2006 SERVICE REPORT - Feb 1, 2007 WT

I'm not sure if anyone's posted this yet, but here are the figures for the 2006 Service Report. I highlighted the countries that have either a "0" or negative growth in yellow and I highlighted key countries where the you would expect more growth......I tried looking for England's stats, but I couldn't see it. I looked under "England" and "United Kingdom" but I can't see it. Can anyone else?

All in all the figures are pretty dismal. They spent 1,333,966,199 hours preaching, yet the average number of publishers---which is the religions goal to increase----only increased by just over 100,000 from 2005's report. There were 248,327 baptised in 2006, so shouldn't there have been an increase of 248,327 publishers? If I'm reading this right, there seems to be 146,594 publishers that have gone AWOL in 2006.

The total irony of this report is the cover of the February 2007 Awake! magazine which is at the very end. For once, I think they got it right, although that building could just as easily be the Kingdumb Halls.

Hi Mary,

Someone did post this a week or so ago, but repetition is good when the news for the wts is bad, My personal favourite statistic is the 234 rise in the number of memorial partakers, I hope to get the opportunity to ask a few jw about that one, although none of them around here speak to me. Ther are a few jws at work who don't know me so well, so they can get ready lol.

The UK is under Britain, for some reason. I guess the wts like to be differrent, and there has been a 1% rise here, apparently, although they baptised 2535 kids of jws new converts last year, but the number of jws only rose by 1346, so 1189 jws either died, went inactive or left altogether last year.

They may have experienced a slight increase worldwide, but we all knw they baptise mainly kids nowadays, and they aren't guaranteed to stay once they grow up, so it's tough times ahead in jwland, whatever their stats say.

D'OH !!!

Hi Mary,

England is under "B" for Britain. I first tried Great Britain, but I guess the Society does not think that merry old England is all that great! Anyway, a couple of others did post the report. But I am enjoying going through your highlights, as it is very telling of what is going on in Watchtower growth and non-growth.

Jim Whitney

PS:  Whoops, it looks like you already learned about "Britain" while I was typing my post.

Thank you to all who pointed out that England is under "Britian".

No kidding eh?  That means that 19,000,000 hours didn't do ANY good whatsoever.  I thought Jehovah was supposed to "speed it up" at The End......

I notice that the number of baptisms decreased by 14,000.  This is lowest since 1988. 

Indeed, God is "slowing things down in his own due time".  Clearly, the work is nearly done.  The door will soon be closed.  I'm already practicing gnashing my teeth.

Ya, I've been polishing up on my weeping   and trying to find my way in the Outer Darkness....

Good spot Runningman, I missed that one. Even the kids must be resisting more nowadays, or maybe they aren't being brought up in the "discipline and mental regulating of jehovah"  as much as they used to be.

Could it be that the wts is losing its' authority over the r&f a little.....

Thanks to the internet, the kids are walking out the door which is a smart move----get out while you're young.  The older ones are more or less stuck in this dead-end religion, as they've given up 40, 50 or more years to it.

I'd have to say "yes".  That's why they've had 2 WT studies within 6 months of each other, telling the R&F they must cut off their own flesh and blood if they "rebel" against the WTS.  This pathetic attempt to squash any sort of individualism in the Organization is reflected in the numbers.

That's a lot of hours to waste! With some math, 1583333 12 hour days, or 4337 years (or 4.3 creative days) of preaching produced no results. Jehovah got more done in that time creating heavens, earth, and other stuff.

I built myself a giant bird feeder to die in.

Actually Mary, it's not a "maybe" as to whether or not the kids around here are rebelling, I know they are. When we go for a drink in our local pub, there's often half a dozen or more kids of jws in there, most with elder fathers, and they are smoking, swearing, getting drunk etc, then turning up at the kh for the next meeting. I rather think the double life won't last long, and it'll be the kh that gets given up, not the pub visits. They speak to da'd people (us) as well.

The wts has already lost any authority it  had over them, and I doubt it will ever get it back. I'm also pretty sure, from conversations they have about the paries and mightclubs they go to with friends from other kh's, that their conduct is the rule rather than the exception around here, and probably throughout the UK as well.

I smile when I see some of the comments of the apologists on here, pointing out the 1% increase in the UK. Maybe they aren't aware that of how some of their younger members are behaving or of how much they really care about being jws, but they will find out soon enough.

These figures put the WTs increase at 1.6%, but if you take into account the worlds population is growing by 1.14%, then you have an actual growth rate of only 0.46%, not nearly as impressive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate

Wow, those numbers are astonishingly appalling!

Global statistics: 6,390,022 (2005 avg pub) + 248,327 baptisms = 6,638,349 (projected total for 2006)...

However.....

6,638,349 (projected total for 2006) - 6,491,775 (actual 2006 avg pub) = 146,574 publishers unaccounted for = 2.2% AWOL

[edited due to calculator failure  that's my story and I'm sticking to it!]

In Canada, the increase was 84 Publishers™ from 2005 to 2006, despite the fact that there were 1982 baptisms. Where have the other 1898 (1.8%) Publishers™ gone?

In terms of hours spent preaching: Canada's 19,060,967 hours in 2006, divided by 12 = 1,588,413.9 average hours per month total; 1,588,414 hours divided by 107,618 average Publishers™ per month = 14.76 hours per month

Factor in Pioneer™ hours at a minimum of 70 hours per month required and Auxiliary Pioneer™ hours at a minimum of 50 hours per month required:

7655 Pioneers™ x 70 hours per month x 12 months = 6,430,200 hours total

4068 Auxiliary Pioneers x 50 hours per month x 12 months = 2,440,800 hours

19,060,967 total hours - 6,430,200 Pioneer™ hours - 2,440,800 Auxiliary Pioneer™ Hours = 10,198,967 Publisher™ Hours

10,198,967 Publisher™ Hours divided by (107,618 av Publishers™ - 7655 avg Pioneers™ - 4068 avg Auxiliary Pioneers™) = annual Publisher™ (only) hours

10,198,967 annual hours divided by 95,895 Publishers™ = 106.35 annual hours per Publisher™ (8.8 hours per month)

If the number of Publishers™ does not include Pioneers™ and Auxiliary Pioneers™, the average hours is even lower:

10,198,967 Publisher™ hours divided by 107,618 av Publishers™ = 94.8 annual hours per Publisher™ (7.8 hours per month)

This means that the average JW Publisher goes in Field Service™ less than 2 hours per week. This average would include a 1 hour per week Family Study™ (which most JW husbands count but seldom do in my experience).

That's a very, very bleak picture for Canadian JWs.

I've been looking at the USA figures a bit more.  There were 28,915 baptisms, but the actual no only increased by 13,210.  This leaves 15,715 unaccounted for.  A death rate of 8.25 per 1000 would account for 8,209 of these, but that still leaves 7,496 people who ceased to be counted as baptised jw's.

An average of 995,071 publishers with a birthrate of 14.14 per 1000 could expect to increase by 14,070 per year, not taking into account the death rate.  Of the 28,915 baptisms, this would account for nearly half of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_death_rate

Actually hon, the projected figure above totals 6,638,349 (unless I'm doing it wrong).  So that means if you take the projected figure for 2006 (6,638,349) and subtract the average no. of publishers (6,491,775), there appears to be nearly 150,000 people who are missing from the ranks....146,574 to be exact.

A median world death rate of 8 deaths per thousand would account for 51,934 of these, leaving 94,640 unaccounted for.