Posts by slimboyfat

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

Looks like he’s angling to transition into make money from entertainment industry in Zagreb. He’ll string along his patrons with token videos and Zoom calls until he’s satisfied with the alternative income.

169

Are the statistics out yet?

by slimboyfat in

isn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?

or have they stopped publishing it?

did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?

slimboyfat

I don’t have a problem with using JW figures because I think they are generally reliable. It’s because you cast doubt on Watchtower figures that I pointed out the same inference about the relative growth of JWs compared with other groups can be verified from outside measures even if you disregard Watchtower numbers entirely.

Watchtower aren’t the only ones who inflate their numbers in various ways. Other groups, if anything, are worse than JWs at this. So any genuine comparisons, looking at the limitations on both sides, and not just the JW side, may produce a favourable picture of growth for JWs compared with other groups.

The most extreme example of inflating numbers is the Mormon church because they routinely add all baptisms to their membership total but do not remove inactive members from the total, so they have ended up with millions of phantom members. Even if they lose touch with individuals they still include them as members until they would be 110 years old. In recent years there has been a movement by former Mormons to request and get their names removed from the membership roll, but even so the majority of inactive members don’t go to these lengths and are still counted.

Other churches, I know, keep members on the books for years ‘hoping they’ll come back at some point’ too, even waiving usual membership criteria such as a small annual donation.

On the topic of disfellowshipping you are correct that Christadelphians do not shun as JWs, but it would be inaccurate to say that disfellowshipping has no social consequences for Christadelphians beyond the breaking of bread meeting, and practice varies between ecclesias with some being stricter than others. In some cases fellowship is withdrawn from entire ecclesias and, while they don’t practice hard shunning, it is fair to say that social contact is curtailed in such circumstances. As for the Exclusive Brethren, I don’t know if they have truly reformed in recent years, but traditionally their shunning practices were every bit as severe as JWs. There are testimonies from former members to this effect.

I suspect that the leaders at Warwick are probably quite alarmed by the figures in the latest report. They are probably inclined to compare it with past performance and see a dramatic downturn. I don’t think they would be much comforted by my point that other religions are doing much worse, because they don’t see themselves as comparable to other religions.

If I was in their position, I would be most concerned about the drop in baptisms because lack of new members will impact overall numbers for years to come. Young people who didn’t get baptised during the pandemic may end up never getting baptised and will be lost forever as members. No wonder there has been emphasis on getting baptised and this will likely increase in view of the latest numbers.

I hope the don’t find the numbers this year so bad that they stop publishing them next year.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

She would no doubt be awarded support but LE is definitely the kind of person to avoid paying it. He resented paying for his own daughter’s haircut for goodness sake. He thinks other people are obligated to pay for him and his family. He even said he contemplated writing to individual who cancelled their Patreon to explain to them that they were wrong to do so. There is no way he’s going to hand over any money to his wife or for his kids if he can possibly get away with it.

169

Are the statistics out yet?

by slimboyfat in

isn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?

or have they stopped publishing it?

did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?

slimboyfat

I wrote:

The JW numbers look “bad” … until you compare them with most other Christian groups which are in severe decline in the west. Compared with other Christian groups the growth of JWs bucks the trend of decline.

And you responded:

Apples and oranges, just like this time last year. The way JWs count membership inflates their growth rate at the expense of the stated number of members, as explained last year.

I pointed out that census results show JWs growing more than other groups - it’s not just Watchtower figures. So do you still deny that JWs have better growth than other groups? That was the only claim I made. I didn’t make any claim about the reasons for better growth.

169

Are the statistics out yet?

by slimboyfat in

isn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?

or have they stopped publishing it?

did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?

slimboyfat

I can see the point of correlating baptisms. But what happens to the trend line of the ‘hours required for additional publisher’ line if JWs begin declining overall? Wouldn’t it tend toward infinity? So what are you really measuring there? And how could it be used to compare with the outreach programmes of other churches that are in decline?

Jeffro you seem to have two basic responses to JW growth. The first is to deny that it exists and say the Watchtower data are wrong. The second is to say that even if the data are correct (the Australian census, for example) it doesn’t count because: disfellowshipping and North Korea. If you believe that Watchtower growth doesn’t count then why are you interested in tracking it anyway? If you can dismiss all favourable comparisons of JW growth with others groups as either factually wrong, or inconsequential if true, then there is no way the data can ever contradict your starting assumptions.

I have been very surprised by the continued growth of JWs over the past few decades. I became inactive in the early 2000s at a time when JWs were still reeling from the fallout of the ‘generation’ disappointment in 1995 and most western countries were in decline. In Britain the publisher number had dropped to around 122,000 from a high of 132,000 in the mid 1990s. I fully expected JWs to continue declining just as practically all other churches were in decline. If you had asked me in 2002 how many JWs there would be in Britain in 2022 I might have guessed less than 100,000. Instead here we are in 2022 and there are around 140,000 JWs in Britain, despite the fact that most other churches have continued or accelerated their decline. To paraphrase a famous quotation: when the data change I change my opinion, what do you do?

People are good at coming up with reasons why not every JW in the official count is a true believer, and the threat of disfellowshipping is indeed a good reason to suspect that not every JW is a true believer. But people raising this issue rarely seem to reflect that questions could be raised about the membership of other religious groups too. The issues may not be the same but there are obviously members of other churches who are not true believers either. For example, it is noticeable that local and national politicians tend to be members of the national church at a higher rate than the population as a whole (current and former first ministers, deputy first ministers, leaders of the opposition, local councillors and so on). Is this because politicians are an exceptionally godly bunch of individuals, or is it because membership of the national church still conveys a certain status that they find useful in their careers. Anecdotally I know of members of other churches who are members for social reasons rather than purely religious reasons. On the other hand nobody joins JWs in order to gain respectability locally or politically. So this phenomenon of non-true-believing members is not unique, or even particularly distinctive of JWs. In fact I suspect it’s probably lower among JWs because of the social costs involved in membership that don’t apply to other groups. So just as there are some factors that may inflate the membership of JWs there are factors that inflate the membership of other groups that don’t apply in the case of JWs. So to dismiss any JW growth with the wave of a hand is to ignore the wider picture of religious phenomena in general.

169

Are the statistics out yet?

by slimboyfat in

isn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?

or have they stopped publishing it?

did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?

slimboyfat

Not an increase in terms of proportion of the population, as Jeffro is eager to point out. Increasing by 1% in Britain seems to be just enough to keep pace.

That is important context, but there are other contexts to consider as well - such as how are other churches doing by comparison. The Church of Scotland had a particularly bad year this year and reported a 5% decline in membership. This accelerates a decades long trend of decline. Their highest ever membership was 1.37 million members in 1957. I made a graph of their decline since 1957 which I will attempt to post below. The spreadsheet ‘fill in the cells’ function indicates that a crude extrapolation of the trend predicts the Kirk will disappear altogether in 2041. (I don’t personally think that will happen) But if this graph doesn’t put JW growth, or ‘decline’ in Britain into perspective then I don’t know what does.

27

How did you find Jehovah's Witness meetings?

by Vanderhoven7 in

i personally have only attended a handful of meetings at kingdom halls.

i did not enjoy any of them nor was i impressed by anything that was conveyed.

perhaps others did not find them boring as i did.. nadia viotto has this to say about her experience.

slimboyfat

How did you find JW meetings?

Go on the website and scroll to the bottom of the page. There is a link that says “meetings” and on that page there is a button that says “find a location near you”. Put in your town and the language you require and it will find your nearest options. When you have selected a congregation then you can see the meetings times and contact details in case you need further information or in some cases Zoom access.

169

Are the statistics out yet?

by slimboyfat in

isn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?

or have they stopped publishing it?

did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?

slimboyfat

There are over a million Ukrainian refugees in Poland, so that must have had an impact on the Polish numbers.

I vaguely recall hearing that JWs had a special scheme to relocate JWs from Ukraine to Norway. I don’t know any details, but if that it true then it would have impacted the Norwegian numbers in particular.

In terms of the UK and other Western European countries I think the impact is probably quite small.

The UK apparently took in something in the region of 100,000 refugees from Ukraine. If JWs were proportionally represented in that group (using the 2021 Ukraine ratio of 1 to 323) that would be around 310 people. Plus they would only have been there for a few months of the 2022 report, so maybe count a third 100, or less. I haven’t heard of Ukrainian JWs coming to the UK.

In Poland, however, it would be a boost of 1000 extra publishers, or more.

Also interesting that there’s a small increase in Japan over the past few years. This is despite the population of Japan as a whole going into decline. (Down by 1 million in the last year, according the Watchtower estimate)

169

Are the statistics out yet?

by slimboyfat in

isn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?

or have they stopped publishing it?

did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?

slimboyfat

A major pattern seems to be large declines in Latin America and the Caribbean, and significant decline in the United States itself for that matter. A decline in Mexico has got to be pretty shocking for those who remember the spectacular growth often touted in the magazines in the 1980s.

But surprisingly, they are still showing some growth in many European countries including Britain, France, Germany. Spain, Portugal, and even Poland, which had been in decline for years.

The most significant growth seems to come from Africa: 8% growth in Nigeria and 5% growth in Zambia. Growth in those countries had been in decline in recent years. What’s behind the turnaround?

What impact has the war in Ukraine had? The 4% decline in Ukraine itself seems small considering the mass exodus from the country, but perhaps most of the service year was not affected. The increase in neighbouring countries might be partly a result of migrants from Ukraine - for example the 6% increase in Turkey.

169

Are the statistics out yet?

by slimboyfat in

isn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?

or have they stopped publishing it?

did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?

slimboyfat

Wow those are bad numbers. No wonder there weren't any preview highlights.

Baptisms down, Memorial attendance down, Bible studies down, and number of congregations down.

The worst baptism figure for decades.

Memorial partakers up.

Latin America and the Caribbean seem to have the worst numbers for some reason. Publishers in Mexico down -1%, and Argentina and Colombia down -2%.