With the serve-us report out.
Its obvious that,, the number massaging continues.
2023 Yearly Report UNDER the Microscope
by raymond frantz 44 Replies latest watchtower bible
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closed
I think that recent changes to reporting are introduced to cover decreasing numbers of publishers and time spent in ministry. Playing with figures will be easier. It will be easier to say that the chariot is speeding up:) Also - my tack on discontinuing info on special servants and money spent - far less of them (due to increasing number of remote, part time bethelites) but spendings going high.
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Vidiot
Magnum - “…I'm just going by the general, overall pulse/feel/look/‘smell’/etc…”
This.
Numbers are irrelevant if the Org’s apparent “real-world” health is being constantly eroded away.
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Jeffro
raymond frantz:
Total Congregations: 118,177 (=up from 117,960, a surprising increase but nevertheless a miniscule increase of just 0.18% OR 217 congregations. Of course the real metric here should be how many KH's closed down but of course they won't release this information. Is it possible that they artificially increase the number of congregations to show an increase? Quite possibly)
There was a net increase of congregations of 217, but it's not particularly impressive when it's broken down further.
The 'Democratic' Republic of Congo (with a 12% increase, 9% of which was newly baptised) got 348 new congregations. (Note that these increases include compensating for the decreases during COVID, not able to preach, delaying baptism etc. Actual increase since 2019 is 8.06% or about 2% per year.)
Brazil got 198 extra congregations, even though it reported growth of 0% (actually a net decrease of 3,336 publishers).
Not very surprisingly, the number of congregations in Ukraine went down (by 195).
All up, 1061 congregations were dissolved, offset by 1490 added in other 'lands'.
'Land' New Congregations Ukraine -195 Mexico -175 United States of America -98 Zimbabwe -75 El Salvador -47 Italy -39 South Africa -33 Cuba -33 33 Other Lands -32 Guatemala -27 Spain -19 Germany -18 Kenya -18 France -16 Britain -15 Venezuela -14 Canada -13 Australia -13 Paraguay -11 Honduras -11 Nigeria -10 Korea, Republic of -9 Greece -9 Haiti -9 Argentina -7 Panama -7 Netherlands -7 Moldova -6 Costa Rica -6 Japan -5 Hungary -5 Poland -5 Romania -5 Nicaragua -5 Côte d’Ivoire -4 Austria -4 Kazakhstan -3 Dominican Republic -3 Finland -3 Puerto Rico -3 Kyrgyzstan -3 Portugal -3 Saba -3 Fiji -2 Sri Lanka -2 Papua New Guinea -2 Malaysia -2 Taiwan -2 Denmark -2 New Caledonia -2 Rota -2 Lesotho -1 Guyana -1 Norway -1 Botswana -1 Serbia -1 Latvia -1 Slovenia -1 Armenia -1 Equatorial Guinea -1 Curaçao -1 Belize -1 Belarus -1 North Macedonia -1 Estonia -1 Israel -1 Suriname -1 Central African Republic -1 Sweden -1 Bulgaria -1 Peru 0 Switzerland 0 Vanuatu 0 Albania 0 Eswatini 0 Senegal 0 Mayotte 0 Trinidad & Tobago 0 Kiribati 0 Sudan 0 Cambodia 0 Réunion 0 New Zealand 0 Mali 0 Kosrae 0 Tuvalu 0 Chuuk 0 American Samoa 0 St. Barthélemy 0 Palau 0 Greenland 0 Turks and Caicos 0 Virgin Islands, British 0 Pohnpei 0 Bosnia and Herzegovina 0 Bermuda 0 Guam 0 Mongolia 0 Samoa 0 Montserrat 0 Guinea-Bissau 0 Virgin Islands, U.S. 0 São Tomé and Príncipe 0 Macao 0 St. Vincent & the Grenadines 0 Uruguay 0 Kosovo 0 Croatia 0 Dominica 0 Barbados 0 Andorra 0 Jamaica 0 Azores 0 St. Kitts 0 Cayman Islands 0 Aruba 0 St. Martin 0 Seychelles 0 San Marino 0 Bahamas 0 Saipan 0 Cape Verde 0 Tahiti 0 Martinique 0 Grenada 0 Gabon 0 Yap 0 Tinian 0 St. Eustatius 0 Nevis 0 Niue 0 Cook Islands 0 Guadeloupe 0 St. Lucia 0 St. Maarten 0 Madeira 0 Nepal 0 Antigua 0 Rodrigues 0 Montenegro 0 Timor-Leste 0 Marshall Islands 0 Bangladesh 0 Faroe Islands 0 Iceland 0 Gambia 0 Pakistan 0 Palestinian Territories 0 Bonaire 0 Mauritius 0 Malta 0 Liechtenstein 0 St. Helena 0 Anguilla 0 Nauru 0 St. Pierre and Miquelon 0 Niger 0 Gibraltar 0 Falkland Islands 0 Ireland 0 Tonga 0 Georgia 0 Cameroon 1 Tanzania 1 Lithuania 1 French Guiana 1 Namibia 1 Solomon Islands 1 Luxembourg 1 Cyprus 1 Wallis & Futuna Islands 1 Slovakia 1 South Sudan 1 Sierra Leone 1 Chad 1 Turkey 1 Belgium 2 Burkina Faso 2 Guinea 2 Thailand 2 Colombia 4 Hong Kong 4 Bolivia 4 Myanmar 5 Czech Republic 5 Liberia 5 Azerbaijan 5 Congo, Republic of 7 Ecuador 8 Uganda 8 Chile 9 Benin 14 Togo 14 Indonesia 15 Madagascar 15 Ethiopia 23 Angola 28 Rwanda 31 Philippines 41 Malawi 51 India 52 Zambia 76 Ghana 88 Burundi 93 Mozambique 100 Brazil 198 Congo, Dem. Republic of 348 Grand Total (239 Lands) 217 -
joey jojo
Seems that the org has peaked and is in decline in developed countries and is increasing is developing ones.
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jehovaxx
The Borg is definitely past peak in every metric. Bethel’s, Bethelites, literature published all way way down, if you saw it on a chart it would be crazy looking
next it will be pioneers, publishers, congregations, KHs. All these numbers in decline
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ThomasMore
The countries that show an increase are highly suspect. What in fact consitutes a congregation by their definition?
i.e. - 348 in in the Congo and 198 in Brazil !!
I suspect that when they sell a cong, the pubs lived so far away that small groups began to be counted as congregations.
On the other hand, -98 in the USA? That is less than 2 per state. I think it is a stretch to say that. I know for a certainty that some cities closed multiples of that number.
All of this is virtually impossible to verify of course, as WTC knows. They provide no details, because none exist.
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Beth Sarim
The Borg is increasing in developing countries because there is lack of internet for them.
Misinformed.
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Anony Mous
@thomasmore; congregations does not mean buildings, although in many cases 1 congregation = 1 building in the past, nowadays they’ve been strongly consolidating that, often 4 or more congregations per building. In places like Congo and Brazil and other developing nations with lots of (both native and western) languages, every language gets their own ‘congregation’ although they often share buildings, meeting times and often even speakers (either using a common tongue or someone doing translations). Although in places like Congo you also have heavy persecution of Christians by some groups so as the wars there ebb and flow, you’ll have a sudden explosion of congregations that were previously unreported and other such non-sense. JWs don’t go back and update their reports with new data.
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ThomasMore
Anonymous - I realize that.
In most cases, KHs were sold because attendance was too low to support all that a cong was expected to do. The pubs were consolidated into another cong at another location. So, congs decreased.
The number of congs formed in some lands does not sound like a normal congregation of 25-150, but instead sounds contrived. Perhaps they are counting micro groups as congs now. In the U.S., you will recall that foreign language groups were dissolved and pubs were asked to go back to their native language of English or Spanish. I thought this was also done in foreign lands - am I wrong?