I think an answer to the 7% increase in baptisms may have something to do with the developing nations. Most of the bloggers and youtubers reporting low baptism figures are from the developed countries. That leaves several million witnesses in lands that have little or no internet. I agree though its strange. The peak publishers increase figure was low so i would expect average publishers to be low as well.
2017 Service Year Report Grand Totals
by Drearyweather 60 Replies latest jw friends
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careful
"Implementing non-construction solutions such as merging or relocating congregations"—well, that's sure doublespeak for "we're shutting down a lot of congregations and selling off plenty of KHs"
More doublespeak: "Significant features of the service year report will soon be available on jw.org." In other words, we're not going to tell you anything that's negative in our eyes! No more real disclosure of the ministry numbers.
SBF: according to the pic here: https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/6248588200902656/life-saving-message
it would not be boring at all to work the carts now: just be sure you've got your smartphone! You can rack up hours playing video games, catching up on email, going on facebook, etc. Pioneering looks easier than ever!
You are spot on here: "there is a bifurcation taking place between JW skeptics on the periphery and hardcore JWs who are becoming more committed." -
ozbrad
I don't believe a word of it. They lie about their numbers like all religions.
There's 100's of misquotes/lies in the creation book alone. All deliberate and misleading.
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sir82
If they don't report the "average publishers" number, it would be almost certain that it declined from the previous year.
Pretty much any number not reported would be something they don't want to highlight
The WTS is becoming, if it has not already become, the USSR.
You gain more information by determining what is not mentioned than by what they report.
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Doubting Bro
Agree sir82. That's why I actually believe the numbers they do put out. If they were making up the numbers, then they would report them all. By doing highlights, they can focus attention on anything that can be spun as positive.
I was at a circuit assembly within the last few weekends and with an attendance of 1900, there were 10 baptized. so .5% I suspect the growth is coming from the 3rd world countries and not from the industrialized lands which means that contributions aren't really growing.
If they are not reporting individual countries (or "lands") then I think that tells us growth in the important countries in terms of size (US, EU, Japan and Mexico - who have a lot of JWs but not all that wealthy) must not be very robust or may even be negative.
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ttdtt
Anyone know how many are Partaking?
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slimboyfat
If they don't report the "average publishers" number, it would be almost certain that it declined from the previous year.
I think that's pretty unlikely, if not impossible given the increase in peak publishers. The figures for other months would need to be incredibly bad to produce an overall decline in average publishers.
Have we already given up on them producing the full report? There's a chance they might still do it into January, when the yearbook had been released in recent years.
If they produce a new page it should look like this. If not then we know full reporting is over.
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2017-yearbook/jehovahs-witnesses-service-report-2016/
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Doubting Bro
I thought they were not going to do the yearbook anymore? Is this that the 2018 version? They announced something along that line during the annual meeting but I wasn't really paying much attention.
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alanv
There is to be no more Yearbooks. The link above was just showing what it used to look like. The org have said that (Significant features) of the 2017 report will be on their website. Certainly sounds like they will not publish the complete report, but certainly hope I am wrong.
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slimboyfat
They didn't say "highlights". That was the pessimistic (perhaps accurate) inference.