Canada's Numbers Declining-Worries Bethel

by Had Enough 46 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Kismet

  ahhh Ernie Funk (now there's a name that would get one beat up at school).

  He is the assistant Home Overseer. Sweet and sincere man but kinda slow in the brains department. His wife Jean is the "den-mother" of the factory boys. Trying to marry them off, or mother them.

  I know what you mean about Ernie's speaking style.. YAWN!!!!!

  I can see him using this as a way of trying to sacre the Rank and file. These stats along with Those that think they are standing and pride before a crash scriptures and send the sheep back out!! sigh

  I don't really miss that conditioning program at all.

  ahhhh Freedom!

  Kismet
• 

  Had Enough

  Hello Bill:

  Thanks! That's the site I remember seeing. I'll have a closer look at it tomorrow when my brain is a little more 'awake' (ugh--there's that word again) [8>]

  Had Enough
• 

  Moxy

  here is a graph of just that number, increase in pubs minus 1%, minus baptisms equals 'drops' (approximately. remember baptism not the same as publishing)
  
  another interesting and telling graph is this one, showing increase for US and world over 30 years against the world population increase as a whole.
  
  ill let these speak for themselves. the stats that generated these are available for download:
  http://members.home.net/aghull/stats/stats.xls

  mox
• 

  ozziepost

  Had Enough,

  Well, you really took on a heavy load this weekend! With the statistics, you're getting into a very interesting area. In past times, both here and on H20, there has been much information published to keep us up-to-date.

  I would recommend caution. Not all figures quoted can be substantiated.

  For example:

  Randy Watters has a very detailed breakdown of 1988-2000 WT growth statistics at his excellent site:

  http://www.freeminds.org .

  Once you get there, scroll down till you see the statistics link and click on it.

  Bill

  Some of the figures there are WRONG. I have written to Randy about this. Figures quoted need come from the Annual Report as published in the January 1st Watchtower each year.

  I think that sometimes we "hasten along" the figures to show a downturn. Yes, there is a downturn, so there's no need to embellish the statistics.

  I would recommend the following site for accuracy and detail of statistics: http://www.jwic.com/stat.htm

  With respect to what Brother Ernie Funk said:

  That leaves 17-19,000 baptized pubs. have "walked away from the truth" as he put it since 1996.

  
  He's including here those who were disfellowshipped and disassociated. This has been taken in the past to be 5%.

  BTW it's typical of the self-righteous class to refer to those who have slipped in sin as having take the deliberate act of "walking away from the truth". No wonder there's little mercy found coming from the Pharisees.

  Enjoy doing your sums!

  Cheers,

  ozzie
• 

  MacHislopp

  Hello everyone,

  I'll try to give you a fast one:

  *av. pub. 1961 ....884,587
  *tot. bapt. from 62 until 2000 ....7,783430
  *Total .............8,668017

  ***Peak pub. 2000 6,035453

  ***total missing in the last 39 years....2,632453

  (this include Disf., diss. dead and inactives)

  On average 67.498 missing every year for the last
  39 years.

  I'll come back to that, Agape J.C. MacHislopp
• 

  larc

  Recently, I took the information from the cite that ozie post provided and prepared some summary conlusions. These can be found here by going to the top of this page to "search" and puting in the word, "decline".

  I wouldn't worry about the death rate, but just take the over all growth rate for the developed and undeveloped countries. You will find that the JW's are declining in the last two years, in 23 developed countries, and growing only about a half a percent faster than the population in the undeveloped countries. For more information, see the thread I mentioned.
• 

  Skimmer

  The remarkable decline in baptisms in all but the least Internet-connected countries is dark news indeed to the WTBTS. Note that some countries have had seven or more consecutive years of decline in baptisms. In others, the baptism decline may have been for fewer years, but is more pronounced. Only a few countries had an increase in baptisms and only three have had two years in a row of increases. Baptism counts are the real leading indicator as they show the effectiveness of the field service. And from looking at the graphs for the more developed countries, it's a safe bet that the number of baptisms is less than the number of JWs' children produced, and so the field service has effectively collapsed in many nations.

  It is almost incredible that there are assemblies without baptisms. I assure all of you that this was unheard of back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Along with the closing of congregations due to lack of membership, a zero baptism assembly must be rather damaging to morale, at least for those who've been around long enough to remember how things used to be.

  I see nothing that will stop the decline. And I think that the WTBTS also sees the handwriting on the wall and so they will continue to pepper the literature with statements like "numbers aren't everything". It will do little good.

  When the numbers of total publishers and total congregations start their accelerated decline in a few more years, it is possible that the WTBTS might just stop reporting statistics.
• 

  Skimmer

  [Blast! Another double post.]

  A data point: I seem to recall that a couple of decades ago that the Christian Science group, stung by a three quarters drop in membership, decided to stop issuing detailed statistics. How many members will the WTBTS lose until their statistics are hidden from all outside Brooklyn?
• 

  Had Enough

  Thanks to all for responding!!

  To Ozzie:
  Yes this is a most interesting subject since the growth of the org. has always been boasted about as a sign of being the one true religion. As in the WT study article for today in April 1, page 16, the chart was overly-emphasized by the speaker as he frothed on about the growth since 1940. Thanks for your link.

  To Moxy:
  Great job in your work at charting those statistics and thanks for the link. I want to spend some time looking over these figures in both links as I haven't had any of these figures to work with before.
  Ps: fellow Canuck...will you have to attend a DA this year and if so, can you say where? I will have to go to Hamilton, ON to help with my aging parent.

  To MacHislopp:
  Thanks for the quick calculations. Very simple to quickly see there is quite a record of "those walking away from the truth" as one Bethelite put it. Those figures show about 30% are "missing in action" since 1961.
  PS: I always enjoy your insights into the WTS antics.

  To larc:
  I checked out the search function for the thread you referred to. What an excellent feast of information there. I didn't remember that subject when I was first posting here. It just recently has hit me since the Bethel speaker himself made mention of the decline in my country and their concern over it. You and some others made some excellent points that I would like to refer to again in a follow-up post.

  To Skimmer:
  

  It is almost incredible that there are assemblies without baptisms. I assure all of you that this was unheard of back in the late 1960s and early 1970s

  
  Those are the exact words my friend and I voiced right after the meeting was over. We both remarked how we had never been to an assembly ever, where there wasn't even 1 baptized.

  The typical explaining away of decreases was handed to us by the Bethel speaker in the form of: "well this was to be expected since we only just had our 2-day CA 3 months ago and our DA is coming up in a month". The truth is our last CA was 4 months ago and the timing is no different than before. Of course, those ever-faithful ones with the blinders, lapped it all up and said "yup, that's right..what can we expect when they were so close together".

  Thanks all for your input. I'm sure we will be hearing more on this subject very soon.

  Had Enough
• 

  Moxy

  had enough:
  6/29-7/1 copps

  email me for further contact info if u like. u could sneak in and pretend to be my friend from 'back in the day' or something. heh

  mox