Attended the Friday sesson of the 2024 Summer Convention.
July 5, 2024 Summer Convention crowd photo; they invited quite a lot of empty chairs.
The facility usually has 5500-6500. They spun it saying that fewer congregations were assigned. There were 6 of the smaller, more distant sections blocked off with tarps to lessen cleaning, which I understand. It really looked empty. I did a rough estimate by just counting the sections and estimating the number seated in each and came up with about 2000-2500, but they announced attendance was 3000 and 3200 for the two sessions, morning and afternoon.
The session was markedly different than usual. I don't recall the last time I went to any JW meeting or assembly where use of JE-sus name was more prominent than Jehovah. Not Christ, not Jesus Christ, not the Messiah, not the Son, but good old fashioned JE-sus. I had to look around to see if I could see Brother Elmer Gantry anywhere.
They are apparently working up to a video series about the life of Jesus (think the Greatest Man book on video). I think the final song on Sunday will be the Jesus/Mary/Nativity song which made the rounds on this site a month or so ago.
Still, I recall the time when if you talked about Jesus more than Jehovah they labelled it as apostate leaning. I do wonder whether this is a one-time blip on the JW history, or a shift in the religion.
Generally though, the presentation and use of frequent videos made the day a lot more bearable than the typical convention-day-in-hell.