by mommyfirstandalways 109 Replies latest members private
As the average age of JW's climbs and many hit their 80's+, I think we are starting to see the number who die each year approach the number who get baptised.
As the conscious class grows and fades away from the WT, and as those who were baptised as children wake up and leave, I think we may have hit the top of the curve already.
2014 passed without incident, downsizing and layoffs are accelerating, and there's nothing left for them to look forward to and get excited about.
Baptisms at lowest level in 9 years, and the 4th lowest total in the past 25 years.
Furthermore, baptisms as a percentage of active JWs is the lowest it's been in 25 years:
Previoius worst was 2005-2006 at 3.68% vs 2014-2015 at 3.17%. Speeding up the work to be sure!
Me too oneeyedjoe. and possibly a lot of others.
Splash, thanks for the chart!
Did you create that or is it from another source?
Did you create that or is it from another source?
I got the idea from elsewhere but have modified and updated this yearly myself.
I have the figures going back to 1914.
There's legitimate criticism that the figure I record is peak pubs and not average pubs.
Mortality rate would account for 80,000. That leaves 160,000 DFing/DAings.
And faders.
Are we sure that the number of publishers in the original post is the peak publishers? Before jumping to conclusions maybe we should wait until the final figures are out.
One really curious thing about the table of figures in Splash's post is the number of baptisms. All the other columns show a similar pattern of growth in the 25 years since 1990, except for Baptisms which is relatively flat. Baptisms as a percent of publishers, or maybe a better measure is Baptisms as a percent of congregations, has been declining for years. Where are all the new publishers coming from if not from newly baptized ones?
