If you count children of JWs who never got baptised then probably there are more former JWs than JWs. But it would be difficult to arrive at an estimate for that number.
Maybe use the New Zealand census data and extrapolate to worldwide membership.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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22
Approximately how many JW have left permanently?
by longgone ini did try a search before posting this question and found nothing current.
pew research -2016 says approximately two thirds of those born into the religion in the united states alone, no longer consider themselves as members.
(sorry, still don't know how to link, but it's an easy google search.).
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Question for SBF
by Fisherman inslimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.
can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?
- this thread is your if you want it..
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slimboyfat
Are you sure it isn't sewn Athanasius? (My copy says first printing 2013, made in the United States of America, on the reverse title page) If it's not sewn then it's made to look as if it is. The songbook is glued.
Click on image to see close up of binding on this page.
Maybe the rNWT isn't up to the standard of some Bible publishers (although it looks pretty good to me) but against the standard of the cheap paperbacks JWs have been printing in recent decades it's a step up and must have been relatively expensive to produce.
Contrast it with the cheap paperback NWT you describe coming across on this thread.
And they describe taking care to make sure they last here.
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2015-yearbook/highlights/bible-made-to-last/
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22
Approximately how many JW have left permanently?
by longgone ini did try a search before posting this question and found nothing current.
pew research -2016 says approximately two thirds of those born into the religion in the united states alone, no longer consider themselves as members.
(sorry, still don't know how to link, but it's an easy google search.).
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slimboyfat
I don't think there can be more former JWs than active JWs because, that would need to mean the annual increase, plus 1% of active JWs, would be less than half the number baptised each year. But that is not the case for most years.
If JWs start to decline overall however, it could change rapidly, the number of former JWs could quickly outnumber active JWs.
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Question for SBF
by Fisherman inslimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.
can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?
- this thread is your if you want it..
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slimboyfat
Incognito thanks for some contrary views. Let me counter them. ;-)
I mean the new Bible must be a large expense because they are good quality Bibles and the material to produce them must be relatively expensive. At a time when they've stopped publishing most if not all hardbacks due to cost, it really stands out as a quality publication. (They even experimented with cheap paperback Bibles for a short period) Plus simply the fact that it's a new edition means that every JW needs one or two new copies, plus inactive ones, plus anyone else who wants a new one. I think it must have been pretty expensive. And now rolling it out to other languages is another huge expense it seems difficult to avoid.
You say they made one or two billion dollars from Brooklyn property, but that's not an inexhaustible sum. Especially when you consider they've spend just under quarter of a billion dollars on missionaries, travelling overseers and special pioneers a year. On top of that you've got printing, bethel staff, property maintenance, legal fees, web technology and whatever. Their overall running expenses could easily be more than a billion dollars a year. So if they made one or two billion from property, after you subtract the cost of the new HQ, it doesn't stretch that far if there's a major deficit.
Stephen Lett said there is an ongoing deficit. He also let slip that income from sale of property was being used to meet running costs. They can only do that for so long before they run out. I don't think they're in the luxurious position of being able to put money aside to live from the investment. The scale and rapidity of cuts in the last two years indicate an organisation that is fighting for survival.
You didn't mention the cost of looking after retired COs, subsidising poor countries on the basis of declining membership in rich countries, abuse claim payouts, declining donations from disaffected membership.
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22
Approximately how many JW have left permanently?
by longgone ini did try a search before posting this question and found nothing current.
pew research -2016 says approximately two thirds of those born into the religion in the united states alone, no longer consider themselves as members.
(sorry, still don't know how to link, but it's an easy google search.).
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slimboyfat
In principle it's possible to work out a good rough estimate for this.
Choose a starting date such as 1945.
Add the starting number and all baptisms since that date together, minus 1% each year for deaths, and finally subtract the current number of active JWs from that total.
Has anyone done it?
Paul Grundy has done most of the work for this calculation but not the final calculation itself as far as I know.
https://jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php
My guess is the calculation would show there are nearly as many former JWs as there are active JWs.
And I suspecf that former JWs will outnumber active JWs very soon.
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192
Question for SBF
by Fisherman inslimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.
can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?
- this thread is your if you want it..
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slimboyfat
Yes, I agree.
And it's pretty weird that WT publications still push "bethel service" for young people when there seems to be little prospect of a "bethel career" at this point. They've toned it down a bit, but not enough to meet the new reality.
The term "publisher" does seem anachronistic now, as does "tract society" as another poster pointed out.
They may have enough money to keep them going for a while. But on the other hand they may find that expenses are not as easy to cut as they hoped for a few reasons:
1. The move to Warwick may have proved more expensive than they budgeted. (On the assumption that most big projects overspend and Watchtower is not immune.) So while they made lots of money from the sale of Brooklyn property, the move might not be the stupendous financial boost they hoped for, or others imagined.
2. Beyond regular costs of moving to Warwick, there were stories about unexpected problems with waste and cleanup. How much might that cost?
3. The same can be said about the expense of moving from Mill Hill in London out to Chelmsford. In principle these downsizing moves should bring in a lot of money. But JWs don't have a great track record in managing such projects efficiently and they may not realise the kinds of windfalls they may have expected.
4. If I understand the Circuit Overseer guidebook correctly, they promise to retire COs at a certain age and provide an allowance for them as special pioneers for the rest of their lives. With increasing lifespans and probably thousands of former Circuit Overseers to support, that's got to be a tremendous financial burden. At some point they may need to choose been going bust from making such payments, or cutting the allowances and thereby alienating and infuriating a huge group of key supporters.
5. Plus the mounting costs from meeting abuse claims. I don't think they were budgeting for this ten years ago or more. It's a cost that could easily escalate and which had not figured in whatever their long term plans have been for the organisation.
6. The new arrangement of removing financial autonomy from the congregations may backfire spectacularly on the organisation. It's quite easy to see a scenario in which contributions fall because JWs don't see them being spent locally and see no point in contributing when the funds are never allowed to accumulate. Resentment is also bound to build up just as soon as local KHs request funds for repairs and Watchtower refuses.
7. Disaffection among ordinary JWs seems to be at its highest ever. And people who are doubtful about the GB and all the scandals in the news and not going to contribute much money, if at all.
8. Numbers of JWs are falling in rich countries and still growing in the poorest countries. This presents a huge financial burden and dilemma for Watchtower. They claim that theirs is the most important message in the world and they spread the message without regard for financial gain. But at the same time they don't want to go bust. So what do they do? The closure of Gilead was an indication of where they are going.
9. They just produced a new Bible and songbook which must have cost a fortune to produce for the worldwide membership. There are rumours that the new edition was due to be released in German this summer, but was delayed. Was it delayed because the work isn't finished, or are they having difficulty financing the publication? You're probably talking about producing something like half a million new Bibles to start with, expensive quality items, which may cost millions of dollars. Then there's Spanish and all the rest to follow. Maybe they've bitten off more than they can chew with the revised NWT. It's a huge expense that has arrived when they can apparently least afford it.
10. They are furiously cutting bethel staff at the moment, down from 26,000 to 19,000 in just one year. But any downsizing of personnel is fraught with difficulty. On top of alienating thousands of people, they may make mistakes in choosing which people to let go. They may lose key skills and efficiencies they had not appreciated. In reality the cutbacks may not result in the kinds of savings that they look like producing on paper.
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192
Question for SBF
by Fisherman inslimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.
can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?
- this thread is your if you want it..
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slimboyfat
I think it's mainly money that stopped Gilead. They just couldn't afford to keep adding, what, eighty or so missionaries year after year, to their ongoing financial commitments. Plus the converts that missionaries made were in poorer countries and a financial burden to Watchtower. So that was a double financial incentive to cut Gilead.
I think we shouldn't underestimate the impact of Gilead missionaries in the past for promoting growth in places like Japan, Nigeria, Brazil and so on. So the removal of Gilead will contribute significantly to declining numbers.
When Watchtower still sold the literature I think even the poorest countries probably at least broke even in terms of money raised covering costs. So it made sense to make converts all round the world. But now when poor countries are a net loss to their finances they are not as eager to push for growth in poor countries any more.
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192
Question for SBF
by Fisherman inslimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.
can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?
- this thread is your if you want it..
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slimboyfat
My prediction is basically more of the same, and considering the ultimate consequences if current trends continue. If there are more and more cuts, and decline gets worse and worse, then I think a crisis is inevitable at some point. The other possibility is that they manage to reverse the trend. It's difficult to see how that will happen. Then again the future almost never fails to be surprising.
All sorts of other events could have a huge impact: fallout from abuse scandals, geopolitical developments (war, including nuclear conflict?), high level defections or expulsions from GB, technological innovations beyond what we can imagine (life extension, space travel or whatever) or who knows what else. The most important factors may well be the ones we cannot even imagine.
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192
Question for SBF
by Fisherman inslimboyfat, it appears that wts is going, gone digital.
can you show your view what is wts next move after they are completely gone from kings county and settled in warwick?
- this thread is your if you want it..
-
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slimboyfat
What happens next? I would never have guessed they would get rid of print literature to the extent that they have. Or that they would drop Gilead or DOs or close so many branches. I am not good at predictions, especially about the future. (That's meant to be funny, by the way, since predictions are always about the future.)
But here goes anyway.
It depends how much money they've got left how long it takes to play out. From the sales of property and raid on KH funds, they may have quite a bit. But since their revenue is poor I think they will face a shortage sonner or later.
They will reduce printing even further. Maybe eventually they'll stop printing altogether and use commercial firms to print a few select items. They may get local congregations to print their own small items. (In fact they are already doing this. Watchtower recently announced that sheet music for the Kingdom Songs will soon be released as PDF and brothers should print their own. There is apparently no plan for the Watchtower ever to print this material, it's all on the brothers now.) The elimination of print literature really signals the demise of JW culture to a significant degree. For most of their history the very identity of JWs was bound up with the books and magazines: their public ubiquitousness, display in JW homes, use in meetings and ministry, studying and underlining, devotion to the literature as important items even to the extent of smuggling it during persecution and bans and so on. The demise of the literature is a huge development.
As money runs out they'll close down more congregations and take more money. Congregations that struggle to send money to the Watchtower will be top of the list for closure. The number of JWs worldwide will start to decrease, especially in western countries. Maybe they'll stop publishing the numbers when decline becomes entrenched. (Within 5 years) More JWs will disbelieve the organisation and leave. Dissent and lack of respect for the leadership will grow among those who stay. The GB will crack down more and more, insisting on shunning apostates and insisting the great tribulation is very near. Eventually money will be so short and they will make such drastic cuts that ordinary JWs will begin to suspect Watchtower is in real trouble. They will close most branches, stop paying any missionaries or circuit overseers, sell assembly halls and KHs. At this point there may appear rifts and splits among the leadership and power struggles, including various official and unofficial attempts to explain the desperate situation of the organisation as a trial from Satan or conversely as some part of God's plan. How this plays out may depend on the complexities of the legal structure of JWs, including obscure aspects of the legal foundation that only become apparent under stress.
At this point I don't know what happens. Complete disintegration, splinter groups, transformation, or who knows? I think all this could happen within 10 to 20 years.
What do you think?
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Why do some British journalists ...
by LoveUniHateExams in... go full retard whenever an arabic name appears on the autocue, and 'give it the full arabic', so to speak?.
rageh omar is a british somali of sunni muslim heritage so it's understandable when he pronounces arabic names with an arabic pronunciation/accent.. but what about people who have nothing to do with arabic - huw edwards, emily maitlis, moira stewart, etc.?
they don't speak arabic, do they?.
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slimboyfat
The reason why some foreign names are anglicised whereas as others retain original pronunciation? Familiarity, mainly.
For example everyone's heard of Vienna, so don't use Wien.
Whereas few people have heard of Sankt Poelten, so there's not an English version. (As far as I know)
It works the other way round too. Many languages have their own version of Edinburgh. The French say Edimbourg. (With accent over the E) But they don't bother having a French version of Cumbernauld. (Again, as far as I know)
So it's mainly down to familiarity and prominence whether names are modified across languages or not.
During the Egyptian revolution (of 2011?) there was some discussion on the BBC about whether they should anglicise Tahrir Square or give it the local guttural sound. Less of an issue for Scots and more of an issue for English people who sometimes struggle with this vocalisation.
There are endless debates about Gaelic pronunciations too. For example the people of Mallaig apparently wish the BBC would stress the first syllable rather than the second. (As is their custom) Linguistically it apparently means the difference between a Gaelic name and a Norse one. Properly it's Norse. (So I'm told)
Other disputes go beyond mere pronunciation. The BBC attempted some sensitivity for example around the Derry/Londonderry issue, and decided to use Londonderry in the first instance and Derry subsequently in news reports. This even applied to reporting of the funeral of Martin McGuinness.
In New Zealand there's been bitter dispute over the addition of a letter H to W(h)anganui so that it conforms to traditional Maori usage. Is it largely symbolic? And if so does that make it any less important?
There are some famous Arabic names that are routinely modified into English so that they differ substantially from the original: Cairo, Damascus, Mecca and so on.
Many famous Indian names have been changed because of colonial legacy, from Bombay to Mumbai and so on.