by slimboyfat 33 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Avoiding severe decline for any church in the secular western world is pretty extraordinary.
France, Britain, Germany up too. Yes some of it will be immigrants, but the overall ratio is climbing in these countries too. Plus other churches benefit from immigrants joining too, yet are still in decline.
There's a lot happening for different groups in Europe. Protestants are booming in China. Watchtower spends so many hours recruiting new members. Still there's really not that much happening.
https://www.conservapedia.com/Growth_of_evangelical_Christianity_in_irreligious_regions
https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/christianity-flourishing-across-europe-new-survey-shows
https://www.christianpost.com/news/evangelical-christians-continue-decades-of-growth-in-spain.html
It’s much lower growth than they used to have but it’s much better than other churches. Still having growth 3% in Germany, 6% in Ireland, 2% in Austria, 6% in Czech Republic and so on is pretty remarkable at this point.
Yes they have decline across most of Latin America. I wonder what’s causing that.
Yes they have decline across most of Latin America. I wonder what’s causing that.
The obvious answer is emigration / immigration.
JWs are joining millions of their compatriots in fleeing crime & poverty in Latin America and going to North America & Europe.
You can’t look at one country in a vacuum and expect it to make sense.
Organic growth is minuscule outside of Africa. New baptisms are an ever dwindling percentage of their numbers, and even a large majority of those are the teen (and even preteen) children of believers who are, frankly, too young to know what they are getting into. Most will likely get DF’ed or fade within the next decade or two.
Agreed that the JWs are doing comparatively better than other religious organizations but the growth is slowly, inexorably grinding to a halt.
Relaxing the rules can prop up the numbers for a few more years, maybe a decade, but the mojo is gone.
SBF:
it seems to be mostly decreases all across the Americas in the western hemisphere.
But maybe they won’t publish the figures next year, and even if they do it will be counting a different thing as publishers report a “yes” rather than a number of hours each month.
Oh thou of little faith, have you factored in the droves of inactive male Witnesses who have left over the years in order to grow beards and will doubtless return this year? Then next year's FS report and accompanying broadcast vid will extol the beard policy change as "food at the right time, the light becoming brighter, Jah's blessing," etc., etc. Who knows? They may even institute a new column in the report on "Inactive Ones Reactivated".
You're just not keeping up with God's chariot, brother!
Only reason there's no major plummeting is JWs having children. And DF arrangements. JW statistic is like sitting at funeral thinking who is gonna die next. Only worth noticing is the increase of partakers at memorial. I don't really why. Is it cause many JWs or people they invite too meetings don't have a grasp about jw teachings? Who can participate or not. Or is it ex jws that participate too disturb numbers.
Slim', what would you say is the difference between JW's and the other faiths you mentioned as regards growth?
To my mind there is one big fat difference that accounts for the JW's continued growth where other religions are struggling.
Shunning.
If that control mechanism was absent as it is in those other religions (I stand to be corrected) then the exit rate would be so much higher. They'd still be baptising kids of course, I doubt the baptism rate would go down, but the churn rate would shoot even higher than it is already.
The JW's have nothing to be proud of in their continued growth, the price of it is simply too high.
What are the reasons? Yes shunning is likely to be a factor. What else? The high level of commitment required. The sense of mission preaching gives for some. The crazy state of the world right now in view of JW end-time teaching. Attraction to a definite black/white set of beliefs and rules in contrast with changing ethical standards in society. Everything being spoon fed and not having to think too much might appeal to some. I don’t know what else. That’s just some explanations I come up with.
The difference in the fate of mainstream churches compared with JWs is extreme. Takes these two graphs. The first shows the decline of members of the Church of Scotland since 1957 where membership has dropped to about a fifth of the peak. The second shows the increase JW publishers in the UK over the same period.
There are single churches in other denominations that are growing, but I don’t think there’s any other denomination over 100,000 members still growing in the UK as JWs are. But I’d be interested to proved wrong if anyone has examples. Perhaps most likely candidates are Pentecostal churches but even these have declined in recent years.
