I have never believed the stats the WTS gives. All I ever know were the numbers in the congregation I went to and the surrounding ones. Not much of a sample to judge by. I do know that many jw children are never baptized, may turn in turn as unbaptized publishers, but stop usually after they live home, escape. A few come back when they have children, still influenced by their children dying at Armageddon if at least one parent is a "good" jw, attending meetings. It seems that many young male jws are not "reaching out" for appointed positions, MS and elders, although staying in. I have contacts with jws still going saying that the average age of elders in the congregation is getting older and older. With the pandemic, many jws are seeing ways not to be counted. Jws now seem only have to report they did go out in the preaching/teaching work at least some, how will many of the other stats be counted. Are they going to stop having congregations give the WTS money based on the # of those at least doing that? Money is the most important thing to the WTS.
Where’s the 2023 Service Report?
by slimboyfat 33 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Walter
Still having growth 3% in Germany, 6% in Ireland, 2% in Austria, 6% in Czech Republic and so on is pretty remarkable at this point
Indeed, they are doing better than lot of other churches in those countries.
But keep in mind: statistics for service year 2023 Europe were affected by refugees from Ukraine. According to JW news from June 2022, some 23 000 publishers from Ukraine fled to other European countries. They were there underrated in average numbers in service 2022, as they arrived quite late (and often, their publisher records even much later, due to war) in that service year. So for 2023 numbers of JWs, these refugees automatically mean an increase of more than plus 1% in lot of European countries.
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Jeffro
The ‘growth’ in various European countries is mostly people who left Ukraine. Most of the European countries with growth did not have a corresponding increase in baptisms, and while there is some lag between ‘unbaptised publisher’ and ‘baptised’, it doesn’t account for it.
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Anony Mous
There’s various reasons, as others pointed out the children are getting baptized earlier and earlier, I’ve heard about 6, 7 and 8 year olds getting baptized - first graders, that’s ridiculous, many kids at that age can’t even read or go to the bathroom independently.
Then there is also the drop in counting hours, suddenly all the PIMOs are counted once again as ‘active’ publishers, all you need is a check mark which they will even accept doing a part in the meetings. Back in the day, elders wouldn’t even accept us as active if we didn’t have at least 10 hours on that slip.
Remote attendance is another one of those things, you don’t even have to show up at the meeting to get counted, I’ve heard many say that people choose to stay home.
All-in-all, they will eventually run out of tricks to stop the bleeding unless there is a major shift in the disfellowshipping at which point they simply will end being JW to me and just another church.