by freddo 30 Replies latest jw friends
Why is Britain in scare quotes?
I think the Watchtower has a problem calling our country by its proper political name - "United Kingdom" as that would undermine their religious claims on that terminology
and so prefers the strictly geographical term "Britain" instead, although Great Britain would be technically more accurate in that case.
Including Northern Ireland in with Ireland makes logistical sense, but possibly speaks more to pro-republican sympathies common on the East Coast of the USA
I dunno Gorby;
The effect is cumulative. Several things are coming in together. Look at the drop in Britain baptisms by between a fifth and a quarter. Aux pios down by a third. Look at that west country circuit the Searcher told us about - a cong. disbanded and 6 CoBE's changed with at least two of them off as elders in less than a year. The peak to peak figure has dropped already.
If the "high profile" CoBE elders are getting twitchy/tired/jumping ship then their fellow elders and congregations will surely wonder what's up.
This (2016 service year) could be the "what a let down" year from the hype of 2014 - remember that October 2014, 100th the anniversary of "the end of the gentile times" is the one that is included in this year's (2015 service year) reported statistics, so still a remnant of 2014 fervour spilled over into this 2015 service year.
Next year - if the org dares report it in the current format could be the world wide decrease year. If they don't report it then you can take it as (un) read that it was a decrease year!
Yeah they'll screw us one way or another. Either they'll defy the odds and go on publishing increases or else they'll stop publishing the figures altogether if they turn negative.
We should plan for ways to keep on measuring JW statistics even if they stop publishing the figures in the yearbook. For example even if they stop publishing the report we could still keep track of how many congregations there are per country and worldwide. So that if decline sets in and they stop publishing the numbers there's still a way to keep tabs on how fast they are in retreat.
I was in the middle of pulling the data and the link to the stats to 2014 came up - saved me a load of bother.
I am just doing some Britain branch munging...
Interestingly the late 90s saw some big drops, more than recent times.
However the efficiency of the work is getting worse and worse and worse. In 1988 it took 1.2 YEARS (constant 8 hour days) to get one person to baptism. It now takes 3.7 YEARS of constant 8 hour days for ONE person to become baptised in the UK. When you consider many of the baptisms are born-ins it's got to be the most fruitless work possible.
Using average publisher figures, even though they have increased numbers by almost 30,000 since 1998 they have gone from over double the publishers attending at the memorial to around 2/3. This constant bleating about the "potential" in the memorial attendees is just bluster.
Hours are on the rise overall, with a drop over last year being explained by the extra campaigns. The peak of 25.2m hours last year was all well and good however there was a peak of 24.4m in 1992 - a figure (ignoring last year), they have only just beaten this year with 24.8m. Like for like, it's been over 20 years since they beat their last peak of hours.
I will do the same for global figures as soon as I can.
I admire all you smart statto guys who number-crunch all this info . Well done!
I had already rejoiced over the static number of publishers, now I can rejoice over the reduced aux pios. and baptisms . It has made my day...Off to the coffee shop to celebrate....!
Hello everybody. My first comment 😉 My experience from foreign field is telling me that almost all growth in UK ( at least since Poland joined EU) has been from migration and new baptisms of east Europeans. Look at figures for Poland, Romania etc. Many of JW came over to the West. So, East loses r&f but flimsy growth or stagnation shows that the West loses even more. I am watching congas in my area North of Uk - old people mainly, never bothered middle age, indifferent young ones, elders with no willingness to do more than knocking on doors on Saturday mornings. But foreign language groups can offer something new and exciting. I am not saying the truth but a feeling of doing something valuable or spirit of friendship.
