BourneIdentity - "I believe it’s a big reason they’re merging KHs. Not only to make them look fuller because attendance is down, but also due to brothers not wanting to serve. They are also creating more and more videos to deal with this lack of brothers that can give parts"
Agreed.
This was how I realized that the child-abuse problem had to be far more prolific than was once thought, and that it was a major factor in (so-called former) abusers being "given immunity"...
...after the 2002 Dateline expose, the WTS made a statement to the effect of a "zero-tolerance" policy on known abusers serving in congregation capacities...
...which they quietly dropped a few years later.
I scratched my head over it for the longest time, until I finally realized that the only reason they'd make that kind of decision was that - due in part to fewer and fewer young brothers "reaching out" - they'd have run out of qualified guys otherwise.