Trying to think what words best describe the numbers…..
Disastrous? Catastrophic? Devastating? Gut-wrenching?
It was never easier to be seen as a “good” JW than during the pandemic. Attend meetings at home in a t-shirt and shorts & drinking beer….getting your field service time in while sitting at home, chatting with friends on Zoom while writing a line or 2 of a letter every 5 or 10 minutes…pioneer with no hour requirement whatsoever….and the numbers still went down or at best broke even.
Now, in person meetings and in person door to door are back at full speed. The hamster wheel is spinning again. But with easily 40% or more still avoiding the KH, and door to door met with less than gleeful enthusiasm, it is quite evident that for the majority of JWs, their heart just isn’t in it anymore. They’ll still keep hanging on, clinging to the hope that “very soon now” they’ll get their seaside mansion and see dead grandma again, but….
As BB King sang, “the thrill is gone”.
EDIT: another thought - now we see the reasons for the January “governing body update”. They cherry picked a couple of meager points & spun them as an “increase”, and lowered the pioneer requirement to literally half of what it was a generation ago, in a desperate attempt to get out ahead of this utterly depressing report. Let’s see how effective the message is…..
