The above 215000 of JW leavers is the highest ever recorded in one year as far as I can see. JWfacts has a section on leavers, both before deaths are taken into consideration and after. So the org certainly have nothing to brag about. Especially when we know there is massive pressure for kids to get baptised. We have read about kids as young as eight getting baptised, which the org brag about. I'm sure at least half of the baptisms will be kids of JWs, rather than people they attract from the local community.
2019 Service Year Report Grand Total
by Listener 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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DesirousOfChange
Figures Lie, and Liars Figure.
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Corney
slimboyfat Plus if publishers increased 103,208 compared with 303,866 baptisms, that’s a lot of people who have left the organisation. In fact it might just be the biggest gap between baptisms and increase ever: 200,658.
It's incorrect to compare publishers and baptisms numbers - the latter don't affect the former because those newly baptized were already counted as (unbaptized) publishers (typically) for years. Also, the peak pubs numbers are less reliable than average ones.
a 1% mortality rate is sometimes suggested as a rule of thumb that is a generous (overestimate) of the annual death rate of JWs compared with the worldwide death rate of 0.83%.
It's questionable. JWs aren't distributed evenly throughout the world, they are overrepresented in the Americas, Europe and developed countries and grossly underrepresented in Asia and North Africa, not to mention the different age and sex composition. Worldwide rates are hardly applicable here.
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alanv
HI Comey, The Watchtower report is a year on year comparison, so the small differences in deaths in different countries apply every year, so can be used for comparison purposes. The same is true with baptised and unbaptised publishers, the same thing applies. Its the same rule as previous years. Did you have a look at the figures on JWfacts? Makes interesting reading.
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Ronin
The number is actually going down then up, yea it went up but only by 100,000 while there was 300,000 so that means 200,000 left the organization. That is very high for many leaving lol
I bet several will see that, if 300,000 were baptized and previous year were at 8,500 or so and we only grew to 8,600. They will calculate that 200,000 left... Enough for someone to think and investigate why so many left.
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slimboyfat
Corney, of course I know that the publisher figure includes unbaptised publishers, and that the baptism figure is not equal to the number of new publishers. This is clear and has been discussed on many occasions. We don’t have a figure for new publishers so we make do with the baptism figure as a close approximation. This is reasonable because most unbaptised publishers get baptised within a few years, and those who become inactive before baptism cancel themselves out in relation to the baptism figure. So in any given year the baptism figure may be different from the number of new publishers, but over the long term they follow the same trajectory.
And of course the worldwide mortality rate is not going to be the same as JWs. The JW death rate is likely lower than the worldwide average because they are overrepresrned in wealthy countries and they don’t include infants as members. By using 1% as a very rough approximation it gives a generous estimate of how many JWs are lost to death rather than defection. The assumtion of 1% mortality indicates around 85,000 died and 115,000 left the organising. But if JW mortality rate is closer to 0.5% that would mean only 42,500 deaths and 157,500 left JWs. The true figure is likely somewhere in between those two figures, perhaps nearer the higher estimate of leavers.
Incidentslly many JWs don’t remain publishers until their dying day, but need to “retire” in the final months or years of their life due to illness. So even the concept of death rates applied literally to JW population is problematic in many cases, but once again as an approximation it is likely close enough to reality to make it feasible to draw some broad conclusions and work out some apparent trends.
We make do with the figures we have got in order to make reasonable inferrrences, while acknowledging they don’t permit exact or certain calculations.
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pale.emperor
Wow! I wonder where the majority of all those newly baptized ones came from?
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suavojr
You guys are just jealous that the tower continues strong
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dropoffyourkeylee
There is a lot of growth in Africa. I have a family member who attended a convention in Nairobi Kenya about two years ago where there were about 850 baptized in one day. I don't think that is unusual over there.
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slimboyfat
The report for Kenya is not terribly inspiring and never has been: 2% growth last year and 1160 baptised. The JW to population ratio is poor by world standards at 1 JW for every 1700 of the population.
For some reason JWs never took off in Kenya as they did I n other African countries such as Nigeria, Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and so on. Othe groups do better in Kenya including 150,000 Quakers and over 500,000 Seventh–day Adventists, compared with fewer than 30,000 JWs.