by hamsterbait 47 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Ours just gets larger all the time!
It depends on whether you live in a growth area where new housing is being built, or if you live in a stagnant area...
Its not about the numbers coming in from the territory though...it's about witnesses moving in from other areas...so it all balances up in the long run....
Our congregation has 100-120 publishers, Sunday attendance is around 100-110, midweek is about 80.
It has been that way for 7 or 8 years.
Recently the CO mandated a core of "strong" families to move in, to boost things up. 8 new folks, mostly pioneers & elders. Attendance hasn't budged.
The four of us left month ago. But my ex just changed halls with my son. Me and my daughter left. So on a world wide scale some leave and some swap KHs. I have noticed though, many who leave are still in mentally and still believe it's the truth.
I would love to really help these ones, it's a terrible situation to be in and leaves them vulnerable to return.
Kate xx
Consensus so far is that attendance is way down compared to a few years ago. My old congregation has gone from 90+ publishers to about 45.
The town that I now live in has several churches with Sunday attendance over 1,000. We have one mega-Baptist church with over 3,000 for Sunday attendance. How does that compare to the Kingdom Halls? Nada. A Circuit Assembly does not even compare.
Oh, I say very little knowing she is a typical Witness who selectively moans about the elders but stubbornly continus to believe it's the" twuth".
Sounds exactly like my wife.. She will complain with me but if I start to say anything about the org "ok, ok I don't wanna hear that"
hamsterbait:
I am one of the ones who stopped attending about 14 years ago but attended a special meeting or two in the succeeding years and the memorial (but no more).
I feel my "fade" was a result of the 1995 changed teaching on Generation. Call it the last straw. From what I could gather, it seems the numbers did go down somewhat several years after that. I attribute some of that to people moving away and some old-timers who passed away. How much is directly attributable to people being fed-up like I was cannot be known.
What the story actually is now I cannot say since I never go and I heard that congregations have been merged, etc.
Overall, I imagine the numbers are probably lower even though they would like to hide that fact. I suspect all the information from ex-members exposing them on the internet is probably to blame (thankfully).
I wonder what the latest stats are for the 'effectiveness' of the 'first call(tm)' is now.
If it's anything like it was when I was in it's naff all.
The WBT$ uses ineffective recruiting tactics and their attempt at promoting their website is not particularly positive.
They ignore radio and TV......probably because they know they'd get called out on their dangerous doctrines.
Before I left you could clearly see that attendance was declining and lots of publishers left. The first night the CO was to speak, the hall was bare. Attendance picked up as some Elders called missing ones I guess.
New groups of witnesses moving in from other territories.
New faces that aren't witnesses are very rare. Very rare.
Attendance at the district assemblies was way down. We also noticed the number of Assemblies this year are down by almost half. The District Assemblies used to run from May - Sept. here for the English. This year they start in June and end in mid July.
The number of reserved baptism seats were a little less than half full at the last district assembly. It was about 2-3 empty rows.
Rooms are still available at the most sought after hotel. That is practically unheard of.
But they keep saying the organization is growing.
It's a strange thing, twice shy, that the official stats speak of growth but the personal observations speak otherwise. Something is amiss here.
My congregation was thriving a few years ago, but we've gone from 90 publishers to 80, and now have the fewest pioneers in the circuit. Sigh.
