Jeffro you are the one who said other churches count attendees as members. This is not the case. I asked for an example, you supplied none. You now seem to be arguing that other churches have more adherents than members. Possibly, I don’t know, because ‘adherent’ needs to be defined in order to be compared. Different churches use different measurements, and they call their measurements different things.
The point I am making, and that you originally objected to, is that JWs are doing better than most other churches. This is clearly the case whatever measure you use. You disputed this by claiming that JWs don’t present accurate growth figures, and then you referenced the relative decline (compared to the population as a whole) of JWs in the Australian census numbers between 2016 and 2021 to make your point. Great! That’s something concrete we can work with. Lets compare all the churches using your preferred data from the Australian census. Here are the results.
Anglicans down from 3,101,200 to 2,496,300 a decrease of 604,900 or 19.5%
Baptists up from 345,100 to 347,300 an increase of 2200 or 0.6%
Catholics down from 5,291,800 to 5,075,900 a decrease of 215,900 or 4.1%
Churches of Christ down from 39,600 to 35,900 a decrease of 3700 or 9.3%
Jehovah’s Witnesses up from 82,500 to 84,400 an increase of 1900 or 2.3%
Mormons down from 61,600 to 57,900 a decrease of 3700 or 6.0%
Lutherans down from 174,000 to 145,900 a decrease of 28,100 or 16.1%
Eastern Orthodox down from 582,800 to 535,500 a decrease of 47,300 or 8.1%
Pentecostals down from 260,600 to 259,800 a decrease of 900 or 0.3%
Presbyterian and Reformed down from 526,700 to 414,900 a decrease of 111,800 or 21.2%
Salvation Army down from 48,900 to 35,400 a decrease of 13,500 or 27.6%
Seventh-day Adventists up from 62,900 to 63,700 an increase of 800 or 1.3%
Uniting Church down from 870,200 to 673,300 a decrease of 196,900 or 22.6%
Or to put that in descending order from the group with the highest growth to the group with the largest decrease:
Jehovah’s Witnesses + 2.3%
Seventh-day Adventists +1.3%
Baptists +0.6%
Pentecostals -0.3%
Catholics -4.1%
Mormons -6.0%
Eastern Orthodox -8.1%
Churches of Christ -9.3%
Lutherans -16.1%
Anglicans -19.5%
Presbyterian and Reformed -21.2%
Uniting Church -22.6%
Salvation Army -27.6%
Jeffro, seriously, according to those numbers, are JWs doing better, or worse, than other Christian groups? Straightforward answer please.