by neat blue dog 28 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
neaty - 'Sure, there are some adults baptised here and there, but do you want to know something wonderful? The vast majority of those getting baptized are teens and preteens!' (audience then applauded)
I don't know what makes me feel the sickest, that they're entrapping minors or applauding it.
Probably both. Oooh, I could spit!
I was at an assembly yesterday too.
#baptized- zero
Yayyyyyy. Celebrate good times, c'mon..dah dah dah daaaarr
Still had the baptism talk of course.
what great big twits!
Anyway we'll soon enough whether or not there will be an annual report for this year, as the year book for 2018 is due to be released this month.
Actually, no-zombie the Yearbook for 2018 is not released until late December-early January. In more recent years, the yearbook has never been released as early as October/November.
I think the day is very close where baptisms at conventions will be whittled down to maybe one every 4 or 5 conventions.
It's the one thing that is hard to fudge. Hours? numbers?, there are ways to massage those. But when you are in an auditorium of thousands and they ask the candidates to stand up and it's only 4 or 5 teenagers, it's right there for all to see.
SBF - What makes you think that they wouldn't fudge the number of congregations? Just because it's theoretically independently verifiable (though it would be a tremendous undertaking to make an attempt at counting congregations based on public information) doesn't mean that they wouldn't lie about that if they're willing to lie about other stats. It's not like they've ever been shy about publishing things that can be easily shown as false via outside information. I'd say they're less likely to have someone dispute a false count of congregations than they are of having someone dispute their anti-evolution propaganda.
Depends on the size of the country. In the UK I think it is doable to keep track of congregation numbers. For smaller European countries even more so. They could fudge the congregation numbers slightly. (Is it a peak or an average number anyway?) But in the long run, keeping track of congregation numbers will be the best way to measure JW decline because 1) we can count it independently 2) you can't fake the existence of a publicly listed congregation 3) it's directly comparable to other religious groups as few other measures are 4) it gives a measure, not just of number of adherents, but of commitment since it requires effort, volunteers and funds to maintain a congregation.
Hasn't it been a few years since we have seen the average publisher hours in the U.S.? We used to see them every month in the KM (now CLAM). That's one statistic gone, right?
We discuss this in my family, how do we know what the national average is? We haven't heard for years, and before that, it was going down. I remember many months it being around 7 hours. Removing it keeps the servant body with their ~10 hour quota.
I think you are on to something with the statistics going away. They are ever so slowly taking one or two away, and replacing a little fluffy piece about somewhere far away...
In the mean time, why wouldn't a liar lie about their statistics?
Thanks for the report from the assembly, neat blue dog!
To fudge the numbers would require collusion among several high-ranking JWs as follows:
Each country tallies its own set of numbers based on what individual congregations submit (e.g., monthly publishers, Bible Studies and annual baptisms,Memorial attendance, partakers, etc).
Those numbers are then forwarded to the Bethel office and/orJW organization headquarters. So individual JWs assigned to forward those numbers would know if those numbers were later fudged for publication.
So, yes, fudging the numbers is possible; however, it would require the willingness of several JWs in higher positions to collude with the fudging - and the more JWs involved in this process, the greater the likelihood of leaks and disclosures about the fudging.
