by LaFrancia 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
We know that in Africa Warwick/Watchtower is adopting a policy of more congregations with fewer publishers in each congregation. This explains the growth of congregations in the 2024 world report.
Cameroon world report 2019 vs. 2024.
With the same number of publishers the congregations grew by about 13%.
Will there be many more curious cases out there?
This is the data
Camerum service report 2019
-Maximum publishers 45,092
-Number of congregations 500
Cameroon service report 2024
- Maximum publishers 44,670
- Number of congregations 579
In essence, Cameroon had 422 fewer publishers and 79 more congregations from 2019 to 2024.
Something doesn't add up here.
"Something doesn't add up here."
Sacred maths never does.
It could be that they are mostly newly converted and there weren’t enough elders to make the extra congregations.
Yes, as you say the reasons can be different. But we notice that in Africa the congregations are smaller than in Europe or North America, I don't know in Latin America or Asia.
Here is another case of anomalous growth of congregations.Two countries similar in number of publishers are Germany and Ghana.
2019 report
Germany max. p. 165,393 congregation 2,091
Ghana max. p. 144,570 congregation 2,167
Report 2024
Germany max.p. 177,240 congregation 1,979
Ghana max.p. 159.140 congregation 2,585
As you can see, Ghana has far fewer publishers than Germany but has 606 more congregations!
Everyone should make their own assessments, this would however explain the strange increase in congregations despite the fact that in Europe, in the US and Canada and other areas of the world congregations continue to be closed, merged and sold kingdom halls
There is a similar “peak” in Turkey. There is a very striking decline of -11 percent. According to what I learned from my contacts living there, the reason for this is that foreign JWs have left the country to a great extent. They returned to their places of origin due to the inability to renew their residence permits and the increasing inflation in the country. Their presence inflated the figures for many years, but once they left, it became clear that there was no progress.
At this rate, a “congregation” really will end up just a half dozen folks in a bunker basement before too long. 😏
Interest finds! Sounds like a bit more of a deep dive into the ratios of publishers to congregations is needed
One possible reason for some difference in numbers of congregations could be around foreign languages. Foreign language congregations tend to be smaller than regular "native" ones. But that would only apply to some extent - it seems unlikely to explain such a big jump in the number of congregations in a land when the total publisher count remains much the same.
Other factors I can think of might be:
Distances travelled: if the terrain is hostile or travel is otherwise difficult in a land where there are a lot of JWs per capita (parts of Africa, for instance?) it may be possible to set up smaller more local congregations if there are sufficient young brothers to lead the meetings;
Opposition from authorities: keeping congregations small makes them less likely to draw attention from the authorities when people meet, and would limit the risk of large numbers being arrested at any one time if the meeting was raided.
Still, none of these factors alone would explain the whole picture, and unless we can see how widespread this phenomena is and what sort of countries in involves it's hard to see why this should be. Is it just the more "underdeveloped" nations with relatively large populations of JWs that are doing this? It can't be possible to do this in the wealthier nations where there has been much less growth, as we know the Org is struggling to find enough brothers to take the lead in those places.
well--mud huts in africa arent exactly valuable real estate are they ?
One of the reasons might be transportation. In third world countries, where most people have little money, transportation is an issue.
in our assignment, in our congregation, we had only five or six families with old cars. On Tuesday nights, after the ts and service meeting some of them had to make three or more trips from the hall to surrounding villages, sometimes untill 11:00 PM, to take friends home. So as soon as possible we tried to establish groups and later small congregations in those villages. Problem was the lack of capable brothers.
