Ever wondered which country in the JW Annual Report is most likely to reflect overall decline/progress of the WTS?

by besty 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  besty

  A bit of spreadsheet fun - trying to ascertain which country is the bellwether for the WTS.

  My methodology was as follows:

  Take the individual AR's from 2010 - 2016 and calculate an accurate (.00) Ave Pub Increase/Decrease for each country. Sort the countries into descending order by this value with the Grand Total row included in the mix.

  Assign the countries 5 places above and 5 places below the Grand Total 1 point. This is to reflect that these countries are very close to the Grand Total 'average' figure, but in reality are basically random small countries that will vary from year to year.

  Look for 'large' countries eg more than 70k pubs within a range of about 0.7% of the Grand Total figure. Assign these countries a score of 3 points.

  Maximum points for any country per year would be 4. Total possible points for the 6 years would be 24.

  Total the points across the 6 AR's and the country with the highest points total is most like the global org. With me?

  And the top 10 countries are: <drum roll pls>

  Brazil 16

  Chile 14

  South Africa 14

  Nigeria 13

  Colombia 10

  Peru 9

  Zambia 8

  Russia 7

  Cuba 6

  USA 6

  So there you have it - if you want a quick clue on whats going on with the WTS keep your eye on Brazil, Chile and South Africa.
• 

  ttdtt

  Yea but more striking to me are the countries that had Zero growth. Poland, Japan, Korea, Britain, Germany, Canada. All these countries are first world and with big populations.

  And remember how we would talk about Japan and Korea, how their growth was always exploding. Guess things changed. P.S. those countries also have fast and easily available internet:)
• 

  Simon

  Interesting.

  I think different countries are on different trajectories because they are at different stages - some of the older, established JW stronghold countries are now past their peak and in decline, while for others it's a new religion with lots of scope for growth.

  At the same time the WTS itself is changing into JW.ORG so there is one religion effectively vanishing and the new one growing and taking its place. Again, this is possibly happening at different speeds and with different success in each country - it's likely easier for the new religion to grow in fresh territories than it is for the changeover to happen in established countries.
• 

  HappyHappyHappy1914

  The big change this next year will be in countries that relied heavily on a dense special pioneer population. The growth rate in some of those smaller countries in south and central america will be dramatically different in 2016. Most of those special pioneers cannot find work in their assignment and will be forced to move towards larger cities or leave those countries entirely.
• 

  joe134cd

  To be honest (and although I am no mathematician) Im surprised Australia isn't in there some where, with all the dramas. I guess the levels of cognitive dissonance must be so much higher there. Lol
• 

  besty

  I think different countries are on different trajectories because they are at different stages - some of the older, established JW stronghold countries are now past their peak and in decline, while for others it's a new religion with lots of scope for growth.
  

  @simon definitely. although the countries listed in the OP 'should' be close to the meagre growth rates of the WTS globally, that being the point of the analysis :-)

  if you were to use lower hours preaching per net new publisher as a proxy for 'enthusiasm' it would interesting to see if there is a correlation to higher growth rates...???
• 

  slimboyfat

  Very interesting I always thought Brazil was a very good performing country, but it's just average?
• 

  Simon

  I always thought Brazil was a very good performing country, but it's just average?

  There are a couple of large JW-population countries (US, Brasil etc...) that so heavily weight the average that the average is as much a measure of them as the whole thing.

  Depends which type of "average" we're talking about: mean, median, mode ...
• 

  Beth Sarim

  North American countries and a few European countries seem to have stagnated, or even slight decline.
• 

  besty

  also this is just based on 2015 - would be better if all available years could be modelled to show trends over time