I don't trust ANY of their printed statistics. Does anyone actually think they would print anything that shows a MAJOR decline? They are all about appearances and if they have to use SPIRITUAL WARFARE to rally the troops, they would have no qualms about it. Their stats are baseless IMO.
August KM provides solid evidence of declining JW morale
by sir82 62 Replies latest jw friends
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blondie
March, April, May are the big months to push for pioneering. What month is reported in the August KM, February or March. How can they have posted the August numbers yet?
The proof is at the baptisms, 90% children of jws. I remember the years before 1975, when many adults without a jw background were baptized. I wonder if they are the people that bailed in 1977, 1978, and 1979?
If it weren't for the poorer countries, there would be no increase.
Blondie
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sir82
March, April, May are the big months to push for pioneering. What month is reported in the August KM
Blondie,
The August KM has the April field service report. The February KM was asking for 160,000 auxiliary pioneers for April, they ended up with less than 130,000.
Otherwise I agree with your post - however, there are still significant numbers of adult converts in the foreign language groups in the US, particularly Spanish. I think the US will show a 3 or 4 % increase for the 2007 service year, but as I noted above, there are mitigating factors to that apparent good news (for them).
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slimboyfat
The publisher figures for the UK in the first 7 months of the 2006/7 service year are very high. I would say they indicate 2% increase for the year.
Slim
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Doubting Bro
Sir82,
Fully 25% or more of the US Witnesses are in Spanish-language congregation, you can probably add a few 10's of thousands more in all the other languages.
I also get the sense that Spanish is making up a pretty large portion of the JW population based on the number of Spanish language DCs I saw listed and the fact that many cities with congregations of say 20 or so in the metro area have at least 4 or 5 Spanish congregations and at least one other language, some with larger numbers than the English congregation they share the hall with.
Has anyone seen any actual statistics that back this up? I find it interesting that the WTS doesn't break out their numbers in local branches by language group, but I think at Bethel, they know exactly what the percentages are. My theory is if they reported the numbers by language, the English speaking publisher numbers would be down by quite a bit, which would cause even more discouragement.
Good business strategy to push the foreign language "avenue of service". Makes sense to deploy resources where the larger profit margin can be had. However, I agree that while the numbers will go up in this segment of the population, the $$$ will not go up correspondingly since that's not the wealthiest segment of the population (on average, especially recent immigrants to the US).
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TheListener
I'll look through my previous threads. I did a calculation over the past few years about how many english DCs there were versus Foreign Language DCs.
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blondie
A CO went through this area and said that based on the hispanic population, there should be 3 spanish congregations, not just one; but the problem is finding male jws in good standing (not illegal) to do the administrative work as elders. Quite a few sisters have switched who are on the hunt for a husband or a cure for the boredom in the english congregations or both.
There is a deaf community here but no deaf congregation despite the numbers. Lack of interest on the part of the jws in this area to learn sign language sufficiently enough. But this is not the rule in the WTS.
I have a jw contact that commented that while a congregation may have 100% or more attending at the sunday meetings that 40% are visitors from other congregations. Did you know if a sleeping baby was carried in by parents at the last minute of a meeting that the baby would be counted as having attended..............
The biggest indicator of a drop is in the quality of hours.........more fake hours and wasted time....one reason I would not go with the rank and file and some pioneers...all I received was a doctorate in how to waste time.
Blondie
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sir82
Has anyone seen any actual statistics that back this up?
The figure "250,000" was quoted by a high-ranking Bethel official (PM me if you want to know who...I still have the illusion of protecting my privacy) who helped conduct the elders' school I attended in late 2005. In the nearly 2 years since, I suspect the number has increased, due to immigration and relative success in the field ministry.
My theory is if they reported the numbers by language, the English speaking publisher numbers would be down by quite a bit, which would cause even more discouragement.
Exactly so! They absolutely know the numbers. I am virtually certain the number of English-speaking JWs in the US is in decline, and has been declining for at least 10 years.
The biggest indicator of a drop is in the quality of hours.........more fake hours and wasted time....one reason I would not go with the rank and file and some pioneers...all I received was a doctorate in how to waste time.
Amen and amen! It is staggering to think of all the wasted time in field service. Out of all the time reported, I would say less than 1/10 of that is acually spent preaching or conversing with another actual human being. And when you consider 99% of the work is done in pairs, and both members of the pair count their time that goes into the yearly total, the number of actual persons reached is quite small.
Of course as others have mentioned, it is all about appearances. "A billion hours per year" spent preaching appears awfully impressive...until you think about it and realize that maybe 950 million of those 1 billion hours were spent walking between houses, knocking at not-at-homes, riding in the car to the next return visit, sitting mute on a bench holding magazine in front of you, sitting drinking coffee, etc. Not to mention the phantom hours that tens or hundreds of thousands make up to pad their stats, or just to appear "active".
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nvrgnbk
It's all a big joke.
I don't care what anyone says.
It's dying.
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Doubting Bro
I honestly believe they will stop publishing the figures once it begins to turn negative.
That billion hour mark is something that is bragged about so if they were ever to change the way time was counted, it would gut that number.
Back when I was a gung-ho JW, I would always complain about the amount of time wasted in FS. I never really liked going out, but I figured if I was going to do it, we should be at least trying. Then, as I had doubts, I joined right into the doing RVs from one side of the territory to the other only to find out that most of them weren't home.