by neat blue dog 32 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Slimboyfat,. You contadict yourself one line you say the jws are not going going down in the United kingdom
Two paragraphs later you say jws are leaving. I know you post on almost every topic
But you talk out of two different idealistic sides many times. Sometimes I don't know if you're a PIMO OR A POMI. I in no were believe there are 8 million wt ZOMBIES.
Why don’t you believe there are 8,000,000 JWs?
JWs are leaving in my experience, but at a far slower rate than other groups.
For example there were around 500,000 members of the Church of Scotland 20 years ago. Now that figure is down to 325,000. That’s a pretty steep decline.
For JWs, they used to get around 9000 people at their district convention in Scotland 20 years ago. At the last convention in 2019 the number was pretty similar, possibly down slightly, but still over 8000. Plus JWs have added a few Polish congregations and other small groups in Scotland in the meantime. (They presumably attend a different convention, but still count as JWs in Scotland) JWs are pretty much treading water in Scotland, as elsewhere.
Every independent census I have seen shows that JWs underestimate their membership compared with official counts, sometimes by a significant margin. For example, official census figures show over a million JWs in Mexico and Brazil whereas the Watchtower publisher numbers are below a million. So there are not 8,000,000 JWs because by measures comparable with other groups there are far more than 8,000,000.
When evaluating JW growth rates there are two ways of looking at it. On the one hand their growth rate is very poor compared to their own growth rate in the past (5 or 6% 30 years ago down to between 1 and 2% in recent years). On the other hand, most other churches are declining rapidly (many churches declining by 1% or more per year).
slimboyfat - "I don’t think they care what opponents say. They do care if it results in lower donations and lower income. I think that’s what prompted the outburst. Are Watchtower experiencing financial difficulty so bad that they see no way out?"
Agreed.
At this point, they don't give a hairy blue fuck what "The World" thinks of them... they're in the Endgame Last Days of the Last Days of the Last Days, now.
What matters is the line in the sand, not budging, and - more than anything else - maintaining the fiction of "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization".
Money is an integral component of that, but reinforcing the ideology - and thusly maintaining a minimum level of membership loyalty and cohesion is - arguably - just as important.
That being said, I do think that financial difficulty is a thing.
After all (and I've said this before), in what crazy-ass, fucked-up mirror universe are constant legal troubles, steady asset and staff liquidation, and demonstrable reduction of product output (in both quality and quantity) signs of robust financial health?
Not to mention that I suspect their lawyers have told them that the Org's tax-exemption is inching towards the chopping block, and I'd bet cash money that the WTS's business model is way more dependent on it than we'd ever imagined.
