Posts by bohm

nonjwspouse: I agree that (DF'ings, etc.) is a confounded, however I am not sure it would overturn the effect.. Let's say that in 1990 100'000 new converts (i.e. door-to-door converts and not children of witness) enter the witness at an average age of 30 and lets suppose that by year 2000 about 30'000 has left. This still leaves a net influx of 70'000 30-year-old in 1990 which will drag down the average age of the witness in the years to come and lead to a lower /effective/ mortality rate as long as this influx happens.

Once the source of converts is removed (i.e. replacement happens by birth) the witness population will begin to closer resemble the average population and the mortality rate will go up -- leading to less growth or even stagnation despite the same conversion/birth/retention rate.

If we assume a percentage of teenagers leave (never to be seen again) I think that effect is better understood as a lower "effective birth-rate". Of course I don't dispute there is some demographic skewing because people (presumably) preferentially leave at a given age and not when they are very old, however I think the above effect is there as long as we assume the source of new (fresh, door-to-door) converts is declining.

13

How baptism rate at conventions relates to yearbook growth rate (Discussion)

by bohm in

jw
friends

we had a number of posters report on the baptism rate at conventions which is usually less than 1% and rates lower than 0.5% is by no means uncommon.

despite this there is still a positive growth rate in the us (0.71% according to the yearbook) and i wonder how these numbers relate.

i wonder if anyone can help me out if these assumptions are true:.

bohm

dropoffyourkeylee:

One hypothesis could be the following: Historically, up to around the 90s, the JWs has expanded primarily by conversion. The "average convert" is probably a younger person say around 30 year old. He or she then has children which are brought into the group as very young. Taken together that means the JWs should have a higher birth rate (or "effective" birth rate due to conversion of small children) than the rest of the population and be younger than the rest of the population. Accordingly the death rate of the JWs is lower than the rest of the population.

However when conversion rates drop (i.e. most converts are descendants of JWs) the JW population will become more representative of the actual population (i.e. older). That means the death rate will increase and the fertility rate will drop. If this is true that means that even if the current conversion rate/ability to baptize and keep children in is maintained the resulting total growth may be lower than now.

I think this hypothesis is (plausibly) true in terms of the overall direction of the effect but I got no idea if it is significant or not, that would need to be checked by looking at the numbers.

13

How baptism rate at conventions relates to yearbook growth rate (Discussion)

by bohm in

jw
friends

we had a number of posters report on the baptism rate at conventions which is usually less than 1% and rates lower than 0.5% is by no means uncommon.

despite this there is still a positive growth rate in the us (0.71% according to the yearbook) and i wonder how these numbers relate.

i wonder if anyone can help me out if these assumptions are true:.

bohm

konceptual: if most people are baptized at CAs, why on earth are people then so exited about the baptisms at the RCs every year? Hrmpf, apostates!. At least the baptism numbers makes a lot more sense to me now..

13

How baptism rate at conventions relates to yearbook growth rate (Discussion)

by bohm in

jw
friends

we had a number of posters report on the baptism rate at conventions which is usually less than 1% and rates lower than 0.5% is by no means uncommon.

despite this there is still a positive growth rate in the us (0.71% according to the yearbook) and i wonder how these numbers relate.

i wonder if anyone can help me out if these assumptions are true:.

bohm

konceptual: It might be a waste of time, but for my own sake I think it would be interesting to get a feeling for how the baptism numbers and conventions relates to the increase in publishers. In your experience is most of the baptisms at RCs or CAs?

Also let me just get this straight: The rate of increase reported in the YB is the increase in peak publishers? (I thought it was in average publishers).

I just noticed the total # of baptisms is given in the YB so i see your point this is probably moot.

13

How baptism rate at conventions relates to yearbook growth rate (Discussion)

by bohm in

jw
friends

we had a number of posters report on the baptism rate at conventions which is usually less than 1% and rates lower than 0.5% is by no means uncommon.

despite this there is still a positive growth rate in the us (0.71% according to the yearbook) and i wonder how these numbers relate.

i wonder if anyone can help me out if these assumptions are true:.

bohm

We had a number of posters report on the baptism rate at conventions which is usually less than 1% and rates lower than 0.5% is by no means uncommon. Despite this there is still a positive growth rate in the US (0.71% according to the yearbook) and I wonder how these numbers relate. I hope someone can help me out if these assumptions appear sound:

Lets suppose in an area of the US there is a baptism rate of r (rate observed) for instance r=0.5% would correspond to 7400 in attendance and 37 baptized because:

r = N(Baptisms at convention) / N(Attendance at convention) = 37 / 7400

We need to relate this quantity to the actual rate of baptisms (yearbook growth rate). There are three principal unknowns:

q : Fraction of total baptisms which takes place at conventions
Pa : Chance an average JW "publisher" will attend (and be counted in) the total number of attendants at the convention
Pb : Chance a random person at the convention is also a JW publisher

q is required because not all baptisms take place at conventions. If q=1 we assume all baptisms take place at conventions and if q=0.5 we assume half of all baptisms take place at conventions.

Pa is the chance a JW publisher will be (counted in) the total number of attendants at the conventions. For instance, if all JWs attend two conventions then Pa=2 and if an average JW attend half of the conventions then Pa = 0.5. This number is lowered by infirm JWs, ill JWs, JWs who are out of the seats getting icecream etc.

Pb is the chance a person who is at the convention is also an "average" publisher (presumably, outsiders, children and DF/DA'd are also counted as attendants at conventions but these are not publishers)

Lets give an illustration: Suppose q=0.75 (75% of all baptisms take place at conventions) and Pa=0.9 (A JW will on average miss out one of 10 conventions when double-attendance is included) and Pb = 0.9 (90% of attendants at conventions are publishers and not faded, DF'd, children, any of you guys, etc.). Then we can compute the total (effective) growth rate as:

G = r * Pa / (q * Pb) = r * 1.33

We need to substract from this number the rate with which JWs leave. First there is death. The death rate in the US is about 0.8%, however we must factor in that we are interested in the rate with which average publishers die (small children who rarely die are not publishers). If we suppose JWs become "average publishers" at age 10 (on average), this would boost the death rate by a little more than 10% (rough guesstimate). In addition many JWs presumably become inactive (due to age) a few years before they die but let's not count that. For simplicity, let's put the death rate at 0.9% (we should also factor in the JW population may be younger/older than the average person or live more/less healthy lives etc.).

Secondly there is the rate with which people leave (DF/DA/fade) and never return. Let's suppose 1 out of 100 leave (i.e. stops being a regular publisher) every year for reasons other than death and half of these never return, that puts the "leave" rate at 0.5%. In total we get the effective growth rate to be:

G(effective) = r * Pa / (q * Pb) - (%Dies) - (%Leaves) = r * 1.33 - 1.4

Thus with these numbers the baptism rate at conventions should be a little more than 1% to maintain equilibrium and about 1.6% to account for the current JW growth rate of 0.71 in the yearbooks (1.6 * 1.33 - 1.44 = 0.71).

Thus, if the baptism rates of 0.5% are representative something fishy is going on with these assumptions... There are a few options:

I am missing something (the "average publisher" may differ from "the average person" in a significant way)
The numbers are wrong (q, Pa, Pb, the "leave-rate" or "death-rate"). For instance there could be more DF/Inactives at the convention (Pb is lower than 0.9%). I am probably the worst person to guess these numbers so I hope someone else will give his or her view.
A few conventions may account for most of the growth whereas the "typical" convention signifies a decline ("the amazing hispanish conventions")
Ex-JWs who attend conventions with high growth rate don't bother to report the high growth rate here or on reddit because it is discouraging

In conclusion:

To translate the baptism rate reported from conventions into yearbook growth rate we must make several assumptions. It would be interesting to narrow down plausible values for these assumptions to better estimate local growth of the JWs.

15

I'm disfellowshipped BUT working my way back

by Want to serve in

jw
friends

i figured i would try this out.

i'm currently disfellowshiped but working my way back.

i was wondering if i am the only one?

bohm

Hi and welcome! There are several disfellowshipped witness on this site however I am not one of them.

I wonder if you could share where you are in the process of getting back? (attending meetings, studying with a witness, etc.).

29

What should I do?

by Tameria2001 in

jw
friends

hello everyone, it's been quite a while since i was last on this forum.

originally i was under a different user name, but lost all that information when i moved to a different state.

anyways, i had left the jws back in 2001, after being raised up in it most of my childhood life.

bohm

Yah what Scary21 said. This is totally unacceptable but I think the best you can do is to explain why you got to leave. And I second Flippers suggestion to "overstay" a bit (take a reeeeally long time to say goodbuy).