284000 baptized in 2017 (page 2)

pale.emperor

How many of these new members are the result of door to door ministry or witnessing carts. I'd doubt even 50%.

My 9yo niece is being groomed for baptism by her parents. As well as my cousins 10yo daughter.

It does seem a surprising increase.Assuming that most who get baptised ( especially in first world countries ) are JW children , I wonder whether the Society's recent promotion to encourage younger ones to get baptised has had an effect ( if the average age is moved down from 16/17 to say 12 then that would create a "bulge" in baptisms for a few years )

Otherwise , I guess it is mainly growth from 3rd world countries.

punkofnice

I wonder how many die, leave or even get the boot, compared to the number craptised™?

ttdtt

Yes remember the last few years they have PUSHED SUPER HARD for KIDS to get dunked.

I am sure that has skewed the number.

slimboyfat

Yeah but the push for kids to get baptised has been going at least four years, so strange to have a bump now, I think it's just random fluctuation. In historical perspective baptisms are well down from their peak in the 1990s, especially in percentage terms.

ToesUp

We drove by a local KH last night. Parking lot was pretty empty.

Give it time folks. With all the JW negative publicity on the internet, who will want to join? If my child or mate was studying to be a JW, I would freak. All you have to do is Google Jehovah's Witnesses and a incredible amount of into comes up....NOT good info. Karma is a bi*ch and she's coming for Watchtower! Karma can be slow but she can be brutal! I've seen it before!

pomo6780

They specifically said the service report for the 2017 service year would be on jw.org.

Some exjws have speculated that it will only be grand totals, to hide decreases. That is possible. However, I discovered on jw.org that they have the 2016 service year report publicly visible through the online yearbook.

https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2017-yearbook/jehovahs-witnesses-service-report-2016/

So don't fret, I do believe they will release a 2017 service year version somewhere on their website soon. Watch this space.

nowwhat?

No need to over think this. It correlates with the big push to get children baptised the last 2 years. It will go back down next year.

sir82

Surprising - that's about a 7 or 8% increase over the past year.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of baptisms in North America & Europe, vs. the rest of the world, compared to the prior year.

Since there are no more yearbooks, in theory the full report will be posted on jw.horg. Hopefully they still include the full country by country breakdown.

Drearyweather

Interesting. Third world countries are still growing in numbers. Cults and Religions reach people faster than the Internet.

284000 baptized in 2017