2015 service report

by mommyfirstandalways 109 Replies latest members private

• 

  slimboyfat

  The figure that interests me most is the number of congregations. If that starts to go down we'll know decline has really set in.
• 

  Splash

  You could begin reporting f.service in increments of 15 minutes from 2002 onwards.

  If it took 1 billion hours to generate an 18,500 increase, that's 55,000 hours ministry for a one person increase.

  Put another way, it would take 5 congregations of 100 publishers a whole year (doing 8 hrs per month) to increase the numbers by one.

  How depressing for them.
• 

  jookbeard

  I think the increasing "partakers" is a real sign of Gods blessing , surely there will be 50 million to the memorial next year
• 

  JeffT

  Two numbers jumped out at me, looking at it like a business report.

  9,254,263 Bible studies produced 260,273 baptisms = a "closing rate" of less than 3%. The public isn't buying what they're selling.

  Another way to look at it: it took almost 7500 publisher hours per baptism. Boeing can build a 737 in 5500.
• 

  Fencing

  Two numbers jumped out at me, looking at it like a business report.
  9,254,263 Bible studies produced 260,273 baptisms = a "closing rate" of less than 3%. The public isn't buying what they're selling.
  Another way to look at it: it took almost 7500 publisher hours per baptism. Boeing can build a 737 in 5500.

  Then think about what percentage of those baptisms are kids of current Witnesses. It's got to be at least >50%, if not considerably more. The actual "closing rate" of the preaching work is probably much closer to ~1%.
• 

  St George of England

  I wonder if they will actually publish the detailed chart this year, including partakers.

  George
• 

  Beth Sarim

  At some point they will have to stop publishing the partakers, at the rate the number is increasing, it just is not in par with their doctrine. Confusing people.
• 

  WTS Archive

  slimboyfat3 hours ago

  The figure that interests me most is the number of congregations. If that starts to go down we'll know decline has really set in.

  Not really. In some countries they've recently consolidated smaller congregations into bigger ones recently. Here in Poland the number of congregation dropped by 25% because of that.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Yeah but I would argue that in itself if an indicator of decline. JWs have struggled in Poland for decades now.
• 

  slimboyfat

  On reflection I think we need to wait to see the rest of the numbers before we draw too many conclusions because:

  1) Friday is probably actually a bad day to have the Memorial in terms of attendance

  2) the peak publisher figure does jump around a lot more than the average figure. And the jump in the peak figure was large last year, so you would expect it to be smaller this year.

  Having said that, if the average increase is similar to the small increase in the peak figure it will make grim reading indeed for JW leaders. And if the same sort of result comes in next year they could start to panic. At the very least they'd have to come up with some sort of explanation how delaying Armageddon shows Jehovah's "patience" even when JW numbers are in decline.