I am sorry for the kids in jw's families who are pressured into being baptised from a young age, just so that the GB's statistics would look good.
Could this be the future for the Watchtower?
by C0ntr013r 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Splash
JW growth in western countries is almost entirely born ins.
Perpetuating your faith down to your children is why the WT has been able to survive. If parents realised that the teachings today are nothing like the teachings that first persuaded them (or their parents perhaps) then this nonsense would soon come to an end.
I'm a 3rd generation JW and when I step back I realise that if a JW called on my house today there's no way I would accept their easily disprovable nonsense.
So my take on it is that if the cycle of inheriting your parents beliefs could be broken, the decline would be abrupt.
The good news is that western kids today do not blindly accept as much as my generation did, and are more empowered to challenge hand-me-down religion.
The WT may spend billions of hours recruiting but the writing is on the wall. Within our generation we will see the decline begin to set in, and even more so as the WT is held to the light regarding their abusive policies, ever changing unscriptural teachings and blatant money grabbing coersions.
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OnTheWayOut
A huge difference between Mormons and JW's is in counting membership. JW's still count those "publisher's record cards" for their numbers. So their numbers are of active members. But there may be quite a bit of cheating on those numbers. Peak numbers would include counting the same person more than once when they turn in more than one slip for current and past months. Peak numbers include the elderly that they decide must still be counted so someone turns in a slip for them. Peak numbers include parents that never go out in recruiting but turn in a slip for their home study with the kids, and others who never go out but turn in an hour.
Also, a huge percentage of JW numbers would be over 50 years old (many way over that) and there just aren't numbers coming in to replace them as they die. So they are in a similar situation as the Mormons, but may be a decade or two behind before it reaches a critical point of shrinking membership. Yes, that could be the future for the Watchtower.