JWs are bigger and more successful than the Mormon church

by joe134cd 48 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  joe134cd

  Just saw the following you tube video. It’s 3 hours long, but thoroughly interesting. If you want to save yourself 3 hours, basically the active mormon church is about 3 million. This figure is been rather optimistic and it could possibly be a lot lower than that. For example a document was released in the UK, with regard to church attendance. It was about 18% of what the church was claiming. This decline has increased since the year 2000. Mormon figures are seriously doctored, and aren’t a reflection of what’s going on. If you were to factor in the amount of temple recommend holders, who’s are true believing members, the figure could be as low as 1.5 million members.

  This confirms that the JWs could have a bigger membership that is more engaged. I think this speaks volumes for the JW methods involved to recruit its members. Sure, the JWs may be be losing 2/3 of its youth, but they are certainly blowing the lds out of the water with regard to size and retention. Bear in mind the Mormon church also is having the same problems e.g internet etc.

  https://youtu.be/422btQC4VEE
  
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  Jeffro

  And JWs are significantly smaller than Seventh day Adventists
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  joe134cd

  I would agree with that. I do believe the SDA could be bigger than the 2 combined.
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  slimboyfat

  Great link, thanks joe134cd!

  It has no doubt helped the Seventh-day Adventists that they have moved considerably into the mainstream, and been pretty much accepted as a Protestant denomination over the past couple of decades. This has caused some angst among traditionalist Adventists, especially the watering down of Adventist invective against the Catholic Church in particular. Some within the church have accused the leadership of betrayal or apostasy.

  Even with that, JW Memorial attendance is similar to Adventist membership numbers at around the 20 million mark, which may be a fairer comparison than the stricter JW “publisher” count. Adventists are not as evenly spread as JWs either. There are hardly any Adventists in mainland Europe to speak of, and even in the UK they trail behind JWs. Adventists do exceptionally well in island nations and certain African countries where JWs also do well, such as Zambia, as well as other Africa countries where they do much better than JW, such as Kenya.

  The decline of the Mormon church has been its best kept secret of the past 20 years or so. Good to see it is getting more coverage. The myth of Mormon growth, fuelled not only by the church leadership, but also sociologist Rodney Stark, has proved stubbornly persistent.

  It will be interesting to see how well church attendances overall recover as we emerge from the pandemic. I was talking to a minister whose church has recently returned to holding services in the building. Before they pandemic they had an attendance of 180 which has now dropped down to 60. This will probably improve as people get used to going out again but it might not recover to pre pandemic levels.
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  Jeffro

  Slimboyfat:

  Even with that, JW Memorial attendance is similar to Adventist membership numbers at around the 20 million mark, which may be a fairer comparison than the stricter JW “publisher” count.

  JW memorial attendance includes people who go along to be polite, to avoid being shunned, or to otherwise keep the peace, so I’m not sure it’s necessarily a great comparison with the ostensibly similar figures for SDAs, where the 20 million refers to baptised members.
  
  
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  slimboyfat

  I agree that Memorial attendance is too high to be a fair reflection of JW membership. At the same time the publisher number is too strict a measure compared with most other churches. A fair comparison with other churches is somewhere in between the 8 million publisher number and 20 million Memorial attendance.

  Another figure that provides a fairer comparison is the number of congregations.

  There are 120,000 JW congregations worldwide.

  92,000 Seventh-day Adventist congregations.

  And only 31,000 Mormon congregations.
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  Justaguy

  I find it hard to believe you are counting congregations as a measure of anything. There are no fixed or set limits on congregation size in any of the church's, therefore comparing the numbers of congregations is comparative of nothing. There is no standard by a comparison can be made. Number of individual adherents is all you can accurately use
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  IWant2Leave

  We had eight congregations meeting at one double KH, with varying numbers of publishers. I think with other religions one church = one congregation. So the number of congregations is not a fair comparison. You could take one mega church and make 200 JW congregations.

  The best comparison would be regular attendees. Memorial attendance can’t be used as a gauge, because at Memorial are df, inactive, polite family members, etc.
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  slimboyfat

  No single figure provides a consistent comparison across different religions because they all count members differently.

  I have argued many times that number of congregations is the best statistic for comparison for number reasons. Some will argue that Mormons and Adventists have larger congregations than JWs. I have not found this to be the case and I have done extensive local research on this. In Scotland the average attendance in a JW congregation is around 70 and there are 116 congregations.

  I have been to almost every Adventist congregation in Scotland and they average about 50. Glasgow is the largest congregation with around 80 or 90 on a typical pre pandemic Saturday. Then Edinburgh and Dundee have around 60 each. Paisley and Irvine are around 40 each. Faifley is a tiny congregation of less than 20. Crieff congregation has around 50. I have not been to the congregation in Aberdeen but I have heard that it’s not very big.

  I have been to about ten Mormon congregations. (There are 36 Mormon congregation in Scotland) None of them had an attendance over 50 any time I have been, and some have attendances as low as 20. I went to a stake meeting in Paisley and counted 200 people in attendance. That represents 4 wards and 2 branches. (A branch is a small congregation - and still counted as a congregation in the congregation total.) That means an average of 33 people from each congregation. Which is in line with what I saw when visiting individual congregations.

  So everything I have seen suggests that JW congregations are bigger than Mormon and Adventist congregations in Scotland.

  The other advantages to counting congregations instead of competing measures of membership include: 1) the number of congregations can be independently verified whereas other figures could be fudged in various ways and 2) the number of congregations gives a good indication of trend in membership.

  For example Mormons tend to count every baptised person as a member regardless of attendance. This means the membership number inevitably goes up no matter what. (They currently claim an incredible 24,000 members in Scotland) The number of congregations on the other hand has gone down from a peak of 42 to 36. And some of the remaining congregations have been downgraded from wards to branches. In other words Mormons have declined significantly in Scotland but you would have no idea from the membership figure, whereas the congregation number gives a better idea. Mormons also have churches in Glasgow and Edinburgh that are shared by more than one congregation, so JWs are not unique in that either.

  JW congregations in Scotland have been steady at around 116 for decades. They are are lot more JWs than either Mormons or Adventists in Scotland, and they are maintaining their numbers better than Mormons.

  To cut a long story short, I think that number of congregations is a very good indicator of the size and growth of religious groups because it’s a number that can be indecently verified and gives a good measure of the trend in the group’s overall size and committed membership.
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  IWant2Leave

  Slimboy you do good work! I yield to your good research.