I think that the retention of youngsters is a tremendous problem for the organization, especially when it comes to the replacement of elders and ministerial servants. In fact, if you still attend meetings you can begin to see it already.
In my congregation, the average age of the ministerial servrants is about 48. Many years ago, speaking of just my congregation, it was about ten to fifteen years less than that. Most of those servants have gone on to be elders, in that congregation or another, but no young people are replacing them. Our youngest ministerial servant is 40. Others of those servants have left the truth entirely or are doing nothing in the truth but just going and smiling and nodding (people like me).
I should add that there is a pretty decent pool of young blood males there that they could choose from, but these ones aren't reaching out. They're in the 20-30 range. A few of them carry the microphones every now and then, but that is about it. We have one that is actually reaching out who is about 30 but he has recently been reinstated. He was making out with an elder's daughter. At the time he was about 24. The elder's daughter was 13. Needless to say, that particular elder and his family are no longer in the congregation.
Yeah.
But I digress.
The point I am trying to make is this: You have to have male leadership for this form of society to continue to function. It's easy to replace Governing Body members with younger men. Give the rank-and-file publisher some lame duck story about the calling not ending in 1935. That'll plug that leak.
But in local congregations it is not done so easily. Many congregations have to conscript elders from other congregations because there just are not enough brothers to do all the work.
My wife is always onto me because even she sees the sharp decline in capable brothers. "You should be doing more," she says. I did five years in the big house as a ministerial servant between the ages of 20 and 25 and I am done. You would not believe the craziness that went on in those closed door servant/elders meetings. Well, some of you would because many of you were in them.
I'm digressing again. Fast forward ten years from now. Some of the now 50 or 60+ elders will either be dead or incapable of handling their already overloaded elder duties well. Current ministerial servants who are 40-50 years old will fill the shoes but there is nobody behind them.
The Organization knows this. I don't know what their plans are. They seem to be cursing and denouncing children here in the literature lately, even so far as encouraging people not to have them because of all the trouble they cause! In reality, the mass exodus reflects badly upon the organization. That is a no-no.
Don't be surprised of they reinterpret scripture again and start allowing females to have teaching abilities (which was always a rather dumb exclusive rule to me anyway). Can you imagine a sister conducting the Watchtower study wearing a head scarf?
