JW.org statistics and the decline in first world countries.

by OneEyedJoe 18 Replies latest watchtower scandals

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  OneEyedJoe

  Cross posting from another thread. It seems that I might not be the only nerd here that's interested in statistics like this so maybe it deserves it's own topic.

  So I was playing around with google.com/trends with some JW related search terms. I found the results a bit surprising, and certainly interesting, so I figured I'd share.

  First off, the link to what I tried.

  One of the most surprising things that stood out was the regional interest. The top 3 countries for both "jw.org" and "Jehovah's witnesses" searches are Angola, Zambia and Congo, and the entire top 10 of both lists is dominated entirely by the 3rd world. Now, I think google scales these based on the total search volume from the regions in question, so it's perhaps a little less shocking, but it does show that the per capita interest in JWism is much higher in 3rd world countries than it is in the more educated/secular places. On a scale from 1 to 100 the US ranks a 6 for interest in JWs, and the UK comes in at 3. Pretty dismal, I'd say.

  Another thing that I found interesting was the related searches section. The top 2 related searches for jw.org (once you skip the obvious "jw") are both clearly made by spanish speakers (and jw.org/es - the spanish site - also made the top 10). Also, several of the top 10 related searches for "Jehovah's Wittness" are clearly not english. It seems that the bulk of the interest in JWism is from latin america(since spain is significantly more secular than latin america, i think we can assume spaniards are contributing very little to the spanish JW related searches) or from immigrants originating in latin america. This supports what I've seen in the US, where it seems the only congregations that are growing are foreign language groups, and especially the spanish congregations (though they seem to be plateauing).

  The JW.org campaign of august does seem to have had a little success with a peak in interest in august. However, I suspect the roughly 50% increase from July to August was less than what the typical R/F JW would expect. Where was that success, though? Not in the US or UK! If you filter by region, interest in JW.org peaked in January of 2013 in the US and October of 2013 (the app/bible release) in the UK.

  I think by itself this is essentially irrefutable evidence that the JWs are experiencing decline in the US, UK and western europe.
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  Phizzy

  "(though they seem to be plateauing)." This is born out by the reduction in those "serving" such Congregations, including C.O's who used to"serve" such ones exclusively. The need is no longer there.

  Quite how the interest in JW.Org from 3rd world places will relate to new recruits remains to be seen, a lot of traffic may come from those just curious, many of such countries have a large minority (?), if I can be permitted to use the phrase, of JW's, so interest in "what the who" they are is inevitable.

  My own , very limited experience, has been that immigrants that become JW's do so for family reasons, or because the Catholic Church (local version) is not for them, but social cohesion with their own ethnic group is. Some join simply to learn the local languge for free, then drift away.

  These Congregations tend to be very insular, having little or no contact with the indigenous JW's, and little interest in having it, and retention of members is becoming a problem.

  Decline in real numbers must be seen as a fact, and future decline, I predict, will accelerate.
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  Simon

  Google trends is a great resource for looking at growth or decline in interest about something.
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  baltar447

  I've noticed that the most JW.ORG hype (images, products) seems to be from third world countries.
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  OneEyedJoe

  Thinking about this more, I think the most telling thing is that there was essentially no bump for august 2014 in the US. There's over a million active JWs in the US, and a significant number "pioneered" at 30 hours for the month. Even if you assume abysmal support for FS with an average of 5 hours per publisher, you'd still have 5 million hours spent passing out leaflets. Again, assuming a low 10 tracts per hour, that leaves you with 50 million leaflets passed out. That's roughly 1 for every 6 people in the US. if only a tiny fraction of those googled jw.org, there would've been a HUGE spike in august. There was a tiny spike, but it was barely more than the spike caused by the AGM and release of the new bible, and less than the spike at the beginning of 2013. Both of those spikes were probably caused almost exclusively by JWs themselves, so it stands to reason that the august numbers probably included effectively zero interested non-believers.

  Just another data point to show the true ineffectiveness of field service.
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  Apognophos

  Yep, this is interesting stuff, thanks (again) for (re)posting it I'm surprised by just how much higher the interest seems to be in Africa, but perhaps I shouldn't be since religion and poverty are comorbid, and sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest place on Earth. They also seem to have a lot of extremist religion there, judging from the stuff happening in the Muslim countries, so hey, why not an extremist Christian religion?
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  factfinder

  Interesting, thanks for sharing.

  I remember hearing at the CA in the 90's how meeting attendence in the US among Spanish congregations was exceeding 100%, while attendence in English congs was in the 80-something to 90-something percent level. No doubt the trend has continued and attendence in English congs has continued to decline.

  There were 3 congs in the town I live in when I last attended 9 years ago. One Spanish and two English. The Spanish was the biggest.

  Now the Spanish cong is still there but only one English cong. Jehovah is bringing in the increase! LOL!
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  OneEyedJoe

  FF-

  The sad thing is I would bet that most of the R/F in the merged congregation think there's been a huge increase since their meetings probably went from being 40%full to being 80% full.
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  Captain Obvious

  Hmm... Good refutation to use when a JW talks about the big J "speeding up the work" in "the time of the end"
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  Ajax

  Just some observations - we went to our local KH for the first time in 20 years - ZERO growth as evidenced by the same tired old faces from decades ago - no young families - no young servants just the same stonehead elders.

  Latin American streets are alive and crawling with Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and JWs all schlepping about giving out tracts etc.

  Thing is - NOBODY READS !! In all my years there, I've never seen anyone carry or read a book on a bus, homes have no books, and I have never seen the library in our large city.-if it even has one?.

  While a couple of the group try to shove pamphlets through your gates - the entire rest of the (sometimes large) group is fooling about on cell phones. The gullibility of these uneducated throngs is astounding - many adults are unaware that the scenes in hollywood thrillers such as King Kong are not real!

  American cults are simply replacing the RC Church , Whatever BS that is presented over a cell phone is what will be believed - absolutely no questions asked. I think the worlds ignorant masses are the real target of JW Borg.