Posts by shepherdless

48

Watchtower Releases 2017 Grand Total Figures!

by darkspilver in

jw
friends

2017 grand totals.

branches of jehovah’s witnesses: 90. .

number of lands reporting: 240. .

shepherdless

If we assume that there are less converts and more born-ins who are getting baptized, would the above statement of yours take the premise that more and more JW kids are staying in the religion and then having kids who are becoming JW's, thus repeating this cycle and the rate of publisher increase is equaling the world population growth?

It would appear from past figures that in places such as USA, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia, this is what is happening. There seems to be few converts, and the numbers are made up of born-ins. Unsurprisingly, numbers are stagnant in such countries.

In Latin America and other strongly catholic countries, there is still growth. In Christian African countries, where there is strong population growth, there is often a massive increase in numbers and a lot of those countries already have higher ratios of JWs to population than many Western countries.

Because, if JW's have low retention rate( born-ins are leaving the cult) and outside converts are also less, then the peak publishers should go down at some point.

That is probably already happening in some Western countries. On another thread I all but proved (using Australian census data) that decline is now inevitable. Better to just rely on “average publishers” not “peak publishers” when trying to work out what is going on, by the way.

For e.g. In my congregation of 40 publishers, almost everyone is a born-in JW, i.e. all had witness parents. There has not been a single convert in years, but the publisher number is increasing because existing witnesses are having kids who are growing up as JW's. So, in reality, in my cong, born-ins are staying in the org. Is this a worldwide trend?

From memory, you are in India? In many Western countries, a number of born-ins leave when in the 15 to 25 age bracket, but a lot of them drift back in, particularly when having their own kids, sometimes dragging a spouse in with them.

20

Congrats Australia votes yes gay marriage! Awesome!

by Witness 007 in

well done aussie's 60% voted yes.

i really did not think this would happen here there is alot of gay phobia.

i saw men on the streets holding signs "vote no.

shepherdless

Hi fulltimestudent, sorry to be slow to respond. Brief responses as follows:

1. I hadn't kept up with the news on Pell. Perhaps I had missed it because the allegation (at least as reported) is very vague at the moment.

2. In relation to Abbott being pugilistic:

I see a strongly opinionated man who is intense in the way he approaches the causes in his life. Would you call his attitude pugilistic? I would...

I agree.

...and could believe the above incident. You may not - but there are times when there is only one witness to an event.

I don't know whether it occurred. The point is that it was denied and, without re-hashing details, it is dubious. Political opponents of Abbott at the time portrayed it as undisputed fact, as does your original post. That prompted my reply.

3. Is Abbott like Trump?

I don't think either of us are too worried about this one. For what its worth, I would describe Abbott as far more like Pence than Trump. (And I am not a fan of any of the three of them.)

4. "But how deeply are Abbott's religious beliefs involved in his political agenda?"

I have to point out that further down in the article that you quote:

Kelly needs a lot more evidence and more examples before his proposition holds that Abbott is deeply indebted to Santamaria in his policy stances. But he raises two fascinating questions. First, is Abbott drawing on some instincts deeply lodged in Catholic social teaching? The evidence is slight.

Anyway, I think we both like to see accuracy and support for positions. Sorry to be a "kill-joy".

BTW: I enjoyed reading your articles on the history of Korea.

20

Congrats Australia votes yes gay marriage! Awesome!

by Witness 007 in

well done aussie's 60% voted yes.

i really did not think this would happen here there is alot of gay phobia.

i saw men on the streets holding signs "vote no.

shepherdless

I am not a fan of either Tony Abbott or Cardinal Pell, but I just feel I have to correct a few things in FTS’s post.

First we have,Tony Abbott. A former (very) conservative Prime Minister ( a bit like one D.Trump),

D Trump and T Abbott are not alike. Abbot is a career politician and an ideologically conservative one. Trump is not a real conservative. He is a populist who says things that appeal to a conservative base.

Now Tony, who in his student days gained a reputation for slamming opponents in student politics, against walls and threatening them with worse, was also once a novice priest and is still very much a supporter of the church.

This “reputation” comes from one allegation by one person about one incident that allegedly happened on a University campus, first reported (I think in David Marr’s biography of Tony Abbott) about 20 years after the event. Abbott denied it, and nobody else says they saw it took place. Yes, Abbott trained to be a Jesuit priest, and quit. I don’t know to what extent he could be said to be “supporter of the church” but 2 things make me doubt that:

1. Even David Marr, who is about as anti-Abbott as you can get, and documented Abbott’s long career in politics, said Abbott was a completely secular politician.

2. When the Royal Commission into Child Abuse was announced, Tony Abbott, as leader of the opposition, immediately supported it, and it became a bi-partisan project. That is significant, given he pretty much opposed everything else the government of the day tried to do.

and having come under some unwelcome suspicion as having had a specific liking for younger boys

I have not previously read any suggestion to that effect. The criticism of Pell is that, in his role, he must have known there was a problem and he didn’t act, or he acted to cover it up.

54

Fasten Your Seatbelts - The Crazy Has Started (Also, bring the Koolaid)

by berrygerry in

from facebook:just saw my jw mother after not seeing her for more than 2 years.

when i do see her, it is brief, she never asks about my life, doesn't ask about my 4 children her grandchildren, doesn't ask about my grandchildren...her great grandchildren, she doesn't ask about my other 2 brothers that she is also alienated from, she doesn't ask about my brothers family.

she doesn't talk about the jw/org either.

shepherdless

I noticed from the reddit site as well, that there iseems to be a bit more hysteria than normal.

I wonder if this is just the result of a few JWs becoming a little more delusional, as a result of recent less-than-encouraging recent news. One part of the typical JW brain must be noticing consolidation, Hall sales and less printed material. Maybe other parts of the brain for some JWs are just ramping up the search for signs, to drown out any thoughts that they want to avoid thinking.

20

Congrats Australia votes yes gay marriage! Awesome!

by Witness 007 in

well done aussie's 60% voted yes.

i really did not think this would happen here there is alot of gay phobia.

i saw men on the streets holding signs "vote no.

shepherdless

One reason the vote was needed, was that it was an election promise.

However, probably the main reason was the difficulty individual members of Parliament were facing in their own branches. Just to explain, political apathy in Australia makes it easy for small aligned groups to control branches. But the apathy is so prevelant that even small aligned groups are hard to form. In my electorate, there were about 10 branches of the political party holding that federal seat. I saw first hand how a christian alignment got effective control of 8 out of 10 of those branches (ie branch stacking and putting office bearers in place), despite the typical member not being religious. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that that is a relatively common thing to occur in Aust; Christians being one of the few that can pull together a small but effective aligned group.

Controlling branches means controlling the appointees to the committee that selects and vets potential candidates. Politicians don’t want to be dis-endorsed. When Labor was in power for 6 years, Labor wouldn’t legislate SSM, despite strong community support, control of both houses, and a lot of noise within. Neither would the LNP Coalition more recently, despite even stronger public support.

Now the vote allows the politicians to move forward and introduce SSM, without fear of repercussions. Obviously the survey was a waste of money in one sense, but it probably was the only realistic way forward.

20

Is it really possible to disprove the Watchtower?

by Coded Logic in

dear brothers and sisters,.

considering the end is so near at hand we thought it important for to reiterate that it's absolutely impossible to prove god's "one true organisation" wrong.

there is nothing on heaven or earth that could ever be shown to be false or incorrect in our entire .

shepherdless

I don’t think it’s possible to prove JWs are wrong. It’s not possible to prove they’re right either, of course, until Armageddon comes.

I think it is easy to prove (to any sensible level or standard) to a rational, logical and impartial person, that the JWs are wrong. It is just impossible to prove it to a thoroughly indoctrinated JW.

20

Is it really possible to disprove the Watchtower?

by Coded Logic in

dear brothers and sisters,.

considering the end is so near at hand we thought it important for to reiterate that it's absolutely impossible to prove god's "one true organisation" wrong.

there is nothing on heaven or earth that could ever be shown to be false or incorrect in our entire .

shepherdless

My wife once told me that the fact that Armageddon didn't come, just shows that the "new light" is correct.

30

Another reason Watchtower may be hurting financially

by shepherdless in

i don't think anyone else has raised this point.

below i set out the case that the jw demographic in usa has a steadily decreasing combined income, and as a consequence, has less money to donate.

not only is the flock not growing, the flock is producing less wool for the borg to fleece.

shepherdless

Hi all, thanks for all of your good comments.

A couple of points:

I'm guessing this means since women are increasing as a percentage of jws over men, and women generally earning so much less than men, this too will impact donations.

Yes, that is what I meant. This is a complicated subject, and it would take me lot of work to explain in detail. Just for starters, a graph of median income vs age for women (instead of men) tends to be a different shape.

So, my question is: does Watchtower know how much income its members have and the liklihood of their spending some of it on WT?

They would have a trove of data direct from congregations. I doubt that they would have data about people's incomes, but they would definitely have sufficient data to line up demographics with expected donations. Do they do that? I don't know.

35

Is All The Bad Publicity About The Watchtower Pedophile Lawsuits Causing Contributions To Nose Dive Worldwide?

by Brokeback Watchtower in

i think with all the child molestation lawsuits the watchtower corporation is and has been hit with is the main reason for all the prime property sell off recently.

the silent lambs protest back in 2001, and the dateline prime time expose probably was the death knell for the watchtower's hey day in brooklyn.. their membership is drying up, young people are leaving in droves, the situation is no doubt far worse than the annually published yearbook figures show and so they ceased it's publication permanently.

and those left remaining are experiencing a huge grab of money from their congregations accounts and now are required to make pledges about how much they can contribute which i think is a last ditch effort by the governing body to squeeze more money out of the rank and file watchtower indoctrinated drones.. i think all this is happening because even those still loyally attending are hearing reports of these tremendous pay out that the watchtower is making to the victims of their self serving policies that put young ones at great risks so that even the rank and file don't want to contribute to pay court costs and so are withholding giving contributions to a very great extent.

shepherdless

Truthseeker: I will shortly be working on a project to analyze all congregations in the U.K. and their contributions once the data has been pulled

That would be fantastic. I have thought for a long while about doing that, but it is far too big a task for me. It should tell us a lot about the real financial position of Watchtower in U.K.

30

Another reason Watchtower may be hurting financially

by shepherdless in

i don't think anyone else has raised this point.

below i set out the case that the jw demographic in usa has a steadily decreasing combined income, and as a consequence, has less money to donate.

not only is the flock not growing, the flock is producing less wool for the borg to fleece.

shepherdless

sbf: ...the decrease in contributions may be larger than the decrease in income because of the important distinction between income and disposable income. In other words, while JW income may decrease by 3% in real terms, the fall in disposable income (which drives spending, including charitable donations) will be much larger.

Yes, that is quite true.

I was avoiding complicating the issue, in the o.p. There are a number of factors that come into play, about how much is available to donate. For example, older people may have fewer essential expenses because they are not raising kids, or may try to save harder, given they know there is little further income coming in for the rest of their lives. I chose words to try to steer clear of that debate, and let others argue about it, if they wanted.

The refusal to allow young JWs to get an education may really be coming back to bite Watchtower.

Yes. However, there seems to be a more fundamental problem; a lack of young JWs in the first place. Reasons may be:

1. a complete failure to recruit, in recent times;

2. the usual drop out in the late teens / early 20s; and

3. as I pointed out in one of my earlier posts, it seems the "return to Jehovah's" aren't returning in the numbers that they used to.

What I mean by point 3 is that it seems it used to be the case that a lot of late teens / early 20s JWs would leave, but come back around the time they have kids of their own. In an earlier thread, I put up some stats that suggested they don't return to the extent they used to.

I also wonder whether, overall, shunning has had a backfire effect, and has lost them more younger members, never to return, than they might have retained by the threat. For whatever reason Watchtower has a shortage of youngsters and it is hurting them in a number of ways, including financial.