2024 year Highlights: JWs hit 9 million Publishers

by Sanchy 51 Replies latest jw friends

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  slimboyfat

  IDK if I believe that number of congregations is that indicative of anything.

  In my experience, all churches in decline, sooner or later, start closing down congregations. I’ve seen it with the Mormons, Church of Scotland, Unitarians, Swedenborgians, Christadelphains, Methodists, Episcopalians, Christian Scientists, Brethren, Baptists, and others. If JWs do experience decline then it will show up in the number of congregations over the medium to long term. In the past few years the number of congregations have declined in line with a stated policy of consolidating resources. If the number of congregations continues to decline then I would say it indicates real decline regardless of what the others figures such as publishers or baptisms are doing. On the other hand, if the number of congregations goes up then it probably confirms growth in general.
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  LongHairGal

  SANCHY:

  I don’t believe for one minute that this figure of 9 million is true.

  I didn’t even believe the JWs had 8 million but felt the number was half of that - especially in recent years.
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  Beth Sarim

  Id venture to say to cut that number of true believers by 1/2 maybe even 1/3 of that.
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  Beth Sarim

  Id actually retract that and say maybe even 1/4 of their figure.
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  slimboyfat

  In what sense is it a 1/4? Because when asked in censuses around twice as many people claim to be JWs than in the publisher count. Are you saying you know better than people themselves whether they are JWs when asked? JWs have one of the strictest methods of counting members of any religious group so even if they “overcount” by their own definition it is still a significant undercount by any comparison with the membership of other groups. And the difference is dramatic.

  For example in 2010 JWs claimed 706,699 publishers in Brazil but in the census 1,393,208 identified themselves as JWs. That’s 1.97 times as many describes themselves as JWs than are counted as publishers.

  By contrast in that same year Mormons claimed 1,138,740 members in Brazil but in the census only 226,509 described themselves as Mormons. That’s only 0.20 times the number of official Mormon members actually identified in the census.

  These results are replicated over lots of countries over many years.

  See more details in the article here:

  https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/106999903/s13644-020-00408-z20231028-1-har52b-libre.pdf?1698538028=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DReassessing_the_Size_of_Mormons_Adventis.pdf&Expires=1731628257&Signature=F8Bi6t5QGvSiCCcvYTHRlo~Ce~ASEfKpA8TyNwnqbSXWu2P1MlkNP7XJUmkfmIGoE0IGOtLXt08~wt-7pl8gvTH0a-SLCnEAfN9-TCSfxCdUAmpMNDafZFwkjUaIRJB7HaZqBhKVrnvlDLGZvRlOqq0Z7FnLyN3cGjBQa5SgjWLB~KpnLJZkHgsWxKCBHto5ado5ZU6c7WfRpTcnlPlXOMbJKcZNkhVM7WeX6CbNTj5HOdTCPwFRwEWOUuuzPsL9ffCOTKowaMB79heHvhLTry9Kj9EnhWddM3d4xEx2j72haq8ZZ1ixVZ3Ssi17UX4h7lvGAWVS90nVd8pxNgkY~g__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
  
• 

  Balaamsass2

  Watchtower lies about dates and "prophecy". They lie about Child and senior abuse. They lie about financial statements at conventions. They lie on their tax returns. They lie in court. It is considered "Theocratic strategy". Why should anyone believe their membership numbers?

  A "new" congregation in the third world can mean 30 people set up benches under a tree, and follow whatever the only local semi-literate male tells them.

  Religion is a snare and a racket.
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  slimboyfat

  Why should anyone believe their membership numbers?

  Because dozens of censuses across the globe have shown that their membership figures consistently understate the size of their community as demonstrated in the article cited above?
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  joe134cd

  Slimboy- We are both on the same line of thought here. There’s the proof from Mormon stories about membership. You have backed it up with similar data. What else can you do???.
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  Phizzy

  Whatever the true membership figure, J.W's are taught to think of themselves as being the True Religion as decided by Jehovah, and yet even at 9 or 10 Million, they are still just a small religion in relation to the Big Boys, why ?

  Surely Truth should appeal to many more millions around the World ?

  You have to engage in a peculiar line of reasoning to dismiss the above.

  It is my humble opinion that all organised religion is moribund, as Education improves in tandem with Internet Access, people no longer feel the need to have membership in a Church of any kind.

  The J.W Org. is always re-inventing itself in an effort to stem the flow of those who no longer wish to be active members, but so far their attempts have not had any notable success.

  They are now withering away as did the various groups SBF mentioned above, attend any K.H in the Educated World and observe the overall demographic of attenders and you will see what is happening.
• 

  joe134cd

  Beth Sarim16 hours ago

  Id venture to say to cut that number of true believers by 1/2 maybe even 1/3 of that.

  If that be true then these people are choosing not to identify as such, when given the freedom to do so in the census. As a general rule, around the world, the census figure is usually twice that of what is stated by Wt.