I have been hearing people talk about there being 6 Million Witness world wide for many years. This sounded like little or no growth to me, repeating the same approximate figure for years. So, I did some research from the Annual Service Year Reports in the Yearbooks. I looked back in time and saw that in 1999 The peak for publishers was 5,912,492, and in the following year the Peak broke 6.million. The following is a summary of Peak Publishers Vs. amount of people baptized since the 6 Million mark was hit.
Peak Publishers
2000: 6,035,564. 2004: 6,513,132. The increase is 477,568.
However in the period of 2000-2004 there were 1,339,068 baptized.
The difference between the amount baptized and the reported increase in Peak Publishers is (1,339,068-477,568)=861,500.
Something happened to 861,500 Peak Publishers. This is a tremendous number of members to lose in a 5 year period. Here is what the Average Publisher numbers look like.
Average Publishers
Average Publisher numbers did not break 6 million until 2002. In 2001 there were 5,881,776 Avg. Publishers.
2002: 6,048,600. 2004: 6,308,341. The increase is 259,741
However in the period of 2002-2004 there were 768,730 baptized.
The difference between the amount baptized and the reported increase in Avg. Publishers is (768,730-259,741)=526,989
Something happened to 526,989 Avg. Publishers. This also is a tremendous number of members to lose in a 3 year period.
The losses in Peak and Average Publishers is a combination of death (smallest contributer), disfellowshipped, disassociated, inactive, or straight-out AWOL. I believe that people are waking up to what has happened to them, and they are leaving in droves. The Annual Service Reports confirm this to anyone who will do a little analysis.