About 10 years ago I did a simple projection for when the organisation's annual publisher growth rate would hit zero. The date I arrived at was 2009. My rough projection was based on the preceding 20 worldwide annual reports.
Obviously my projection was wrong. The dubbies continue to get modest % increases every year of their publisher numbers, although as a percentage of the total worldwide publisher figure the annual growth rate seems to be slowly but surely reducing year by year.
Has anyone else attempted to predict when the growth will finally hit zero. Will it be 5 years, 10 years, 20? Or will they always get some kind of increase, no matter how small?
Obviously the dubbies future growth or otherwise is contingent on many things, for example, future wars, terrorist attacks, etc, and how much doomsday spin the Society excites in the publishers. But it appears the trend is firmly set for the annual growth rate to finally bottom-out in the not too distant future, at least judging by the fall-off in growth in many developed countries.
Yadda
When will the JW's annual publisher growth rate finally hit zero?
by yaddayadda 18 Replies latest jw friends
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yaddayadda
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bigdreaux
i hope your right, and i hope it's soon. in crisis of conscience, mr. franz shows that in industrialized nations, even though alot get baptized, their publisher numbers are going down. i attribute that to things like this site showing the dark side. i predict most of their future growth will come from areas where the people are poor, and looking for something to better their lives.
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Anony-Mouse
It will touch negatives in 2013, then rebound the year of 2014.
Then it will plummet and never recover. -
bigdreaux
why do you say that any mouse? not arguing, just curious
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blondie
Actually in 1978 and 1979 they posted a decrease (around then anyway)
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John Doe
I predict the publisher growth rate will hit zero in the same year that they record the same number of publishers as the previous year. ;-) I'll be happy to take substantial bets on this.
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steve2
There will be door-knockers for a few more years in one form or another.
However, a separate question is, To what extent will the Watchtower openly publish the figures? I'd guess that it gets pretty demoralising for the rank and file to keep seeing ever decreasing figures.
Look at Denmark, for a glaring example: Currently, the average number of publishers is about the same as it was in 1984 - 23 years ago! And look at the publisher stagnation in many other Western countries - it must take a toll sooner or later. I wouldn't be suprised if a decision is made at headquarters to cut down the annual JW statistics that until recently were in the January 1st Watchtower, but latterly, have been included in the February 1st Watchtower (and are repeated in the JW yearbooks).
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mkr32208
I'll put five bucks on 2010-2014 for zero years 2015 will be the begining of the big NEGATIVE numbers 2018-2019 were going to start seeing lots of suicides...
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yaddayadda
Actually I expect the annual percentage figure will remain steady for the next few years and possibly even go on a bit of an upward curve between now and 2014. However, from 2015 onward I think the figure will rather quickly drop to languish consistently below 1%, until eventually, in about 10-15 years after 2015, it reaches zero/negative.
I know that if I was still a dub I would secretly be looking for the end to come before the 100th anniversary of 1914. Lately many JW's seem to have an especially heightened sense of expectation that the end is so very close now. Most JW's who are now aged about 35 up expected the end to come around 2000 and are thus sure that it can't be too much farther away. It's just human nature to have a time-frame in mind and most middle-aged and older JW's were conditioned to look to a date, explicit or not (1975, 1984).
Steve2, yes, I think they will have no choice but to soon publish a truncated version of the annual worldwide report. It will no longer show the annual % publisher stats increase/decease. I doubt they would drop the worldwide report entirely as it may signal alarm bells for too many JW's who are already demoralised and barely hanging in there in the forlorn hope the end truly is just around the corner. -
IP_SEC
I prognosticate they will stop the whole counting time and publisher reports before the low increases get too embarrassing. Even the Morons are kicking their butts in growth. Maybe the JWs should get a show on HBO to help their stats? ;)