Annual Report

by St George of England 88 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  joe134cd

  Vidiot2 hours ago

  Take any number the Org puts out with a massive grain of salt.

  I do believe this to be true. Because if anything, Wt underestimates its numbers. For example I live in what is considered a wealthy western country. For as long as I can remember the census figure for my country has always been twice that stated by Wt. There are 2 conclusions:

  (1)PIMOs/ POMOs are choosing not to identify as such, when given the freedom to do so in the census.

  (2) As far as my country is concerned the truer figure is twice that stated by watchtower.

  Anecdotally I've heard similar accounts in other countries. Here is another example.

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/4801405261447168/comparison-between-jws-lds-sda-mexico
• 

  Balaamsass2

  Take anything Watchtower says with a huge chunk of salt.

  In times past the JW designation meant something. An ACTIVE (preaching and attending) member who held a set group of beliefs including; future life on earth in a paradise.

  WT used to be proud of this difference in comparison to mainstream religions which count all nominal 1x per year attenders or donators.
• 

  NotFormer

  "WT used to be proud of this difference..."

  They still proclaim pride in their differences, but a lot of those differences are being whittled down to the point of non-significance. This so called difference is just one among many.
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  scary21

  My sister is getting older, 65, she thinks back to our old congregation and has some good memories. She ran into some old JW friends.

  Being lonely and braking up with her BF, she is thinking how easy it would be to just fake being a JW, being she is agnostic I can see many more PIMO people coming back . She wants more friends and they are some nice people..

  She won't do it but the thought has crossed her deviant mind.

  CLICK A BUTTON AND YOU TOO CAN BECOME A JW.
• 

  Jeffro

  joe134cd:

  There are 2 conclusions:

  In addition to ‘inactive’ JWs identifying as JWs in census reporting, the higher amount is also accounted for by the fact that young children are counted as JWs by their parents in census reporting but aren’t registered as ‘publishers’. This is why Memorial attendance is closer to what appears in census data, and is related to the fact that the JW method of counting members favours growth rate.

  Counting ‘Bible studies’ with their own children also contributes to the illusion of higher interest in the denomination.
• 

  joe134cd

  Jeffro - I agree to a point. But you would think that this would be offset by all the half heartedness, and the growing PIMO population. This hasn't happened as with the case of the census regarding my country and Mexico.

  PIMOs aren't identifying as such when given the freedom to do so in the census. Unless the birth rate supersedes the PIMO rate. Another possibility is that there are more POMIs than there are PIMO.

  In any case you have anecdotally confirmed that WT is accurate with its counting methods. By agreeing that the census figure aligns with the Wt count, which is roughly x2. Wt under reports it membership, by not including kids. I could list a few other religions where this isn't the case.it won't be unti next years report, for comparison, that we can determine the effect on growth these changes have made.
• 

  Journeyman

  Interesting to see growth in almost every developed nation - Mostly just 1-2%, but some at 3%. I was surprised to see Ireland as high as 4%.

  Poland seems to be one of the major developed countries bucking the trend, with the number still falling at -1%.

  It will indeed be interesting to see if this is a temporary boost caused by changes to reporting, and if it drops back in 2024-25 and 2025-26 service years. The dilemma the GB will have is: how do you keep kickstarting the engine when it revs up briefly but then drops back to idle again? How often can you keep "simplifying" to try and squeeze another 0.5% or so out of the numbers?
  
  Their numbers may be healthier than many other churches, but by their own standards it's still a struggle. Many still keep banging on about "millions" flocking to "the truth". They stopped talking about that for a while, but recent revisions to ideas about what will happen at the great tribulation mean many are now anticipating a big increase again before Armageddon. Any increase is still a trickle rather than a flood though, and we still don't get reliable numbers of who is going out of the back door in the form of death, disassociation or disfellowshipping "removal from the congregation" each year, so a true value for the increase (if any) is hard to pin down.
• 

  slimboyfat

  The census is a level playing field. Each religion has its own internal measures of membership, but censuses simply ask what each person identifies as.

  So for example, when the Mormons claimed 1.1 millions members Brazil in 2010, and yet only 226,000 identified themselves as Mormons in the census, it seems fair to conclude that Mormons in some real meaningful sense overestimate their membership.
  

  At the same time, when Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed 700,000 members in Brazil in 2010, and yet nearly 1.4 million identified themselves as members in the census, it also seems fair to conclude that in a real meaningful sense Jehovah’s Witnesses underestimate their membership.

  So there really is a lot of empirical data to support JW figures and to show that they underestimate their membership compared with other groups.

  See this chart of census results compared with official memberships.

  
  
• 

  Jeffro

  joe134cd:

  In any case you have anecdotally confirmed that WT is accurate with its counting methods.

  It seems that the collation of the reports is accurate at a higher level, but the information reported by individual members is likely more prone to error. This was even more the case when members had to report preaching hours and were incentivised to inflate the figures.

  Wt under reports it membership, by not including kids.

  This is intentional (and it isn’t simply ‘underestimating’ at all). There is a trade-off in that it suggests lower membership than is actually the case by other metrics but the upside (from their perspective) is that it 1) inflates the supposed rate of growth and 2) misrepresents the amount of interest of non-members by comparison with ‘Bible studies’ and Memorial attendance.
  
• 

  Jeffro

  Journeyman:

  Interesting to see growth in almost every developed nation - Mostly just 1-2%, but some at 3%. I was surprised to see Ireland as high as 4%.

  The statistics are distorted because they changed the metrics for counting membership in November 2023. ‘Just tick a box if you did any preaching at all during the month.’ Because the criteria were changed, it is not a reliable indication of actual growth, and even with this distortion, growth averaged over the last few years remains poor.