Reaction to baptism figures

by neat blue dog 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  neat blue dog

  Talking about tomorrow's WT study, that mentions over a quarter of a million baptized every year, a JW asked how many that is a day. I got out my calculator and answered over 778 a day. Of course they were amazed at the growth, but immediatly I googled another statistic and read it aloud:

  'And 360,000 are born every day, and 151,600 people die every day.'

  Nobody said anything, but the sister who asked in the first place was a little annoyed. Instead of addressing it, she asked:

  'Well, how many are baptized in a week?'

  I said 'over 5,000'.

  She said 'Its good to think about it that way, by the week'.
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  Nathan Natas

  or more than 32 are baptized in an hour on average.

  Personally, I'd like to meet the 0.4166666666666667 person and hang out with them.
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  neat blue dog

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gGrL5C4uS1s
  
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  new boy

  It sounds like a lot of sex to me.

  This is how the vast majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses are now created. It wasn’t always this way. From the early years of the church through the nineteen eighties people joined the religion by way of the “door to door” activity mostly. What has changed? Two things. 1. Millions of Jehovah’s Witnesses are having sex with millions of other Jehovah’s Witnesses 2. People are now more educated. Now with the internet people can really research religions before they join them. Not too many people now a days are looking for a religion that got started in the 1870's by a bunch of Germans from Pennsylvania. A religion that doesn’t believe in any holidays or blood transfusions, is very restrictive sexually and has been preaching the end of the world is coming for over a hundred years.
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  nugget

  not too impressive when you look at it as a percentage. Also when you balance it against inactives, df'd and Da'd individuals and natural loss through death they are barely breaking even.

  Also how many are new to the faith and how many are children strong armed into baptism?
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  slimboyfat

  At their peak JWs were baptising over 1000 people a day for a few years during the 1990s.

  Which is all the most striking when you consider there were only 5 million JWs then compared with over 8 million now. Meaning the rate of baptisms in proportion to the size of the community has reduced dramatically.
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  slimboyfat

  I just checked: the peak year for baptisms was 1997 when 375,000 were baptised with the average publishers number at 5.3 million. Incidentally - this was the year I was baptised. I got in at peak JW.
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  Brokeback Watchtower

  The last conventions I went to was in the early part of year 2000. Always just 1 -5 getting dunked. I think the figures that the WT corporation give are very suspect and most likely heavily inflated as they try to : "Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative" in their published material.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qk9o_ZeR7s
  
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  steve2

  Very few JWs appraise the numbers intelligently or critically. That’s why they are so easily impressed when stand-alone numbers are presented in the literature or talks and have no ability to put the numbers in context.
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  Brokeback Watchtower

  I'm sure there are lots of assemblies where nobody gets baptized, in that case they should skip the talk and just play a video recording of one of Anthony Morris 3rd tight pants rants.