Italy: conventions baptisms stats

by behemot 15 Replies latest jw friends

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  TheOldHippie

  Behe - how could I forget that? Seems I am VERY close to extremely humiliatingly having to admit I just MIGHT be wrong, however terrible that is! But just a question, although I have never encountered the situation myself, although I was an elder for a quarter of a century: If a youngster or someone else has completed the questions and is ready for baptism and wants to be baptised at the international convention, is that OK? Then the number of people baptised would be highter in the pre-75 period. Perhaps one was a bit more relaxed then, also, as to the baptism-candidates. I remember in my own congregation, many more attended the questions-meetings than were actually baptised later on. And people did not have the most accurate knowledge in the world, but still were baptised. More strict now.

  But - until I can find some more devastating arguments for you - you have an ad hoc victory ........ shame on you!
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  Pistoff

  The key is the percentage of baptized to total growth per year; so if there are 2000 at the convention and 20 baptized, multiply by 3, for 3% growth, figuring 3 conventions/assemblies per year.

  In the midwest US, they run now from .8 to 1.2 percent of total, for a yearly growth of roughly 2.4 to 3.6%
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  steve2

  Oops, my apologies. I had simply assumed that Behe's statistics were cumulative (i.e., across all conventions held in Italy this year). So, I agree that the total attendance figures and total baptisms at conventions held across a specified country need to be taken into account, including whether the conventions included international attendees.

  That being said, do we know what were the total peak attendances and total baptisms at conventions across Italy this year?
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  willyloman

  No matter how you parse these numbers, 300-and-some baptisms with 70,000 in attendance is way under the old "norm." We used to expect 1 to 2 percent, which would yield 700-1,400 at a convention with that many seats filled. I attended a convention with 40,000 dubs in the mid-70's and there were 1,100 baptized; they had to bus them to an offsite location on motel row where they used a number of swimming pools. This suggests that the society's "work" is largely finished now and that they are merely baptizing their children - most of whom will not stick around into their 20's.
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  steve2

  No matter how you parse these numbers, 300-and-some baptisms with 70,000 in attendance is way under the old "norm."

  Agreed. That conclusion is inescapable.
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  behemot

  OldHippie,

  If a youngster or someone else has completed the questions and is ready for baptism and wants to be baptised at the international convention, is that OK?

  Can't answer this question, in my experience (I was an elder half of your years) it never happened. I agree that in pre-75 years baptism procedure was way less strict than it became later on.

  However, in the particular case of the Rome 1973 convention, I'm pretty sure the candidates were all local. I was there and, as far as I remember, the candidates were only one huge group (not split in different language-groups) and the baptismal talk was given only in Italian and not translated in any other language (which would obviously have been the case if there were foreign candidates). At the 2001 convention (I was still there) the baptismal talk was given also in other languages for candidates coming from the local foreign speaking field. Can't tell what happened last weekend but I guess it was something similar. The news report talks about 70 of the 338 baptised being "foreigners" but most likely this still refers to candidates coming from the Italian foreign speaking field.

  In any case, willyloman sums it up nicely (and I agree):

  No matter how you parse these numbers, 300-and-some baptisms with 70,000 in attendance is way under the old "norm."

  Behemot