowed to do? It must be written down somewhere?” And we must be “obedient to the superior authorities” up against “we must obey God as ruler rather than men”. Inevitably JWs in Britain settled down and fell into line with the instructions coming down verbally through the elders, and within a few weeks they were writing letters to the public like crazy.

There were a few teething problems with the new system because some brothers opted to deliver their own letters to save postage. The branch clarified that letters should be stamped and posted and not hand delivered by brothers and sisters. Some congregations bought stamps and distributed them to the brothers to use on the ministry. The branch clarified that congregation funds are not to used to buy stamps and that individual publishers must bear the postage costs. There were scattered reports that some publishers were not paying the proper postage for large letters leaving some householders to foot the bill. The branch instructed all publishers to make sure they pay the postage in full to avoid a “bad witness”.

So all in all, it’s probably not surprising that Britain’s level of decrease at -3% is a bit higher than other countries. In fact it’s a wonder they didn’t suffer a larger decrease. Memorial attendance, at the height of lockdown in Britain, was well below the previous year.

Rather astonishingly, the peak publisher figure for Britain in 2020 is higher than 2019. This would seem to indicate a recovery of JW numbers by August of 2020.

It will be interesting to see further developments.

DATA-DOG

“No doubt there are some sincere Brothers and Sisters who mistakenly partake this year because of the mental and emotional stress and imbalances brought on by the Pandemic which is the only thing “Satan’s” Media has correctly reported, as compared to any Child Abuse articles reported by the same Media outlets. In these “critical times” we would never want to judge our dear brothers and sisters who, due to imperfection, confuse a love for Jeehoober, with being “genuine” anointed “Sons” of the Kingdom.

Please be assured of our warm Christian ( not sexual ) love, and get your MRNA vaccine for Bill Gates asap.

Tomo and Company

- Future Watchtard Article

DD 😇

respectful_observer

What stands out to me is the year-to-year percentage change in baptisms between 2019 and 2020 (i.e. "how is the pipeline doing?"). Even considering COVID, the numbers are shocking (at least to me). Globally, there was a decrease in baptisms of 25.6%.

For lands reporting over 100K publishers (26 lands), only three had an increase:

Malawi: +0.5%
Germany: +7.5%
Korea: +11.4%

The other 23 lands all had a decrease in 2020 baptisms against 2019:

US: -17%
Brazil: -12.3%
Mexico: -34.4%
Nigeria: -12.6%
Italy: -8.9%
Congo: -80.5%
Zambia: -19.4%
Philippines: -24.1%
Japan: -10.9%
Colombia: -24.9%
Angola: -62.7%
Argentina: -59.6%
Ghana: -2%
Venezuela: -14.7%
Britain: -72.6%
Peru: -41%
France: -23.5%
Ukraine: -19.6%
Spain: -19.3%
Canada: -23.6%
Poland: -56.2%
South Africa: -30%
Ecuador: -25.3%

-0:6 negative growth 2020 service year

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