As the Watchtower organisation continues to disintegrate, among other things, it may be time to consider what sort of response might be possible if the Watchtower collapses quicker than we imagined.
It's funny how perspectives change. A few years ago it was commonly assumed on this forum that nothing could derail the Watchtower and that any talk of collapse was just people dreaming. It doesn't seem so unrealistic any more, as a derailment of sorts appears to be underway. The possibility of collapse should never have been dismissed so easily in the first place.
Sometimes discussion has vacillated between the Watchtower collapsing tomorrow, or else that there is nothing on God's earth that can impact its future for decades or even centuries to come. In reality organisations such as the Watchtower do decline and/or collapse. It happens all the time.
On the one hand there is the example of the Christian Scientists, who were a vibrant religious organisation at one time. But they started declining sometime between the wars, and are very small now, nearing extinction in most places. (Incidentally they forbid their membership from counting their numbers when they started to decline - that's one way to deal with decline!)
On the other hand there was the Worldwide Church of God that collapsed all of a sudden due to a mixture of financial, organisational, and credibility problems. In many ways the WT more closely resembles the Worldwide Church of God than it does Christian Scientists. So a rapid collapse rather than a gradual decline is not unrealistic.
It seems pretty clear to me now that the Watchtower organisation is entering a serious period of decline and has significant financial and organisational problems, and mounting credibility problems.
Like I said on another thread, it is becoming ever clearer to me that most of the committed JWs I know became JWs in the 1970s or earlier. Only a few of their children became JWs, and hardly any grandchildren. The congregations are getting older and there is no one to replace the old JWs. I used to think that maybe many of the children will come back to the KH. And some of them have come back, for a while, and drifted away again. That maybe it was a life cycle thing and they would return later, at some point. But it really is reaching a point now where, most of the children and grand children of active JWs have largely forgotten about the KH. It's becoming a distant childhood memory for that generation. They really haven't been inducted into the JW way of life as their parents and grandparents were. It's becoming increasingly unlikely they will ever come back.
And hardly anyone comes into the KH from the general public any more.
So with no new converts, and the next generations of JW children all but disappeared, where are the new JWs going to come from? I think the most reasonable conclusion is quite simply that there won't be very many JWs left in 20 or 30 years time. It happened in other churches in precisely the same way, as children failed to follow the faith, over the last 30 or 40 years. JWs are following the same pattern, just a little later than most other churches.
See for example the Methodists, that went from being one of the largest denominations in Britain to being almost extinct now:
http://churchgrowthmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-rise-and-decline-of-british.html
When I look around at JWs I see many parents and grandparents, and their children are nowhere to be seen. Last spotted at a Memorial or convention, some years ago, if you are lucky. It is rapidly becoming an older person's religion. Which, following the Methodist example, is one stage before rapid decline sets in.
But JWs are not Methodists. And in many ways the problems the Watchtower organisation faces are much greater. The JW mindset is not well equipped to cope with decline, neither among ordinary members, nor among the leadership, who are apparently facing many crises at once: financial, declining membership, commitment, credibility gap, legal challenges, mounting public criticism of shunning and abuse. And they don't seem able to meet these challenges other than to double down on a hardline agenda, demanding obedience, scare mongering about "apostate" lies, and impending tribulation.
The organisation doesn't even seem to expect growth in the future, they are merely hoping to survive. A few examples that prove this point: abandoning the Gilead missionary program; closing branches; abolishing district overseers; and cutting literature production.
I can't get over just how huge each of those retreats are when you really think about it. No organisation that is growing and plans for more growth cuts branches. And dropping the missionary school practically says: we give up, game over! But most of all, the halt in literature production. When you consider just how competely central book production has been to purpose, mission and identity of JWs for most of their history, the significance of the cutbacks can hardly be overstated.
For example, and it might seem a small thing, but consider the fact that as WT cuts literature production, their literature will no longer be as ubiquitous as it used to be. At one time JW literature was everywhere: in waiting rooms, book stalls, charity shops, auction rooms, all JW homes, anyone with a JW connection, even homes of people who just took a book from someone at the door. And when the literature was lying around, occasionally people picked it up and read it. I know many JWs who came to the KH as a result of reading stray pieces of Watchtower literature.
There was an elder in our congregation who became a JW this way. He took a book from JWs (in the 1960s) put it aside and would probably never look at it again. Except that he was sick a few months later, was in bed for weeks and ran out of things to read. In desperation he picked up the old yellow "What has religion done for mankind?" book the JWs had left. He became a JW and later an elder. (None of his children became JWs and he died recently)
I know another JW who grew up in a non-JW family, but for some reason she had a copy of the "Greaf Teacher" book she read as a child. She loved that book. She doesn't know where it came from. But when the JWs called years later she remembered the book and started a study, and later got baptised.
So many cases like this where the literature worked its way into people's lives and was instrumental in bringing people to the KH. But as the WT stops literature production this will not happen any more. It may seem a little thing for the WT leadership to cut costs by moving from print to telling publishers to download the literature. But it has so many unintended consequences, and is just one more reason why there is little prospect of future growth for JWs.
To get back to the point, I think there are very many indications that JWs are beginning to decline and that this decline will rapidly accelerate as the generation of believers from the 1970s and earlier gets even older. They also face serious financial problems, legal challenges and bad press. Plus there is an increasing credibility gap that may just reach a tipping point for ordinary JWs when combined with declining membership.
So I think it is all "over" for the Watchtower. The only question remains how the final chapters will play out. Will it be decline over a few decades, or will it be sound and fury as the "unsinkable" ship goes down rapidly in crisis?
And if the organisation does collapse suddenly, I wonder how the ex-JW community will respond, and what, if anything, will emerge from the WT when all the dust settles.