by HiddenPimo 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
So the Borg has put up the attendance and baptism figured from the Miami and Atlanta International Conventions.
Amazing Growth!
Atlanta - 46,374 Peak Attendance / Baptized 314
0.67% Growth
Miami - 28,562 Peak Attendance / Baptized 230
0.81% Growth
And as a side point, Brother Schafer did the baptism talk in Atlanta and introduced the Simplified version of the Baptism Questions where question #2 was changed removing the Spirit Directed Organization part.
Schafer did the baptism talk in Atlanta and introduced the Simplified version of the Baptism Questions where question #2 was changed removing the Spirit Directed Organization part.
Noticed that too. I asked everyone I talked to at the CONvention I was at if they noticed the change. No one did.
About 3,200 attendance with 13 dunked. All except one were school age teens. Of the 13 only 4 were males.
The “growth” percentage presented appears to be baptisms exprsssed as a percentage of those in attendance at the convention, which is a peculiar way to calculate “growth” to say the least.
Since when was attendance at a convention the measure of JW membership?
What about people who died or became inactive?
Why are only baptisms from the summer convention counted and not the two assemblies?
Not to mention unbaptised publishers, and other issues.
I don’t think this “growth” figure tells us anything much at all. A comparison with last years’ attendance and baptism figures at those conventions would be useful information.
Ok SBF I get what you are saying - in the 90’s at our Districts in Columbia, SC there was always over 100 baptized and the leak attendance was in the 8,700 range. So a little higher percentage is all.
how about NY,NY 1958 250 000, attendance ~ 3000 Baptized. double what it is today?
overlapping baptism with new questions?
The ratio of baptisms to attendance is an interesting metric that has been reported on in this forum a few times. This ratio has the benefit that the numbers are verifiable by those in attendance. I recall the ratio running about 0.50% in recent years, so it looks like this year is indeed up a bit.
The fact is these people baptized were already counted as publishers so really there’s no growth.
Less than 1% is less than the " Death Rate" in the general population, I should guess that the death rate among JW's is slightly higher than the average Pop. as most JW's are over 50.
I think that however you massage these pathetic figures, no way can you call it "growth".
The percentage of baptisms at summer conventions is not the annual growth measure but does give a feel for more than half, perhaps two thirds(?) of the annual baptisms in a large area. I predict they will stop having baptisms at circuit assemblies because it is discouraging to have so few candidates............
The Atlanta figures are telling because we have the ages of the dunked-- and as teens it is likely that they are doing it primarily for their family and family tradition not for personal conscientious or 'spiritual' reasons. If this is representative of most baptisms today (young born-ins) it shows that the door to door preaching work has become a FAILURE! An enormous effort for few rewards in terms of getting outsiders on board the Watchtower ark. In other words it's much easier to believe the JW drivel if you were born into it.
However it is encouraging to know that past statistics show that whatever the reasons for getting baptised, JWs have a very high churn rate and most of these newbies will leave the organisation sooner or later.
