by slimboyfat 199 Replies latest members campaign
" Once again, the membership numbers are irrelevant if the problems the Org is having aren’t actually membership-related. "
One perennial problem they have, which is no doubt getting worse, is Cash Flow. A membership not contributing as much $$$ as it did will exacerbate that.
From your Baptised and Average Publishers charts, SBF, it looks like the number baptized is just keeping pace with the number of those dying and the number leaving (for whatever reason).
Treading water number-wise?
As you've said many times before, the number of congs tells the real story, and that decline is not leveling off.
As for Memorial Attendance, isn't that more a story of how many inactive Witnesses can be successfully drawn to the meeting for an annual appearance? Is that uptick In 2020 due to the Covid pandemic?
The figures presented are for Romania because Romania was mentioned earlier in the thread. The downturn in baptisms has fallen particularly dramatically from the 1990s when they were baptising record numbers to the point now where baptisms are well below other countries as a percentage.
So yes JWs are just treading water in Romania, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the population of Romania fell by around a quarter from 23 million to 18 million over this period. Therefore JWs as a percentage of the population has continued to grow slowly over this period as the graph below shows.
An uptick in Memorial attendance was observed worldwide in 2021, the second Memorial to be conducted in Zoom, apparently as a result of very a very liberal count of attendance that included all members of households “present” on Zoom, whether visible or included in the name tag or not.
The fall in the number of congregations is very recent and sudden. There are various factors that could have played into this including the recent statement about discontinuing unproductive foreign language congregations, and the push to consolidate Kingdom Halls to save money. We’ll need to watch how the trend develops. (Depending on whether Watchtower keeps publishing the data of course.)
Closing actual brick and mortar buildings makes alot of sense to me actually. It does save money and time to take care of buildings that really aren't needed. Why not put 2 or 3 congregations into one building that is basically in the same geographical area? Kingdom Hall expansion mostly happened before the internet. Being visible in high traffic areas was a big part of the game plan. Nowadays being visible on the internet is more important. From there, you can be directed to e-meetings and a local building for in person meetings.
The decline in actual congregations though is an interesting trend. Are congregations bigger now as a result? I mean for awhile it was thought to be better to have smaller congregations and that would make brothers reach out and congregations would grow more as a result. That seems to have gone out the window. Less brothers reaching out no doubt and less growth generally.
Excellent work SBF !
Thank you.
The Cong expansion of congs in the Congo was direct result of the need for CMCs which were needed to funnel money from other branches back to the US. Why the Congo?
Take a look at the lax banking rules.
It does surprise me that WTC was naive enough to publish such an unrealistic increase in such a small country. Maybe they had no choice when they started down the CMC road….? It appears to have been a move of desperation due to a miscalculation about the laws of the Congo. Money went in and then they learned that all the money could not flow through one congregation.
“Well fellas, we need to create 300 new congregations to move the money.” - Legal Dept
“Get’er done!” - GB
Blondie - I fully agree with your observations. Even if I didn’t know what I know, I would still say that they are in steep decline - moreso than any numbers WTC publishes. Social media echoes the many problems they face with the emerging new generation of ‘yang wans’. It is a trainwreck in slow motion.
I don't think the numbers tell the whole story, and I agree with Blondie about not trusting them. I'm going by the overall feel/look/"smell"/etc. If I see a dog writhing injured in the road, I know something is wrong..
JWdom is writhing in the road; it is badly injured and is, to me, dying. It is completely in survival mode - flapping at the water trying to keep from drowning. The org used to be proactive and confident and bold; now it is simply reactive and cowardly. It runs from challenges, deep questions, etc. Individual JWs used to seem to relish challenges, arguments, etc. Now they run from such. The org has been defeated in the doctrinal arena and no longer really enters in it. It has become and is becoming more so a dumbed-down lifestyle religion.
JWs used to think and question and analyze and study. In the older days, JWs were encouraged to study the "deeper things." They had concordances, interlinears, various Bible translations, etc. I knew JWs who were learning Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew; others were studying world history to see how it related to Bible prophecy. Now, the org discourages such because it knows its doctrine can't stand up to such. JWs now are ignorant and confused; they don't their own history and doctrine. A few years ago, a 35ish JW female approached me in a parking lot and tried to give me a tract. As I was talking with her, I was shocked to find out that she had never even heard of Fred Franz - one of the most influential figures in JW history.
I vividly remember as a child hearing the JW adults sitting at tables by motel swimming pools at night after district convention sessions having deep discussions about prophecy - talking about, for example, the king of the north. JWs don't do such anymore.
I know I sound like a broken record mentioning this, but here I go again... it is a profound, telling point to me. Back in the 70's and 80's, in just my area alone, there were eight engineers, two dentists, a veterinarian, two medical doctors, a college professor with a doctorate, a high school teacher with a BS in physics, a brilliant armed forces pilot, a number of really successful businessmen, and a number of deep-thinking hippie types who became JWs. THAT KIND OF INFLUX WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!!! In fact, I don't think JWdom is growing much at all, if any, from the outside anymore. If it does attract outsiders, they will not be like the ones I mentioned above; they will be unstable and/or needy and/or lonely and/or low-caliber and/or lacking in intelligence and discernment. I, myself, would never have become a JW if I had had the internet and if JWdom was what it is now when I became a JW.
The JWdom of the 70's and 80's would have ridiculed the JWdom of today. It is now a shallow, shiny & glittery, "plastic" televangelist-like religion. The preaching work is at best a faint, unclear whisper. It is nothing like the Jericho-style shout it should be according to JW theology. Back then, we had four 32pg mags to read per month; now, they barely have mags, and what they doe have is simplified and dumbed down.
I think the whole realm of JWdom is a house of cards that could crash. It is continuing to be exposed. Its history of failed predictions looks more and more wrong with each passing day/month/year.
consider Mt 10:18:
You will stand trial before governors and kings because you are my followers. But this will be your opportunity to tell the rulers and other unbelievers about me. -NLT
On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.-NIV
JWdom is being haled before governmental authorities, for sure, but it ain't to give a witness. It is being exposed. It is not fulfilling this prophecy; in fact, it is doing the opposite of what this prophecy foretells.
The zeal and depth and excitement are just gone. People aren't going to sacrifice for the org the way they did back in my day. I think most of those who are really intelligent and honest and discerning have left JW land, and those who remain are more the naive types who are easier to control. Maybe the org will continue on with such types propping it up, but I still think it could reach a cataclysmic crashing point.
Magnum have you ever visited any other church to see how they are doing? I doubt that anybody who has any familiarity with any other churches could seriouly say that JWs are not doing well by comparison.
My local congregation now has over 70 publishers. This is the highest number I’ve ever known it to have. They have fluctuated between 40 and 60 since the mid 1990s. It did have a peak of 80 or so publishers in the 1980s but that was before my time. Admittedly the congregstion is getting older, and many of the new members are immigrants. Nevertheless I find it hard to say it’s not doing remarkably well, all things considered.
Meanwhile in the same area churches have closed all over the place, and those that remain open have very low attendance. I’m not speculating here. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve actually sat and counted them. Most churches have hardly anybody under the age of 60. The local Mormon church used to have around 100 people in attendance on a Sunday in the 1990s, but it has now been demoted from a Ward to a Branch and there are barely 20 people there on a Sunday - 20 people in such a huge building looks odd. And that’s with Mormons coming from different areas to try to help it out. A Ward in a nearby town closed entirely and the building has been lying empty for a few years now. The last Methodist church in the town closed 4 years ago. The remaining Episcopal church is down to very low numbers, despite amalgamating with a church in a nearby town only a few years ago. There used to be two large Baptist churches in town, now there is only one Baptist church. I attended an evening service a few years ago and there were fewer than 20 people there. Three Church of Scotland churches amalgamated twelve years ago and there are talks of further amalgamations before 2025. The United Presbyterian Church closed ten years ago and the Free Church is dwindling in numbers - fewer than 10 at a service I went to before the pandemic. Nearby the Swedenborgians closed durung the pandemic, as did the Christian Scientists. Various Christadelphian ecclesias have closed in recent years and remaining ecclesias are very low in numbers. A local Pentecostal church closed its cafe and is cutting back its activities because numbers have dropped. The Brethren meetings are getting smaller and smaller - I’ve been to some meetings with fewer than 10 in attendance, and most people are over 70. I can’t imagine those congregations will last much longer. Attendance at Catholic mass is well down everywhere even for special masses at Christmas and Easter. I could go on.
Meanwhile there are still well over 100 JW congregations in Scotland (a steady number for decades) and the regional convention still attracts around 8000, as they have done since the 1990s. The age profile has got a bit older in my opinion, and there are more immigrants, but in terms of numbers they have had similar numbers for the past 20 years or more. They stand out in complete contrast with almost all other churches that are in decline. There are still young and middle aged people among JWs. In other churches there is hardly anybody under 60 and many are a lot older than that.
To be fair there are two other exceptions to decline: the Seventh-day Adventists and the Iglesias ni Cristo are both growing in Scotland, albeit from very small numbers. The Adventists have 10 congregations and most members are from Africa. The Iglesia ni Cristo have two congregations and are mostly from Philippines. In fact the Iglesia ni Cristo took over the Swedenborgian church when they closed their doors.
I do believe Jehovahs Witnesses have growth from the celebrity sector. Prince followers. 😋
