JWs: Biggest Turnover Rate of Members! "Masked churn" rate of 2/3rds!!

by Seeker4 78 Replies latest jw friends

  • Doubting Bro
    Doubting Bro

    Even on a local level you can see the churn. The congregation I'm "in" over the past year has had 3 baptized (all kids in the 12 y/o range) while 5 df'ed (all unrelated incidents).

    I think they're calling members what the WTS records as publishers.

    I'll bet in some of the non-English congregations where many of the converts are first generation (both to JWs & to the US) are the ones where there is more being converted than are leaving. It will take a while for them to catch up on the curve. Proof that it will eventually happen to those congregations as well is found in Japan. 10 years ago, all you would hear about is how the Japanese were putting the western countries to shame with their large growth. Now, the growth has slowed to a crawl like the west.

    In the not too distant future (5-10 years), the non-English language congos here in the US and western Europe will start taking the same sort of hit out of the back door.

  • nomoreguilt
    nomoreguilt

    Yup, we have the same article in the Flint Journal today. They'd better hurry up and encourage the dubs to have more babies if they expect to have any growth at all.

    NMG

  • civicsi00
    civicsi00

    Aw dang it, you beat me to the punch! I saw the article on yahoo and wanted to post it...

    What a way to describe the turnover rate..lol.. "masked churn"...

    From my experience, I see a large number of hispanics/mexicans join the JW's simply because they can be some of the most uninformed people you run into. They rarely have a computer at home, and if they do, they won't do any kind of research on the religion. The town where I grew up has grown from three congregations to five just in the last couple of years.

  • StAnn
    StAnn

    Here's the direct link to Time

    http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1716987,00.html

    It's referring to a study done by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Here's a link to their page where they have more on this

    http://pewforum.org/

  • grey matters
    grey matters

    From the report on Pew Forum:

  • Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious tradition. Only 37% of all those who say they were raised as Jehovah's Witnesses still identify themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses.

    • Fits with my experience....

  • stillajwexelder
    stillajwexelder

    yes this on front page of MSN -interesting

  • Pwned
    Pwned

    there are like 5 threads on this, may want to combine some. Just a few days ago there was a different article stating that JWs were one of the only religions experiencing growth, it didn't mention the churn though. Thats good news, too bad in my family the churn rate is only 25%, it was 50 for a while but they got one back.

  • Seeker4
    Seeker4

    The "fastest growing religion" comment about JWs has always puzzled me, especially over the last 20 years or so, and until the 2007 report, Witness growth was at a trickle since the mid-1990s.

    I too have felt that there would be negative growth by now, but perhaps have underestimated the effect of the growing immigrant populations. I know for a fact that for decades here in the US, it was the need to learn English that many immigrants began to study. Many of these dropped the studies, but obviously many also became members.

    But I think that figure, that two-thirds of the people who said they were once JWs now are no longer members, is a huge, and for the first time, accurate assessment. It coincides with our own experience, I think.

    This is an important article, and worth getting spread around as much as possible. It portends sad things about the future of the Witnesses.

    S4

  • grey matters
    grey matters

    This is sad, considering how witness parents are told to treat their children who leave. Then again, it really says something about the religion when they leave anyway.

  • The Oracle
    The Oracle

    Note: In my congregation, here is what has happened in the last five years:

    We have had 6 people disfellowshipped. Three have those have been reinstated.

    As far as productivity from the thousands of hours spent n the door to door recruiting work - we have had one person become a publisher and get baptised. That lone person has recently begun their fade. LOL.

    Not exactly stellar.

    I guess it is typical.

    Skewing the numbers is the fact that we have probaly had 3 or 4 minor children become publishers during that time.

    Conclusion: there is a sickness spreading through the "congregations". That sickness is called "nobody's buying our bullshit anymore"

    The Oracle

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