Number of KHs in Spain: drastic decrease?

by Corney 6 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Corney

  It was posted on Reddit that 226 of 876 (or 1/4) Kingdom Halls in Spain were sold during 2016. For many it sounds amazing and awesome. For me, this is implausible and needs fact-checking.

  The above-mentioned figures come from bi-annual publications of The Observatory of Religious Pluralism in Spain (established by the Spanish Ministry of Justice, the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, and the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation). And yes, according to these publications, the number of KHs in Spain was 876 as of December 1, 2015, and 650 as of December 2016 - but also:

  706 as of June 15, 2011,
  

  703 as of June 20, 2012,

  718 as of June 30, 2013, and

  702 as of June 1, 2014,

  701 as of June 1, 2015,

  856 as of June 2016,

  636 as of June 2018.

  Does anybody believe JWs have build 175 Kingdom Halls (+25%) between June and December 2015 and have sold 206 (24%) ones a year later? I think not. I think the conclusion is obvious: the numbers of KHs for Dec 2015 and June 2016 are anomalous, the result of an error or a different methodology. The number of Kingdom Halls declined, but not so drastically - by 51 (7%) between June 2015 and December 2016.

  For more data, see this spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LntyFxJzkdSVT7_pVpR479fqkDJzeVGY/view?usp=sharing

  Full list of Kingdom Halls in Spain is available here and here.
• 

  sir82

  I think a lot of European congregations rent facilities for use as a Kingdom Hall.

  Their overall worldwide plan seems to be aggregating congregations and squeezing more congregations into each KH building. If they are doing that in Spain, they could stop paying rent on properties used as KHs, saving a significant amount of money, freeing up more funds for JWs to donate to HQ instead of supporting a congregation rent payment.
  

  The count of publishers in most European countries is stagnant or dropping slightly. [Roughly same number of publishers] + [fewer KHs] = [More congregations per KH] + [more publishers per congregation].
  
• 

  Simon

  I wonder if they counted the wrong thing? Like congregations instead of Kingdom Halls? Congregations sharing a hall might explain the anomaly.

  PS. I'm going to edit your posts because the ordering (but in year sequence) makes it harder to follow
• 

  Corney

  There were 1,502 congregations in 2016. I think they could count both owned and rented properties and/or halls instead of buildings (I mean KH complexes - but doubt they have many ones in Spain).
• 

  Corney

  The above-mentioned reddit post contains figures relating to Austria. I added some ones from 1997 to complete the picture of long-term stagnation:

  1997 - 20.8K pubs, 298 congs, 202 KHs - https://web.archive.org/web/20181008183503/https://www.jehovas-zeugen.at/fileadmin/user_upload/02-Anerkennung/Anerkennung-link-file/19980227_ECHR_JZ_I.pdf (p. 4)

  2008 - 21.2K (20.7K according to 2009 Yearbook) pubs, 296 congs, 193 KHs - https://web.archive.org/web/20131030113230/http://www.jehovas-zeugen.at/fileadmin/user_upload/01-Wer-wir-sind/02-Struktur-link-file/2008_Glaubensangehoerige.pdf

  2017 - 21.6K pubs, 301 congs, 173 KHs - https://web.archive.org/save/https://religion.orf.at/stories/2835258/
• 

  Simon

  There were 1,502 congregations in 2016. I think they could count both owned and rented properties and/or halls instead of buildings (I mean KH complexes - but doubt they have many ones in Spain)

  An error being made by one region/ district would maybe make sense then?
  
  
• 

  Corney

  Unlikely. In 2015 the number of KHs significantly "increased" in every major (10% or more of total Spanish population) autonomous community and province.