Are the statistics out yet? (page 4)

punkofnice

'highlight their positive aspects of the 2022 service year'

No room for truth. Just spin.

Once you see the propaganda control methods, you can't unsee them.

Jeffro

slimboyfat:

The JW numbers look “bad” … until you compare them with most other Christian groups which are in severe decline in the west. Compared with other Christian groups the growth of JWs bucks the trend of decline.

Apples and oranges, just like this time last year. The way JWs count membership inflates their growth rate at the expense of the stated number of members, as explained last year.

As I explained last year Jeffro, it’s simply impossible to inflate the “growth rate” for long periods of time without the two measure drifting apart from one another. If the growth rate was consistently overstated for many years you would end up with JWs claiming a lot more members than other measures produce. This has not happened, ever.

Or look at it another way, and ignore Watchtower figures altogether and what do we find? As with the latest New Zealand data, they show that JWs are growing while almost all other Christian groups are declining. The only other Christian group with any significant growth in New Zealand is the Seventh-day Adventists. The Baptists are remaining about level, and most other groups are declining heavily. These data are derived without looking at Watchtower’s own figures at all.

Plus there are aspects of the Watchtower report that are likely to be highly accurate, such as number of congregations, which can be independently verified, and the number of baptisms, which is likely to be accurately recorded, and is not subject to change in definition of what “baptism” means.

Your only argument boils down to the claim that the definition of “publisher” this year may be a bit more liberal than the definition of “publisher” last year, and granted in some individual years this is probably the case, such as when the 15 minute rule was introduced in the early 2000s. Over the long term, however, the number of members that JWs claim remains much lower than the number of self identified JWs in national censuses, and often by significant amounts. Some countries, especially in South America, have close to double the number self identified JWs compared with the Watchtower “publisher” count. This is in stark contrast with Mormons who often claim twice, three times, even four times as many members in their official count compared with census results.

Jeffro

slimboyfat:

Your only argument boils down to the claim that the definition of “publisher” this year may be a bit more liberal than the definition of “publisher” last year

No. Not a valid representation of my position at all. I have explained the reasons previously and you either don’t understand, or you ignore the reasons why JW rates of growth seem higher than for other denominations because it goes against your narrative.

slimboyfat

Have you got any explanation why the New Zealand census confirms that JWs are growing compared with other Christian groups? Or why censuses in general produce higher JW figures than the annual report, and have done for decades?

As I mentioned, even if inclined to reject Watchtower figures altogether (not a reasonable position in any case) census returns alone show that JWs have better growth than most other groups, and in fact most other groups are declining rapidly.

As I recall your argument (feel free to provide a link) it leans heavily on the fact that the publisher number includes unbaptised publishers as well as baptised JWs. But as everyone knows, JWs have always done this, it is nothing new. You didn’t give any compelling reason why this measure would give an increased rate of growth for any length of time. Plus, as I pointed out above, if somehow it did produce an inflated measure of growth over time the publisher count would drift above other measures of membership. This has not happened, as census returns show.

Hellothere

There's always different reasons for numbers. Some years ago JWs we're growing in Norway. Reason many JWs moved to Norway cause there was more job opportunities. Puerto Rico was other way around. Many moved to mainland for jobs and numbers of JWs was staggering. Either way you cut things. Only reason watchtower is not dropping massively in numbers are the strict DF rules. Remove DF arrangements and oh boy the drop they gonna have.

slimboyfat

There's always different reasons for numbers. Some years ago JWs we're growing in Norway. Reason many JWs moved to Norway cause there was more job opportunities. Puerto Rico was other way around. Many moved to mainland and numbers of JWs was staggering. Either way you cut things. Only reason watchtower is not dropping massively in numbers are the strict DF rules. Remove DF arrangements and oh boy the drop they gonna have.

1. Other religious adherents move around too, this is hardly unique to JWs. (Hundreds of thousands of Polish Catholics moved to the UK in the past 20 years, for example)

2. A JW who moves to Norway, Puerto Rico etc., by definition has moved away from somewhere else. So while they are added to the Norway or Puerto Rico count, they are subtracted from the count in whatever country they came from.

Movement between countries, obviously, is no explanation for the growth in JW numbers worldwide, overall, unless we posit extra terrestrials.

Edit because I’ve run out of posts:

I don’t know any religious group that defines membership as attendance. Can you give an example? It’s not true of the groups I am familiar with. In fact many groups, such as Adventists and Catholics, maintain separate datasets for membership and attendance, precisely because they are not the same thing. Others don’t regularly publish attendance figures (though these may be gathered internally) such as the Church of Scotland which only publishes membership statistics not attendance numbers. When independent counts of attendance are conducted (see the work of Peter Brierley) they show that attendance at Church of Scotland churches is well under half the membership count.

I don’t know where you are coming from with this mistaken assumption that other groups count attendees as members.

Jeffro

slimboyfat:

As I recall your argument (feel free to provide a link) it leans heavily on the fact that the publisher number includes unbaptised publishers as well as baptised JWs.

No.

Your comparisons of growth rates between JWs and other denominations are invalid because most denominations count all attendees as members, which results in higher membership stats but lower growth rates. This is also the reason that secular surveys of JWs report higher membership numbers. And despite some cherry-picked relatively high secular growth rates for JWs for selected countries (though apparently, just New Zealand), that is not the norm.

I have previously provided examples of routine scenarios where the JW method of counting members demonstrably inflates their reported growth rate compared to analogous scenarios for denominations counting typical membership.

Hellothere

I'm telling you the DF arrangements are behind any positive numbers in JW land. If you ask a JW pimo if he is a JW, he's gonna say yes. Cause his afraid losing contact with family. Other religious groups don't have same situation. Only groups that really growing in new Zealand are Hindu and Muslim. Anglican, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian are the largest among the Christian groups in the country. Although Christianity is still the most common religion in New Zealand, there has been a steady decline over the past years. In the 2006 census, forty nine percent of the population identified with Christianity. It saw a huge dip and reduced to forty three percent according to the 2013 census. In the 2018 census, only thirty five percent identified themselves with Christianity. Most countries in Europe numbers are 0%, -1%, or +1. You can not have a discussion about growth when billions of hours are spent preaching and it's like 1% growth. This discussion is crazy 😂😁

Indoubtbigtime

So are global numbers of jws in decline

Are the statistics out yet?

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