i think with all the child molestation lawsuits the watchtower corporation is and has been hit with is the main reason for all the prime property sell off recently.
the silent lambs protest back in 2001, and the dateline prime time expose probably was the death knell for the watchtower's hey day in brooklyn.. their membership is drying up, young people are leaving in droves, the situation is no doubt far worse than the annually published yearbook figures show and so they ceased it's publication permanently.
and those left remaining are experiencing a huge grab of money from their congregations accounts and now are required to make pledges about how much they can contribute which i think is a last ditch effort by the governing body to squeeze more money out of the rank and file watchtower indoctrinated drones.. i think all this is happening because even those still loyally attending are hearing reports of these tremendous pay out that the watchtower is making to the victims of their self serving policies that put young ones at great risks so that even the rank and file don't want to contribute to pay court costs and so are withholding giving contributions to a very great extent.
I've heard a few JWs talk about the Australian Royal Commision. And I don't even talk to that many JWs.
The Catholic Church certainly lost donations when their scandals broke. Why should Watchtower be different?
It's not even so much that JWs necessarily turn hostile against Watchtower. Most Catholics are not hostile to their church either. It's just a case of, "what's the point of giving my money to the church if it gets spent on abuse scandal?" So they donate less, or not at all.
i think with all the child molestation lawsuits the watchtower corporation is and has been hit with is the main reason for all the prime property sell off recently.
the silent lambs protest back in 2001, and the dateline prime time expose probably was the death knell for the watchtower's hey day in brooklyn.. their membership is drying up, young people are leaving in droves, the situation is no doubt far worse than the annually published yearbook figures show and so they ceased it's publication permanently.
and those left remaining are experiencing a huge grab of money from their congregations accounts and now are required to make pledges about how much they can contribute which i think is a last ditch effort by the governing body to squeeze more money out of the rank and file watchtower indoctrinated drones.. i think all this is happening because even those still loyally attending are hearing reports of these tremendous pay out that the watchtower is making to the victims of their self serving policies that put young ones at great risks so that even the rank and file don't want to contribute to pay court costs and so are withholding giving contributions to a very great extent.
I was just wondering about this. I reckon there is a good chance it's hurt donations, combined with the new policy of sending congregation funds to WT.
The congregation accounts for 2017 in Scotland are beginning to appear on the charity website and many congregations are down this year compared with last year.
It would take ages to gather all the figures.
i don't think anyone else has raised this point.
below i set out the case that the jw demographic in usa has a steadily decreasing combined income, and as a consequence, has less money to donate.
not only is the flock not growing, the flock is producing less wool for the borg to fleece.
In conversation a brother told me that a nearby congregation has "gone bust" recently, which was news to me. It struck me that he used those exact words. "Gone bust" didn't exactly sound like theocratic language. I asked him what happened, but he caught himself, and toned down what he was saying. He said a nearby congregation sold their hall for some reason and are meeting in a neighbouring KH instead. I don't know if that was a purely local situation or part of a wider trend. I'm not even sure if he meant that the original congregation still exists or whether it was combined with the other congregation.
i don't think anyone else has raised this point.
below i set out the case that the jw demographic in usa has a steadily decreasing combined income, and as a consequence, has less money to donate.
not only is the flock not growing, the flock is producing less wool for the borg to fleece.
Thanks shepherdless, interesting analysis. I'd also point out that the decrease in contributions may be larger than the decrease in income because of the important distinction between income and disposable income. In other words, while JW income may decrease by 3% in real terms, the fall in disposable income (which drives spending, including charitable donations) will be much larger.
The refusal to allow young JWs to get an education may really be coming back to bite Watchtower. Some small poetic justice I suppose. But hardly worth it for all the hardship it puts faithful JW born-ins through. Young JWs are splitting into various groups these days: 1) those who remain good JWs and stop at minimum education 2) those who somehow manage to excuse getting an education while remaining in "good standing", and 3) those who leave and pursue education as normal. As the years roll on, those in the first group probably have many occasions to observe others and wonder if they made the right choice.
So those who leave and get an education are no longer around and contributing to Watchtower, and those who remain have lower disposable incomes, and some may be increasingly resentful of the low income situation they were effectively coerced into, and less inclined to contribute the little they have. It's the perfect storm, or a downward spiral for Watchtower, to mix metaphors.
i believe the gb's takeover of the fds was an illegal coup - not illegal relative to the laws of land, but illegal according to jw "laws" or doctrine.. according to jw doctrine, the fds is god's channel of communication between heaven and earth.
before the coup, the fds was defined to be all the anointed on earth, and the gb was part of that group and merely the spokesman for the group - individual gb members having no more authority than non-gb members of the fds.. however, a few years ago, the gb, independently of the other members of the fds, decided that it alone was the fds.
that, to me, was an illegal overthrow of the body (fds); it was a coup.. suppose the u.s. president decided that he has all power, and that he removed the powers of the u.s. congress.
In some ways it was an odd thing to change.
In theory all anointed were part of the faithful slave. But in practice only the GB had the authority of the faithful slave. Everyone kind of realised that anyway.
But to actually change the doctrine in order to make that explicit. It just seems heavy handed and so unnecessary. Plus it raises really awkward questions about who was the slave earlier in JW history and whether you can have a slave that doesn't realise it's a slave and others who think they're a slave who are not. It's just a mess.
latest perspective of the san diego reader on wts loosing its $4000 per day sanction appeal.... https://m.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/nov/10/ticker-jehovahs-witnesses-withheld-info-4000-day/?templates=mobile.
It looks like they're in a lot of trouble.
looks like trump wants to take out the scientologists.. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-scientology-tax-exemption_us_5a04dd35e4b05673aa584cab?vpo .
as a cult, could the watchtower be close behind?.
JWs are nothing like Scientology. I don't like equating the two.
And JW attendance at the Memorial at well over 2 million is just under 1% of the US population. I wouldn't call them a "nobody".
omg my head exploded!in this months broadcast - splian goes off on how much care the wt in making sure its facts are correct, and how they make sure their quotes are not taking from people who have a bad reputation or have an agenda.
and that the make sure its always in context!.
they are such liars!.
To be fair, maybe they realise WT publications had a problem with misquotations in the past and they intend to do better in future.
Frankly they produce so little serious literature these days that it may be much less of an issue than it once was.
much as been revealed over the years to the date setting doctrines made by the wts.
such as ( 1874, 1914, 1925 , 1975 this generation, the last days, the end times etc.... which were not created by other christian based faiths.. as to critically examine why might reveal a hidden agenda to all these date setting proclamations.. the point in question is did the wts and its leaders intentionally manipulate or exploit the preaching of the gospel to enhance the proliferation of their own printed publications ?.
i would say convincingly yes, no question.
Generally I thought Edmond Gruss was a good writer. Mostly his books consist of extensive quotations from a vast collection of Watchtower literature. Lots of them very illuminating. I would be interested to know where he goes wrong.
Incidentally Gruss also had a JW parent but chose never to get baptised himself and studied JWs academically instead. So in some ways a similar background?
much as been revealed over the years to the date setting doctrines made by the wts.
such as ( 1874, 1914, 1925 , 1975 this generation, the last days, the end times etc.... which were not created by other christian based faiths.. as to critically examine why might reveal a hidden agenda to all these date setting proclamations.. the point in question is did the wts and its leaders intentionally manipulate or exploit the preaching of the gospel to enhance the proliferation of their own printed publications ?.
i would say convincingly yes, no question.
Thanks for the further explanation of background. I appreciate you never chose to be a JW yourself, nevertheless interaction with JWs may be fairly described as more than academic.
I can’t show it written down anywhere, but I can certainly say that my experience is that giving to charity was frowned upon. The basic attitude was that money donated to charity could be better spent on the “world wide work”. Because what charity could be more important than the good news? If you really believe the JW worldview then they would have a point.
This was not a hard rule. Some openly donated and even volunteered for charities. But those doing this seemed to need to “justify” their actions to others.
