20,000 More

[Dustparticle]

 

 According to March of 2018, WT, on page 6, paragraph 11 there was 284,000 was baptised during the 2017, field service year. That is more than 20,000 more than 2016, field service year. COOL!

[jwhess]

5 hours ago, Dustparticle said:

 

 According to March of 2018, WT, on page 6, paragraph 11 there was 284,000 was baptised during the 2017, field service year. That is more than 20,000 more than 2016, field service year. COOL!

I love statistics.  But my age is showing.  This 2018 total is almost 100,000 LESS than 20 years ago (1998 = 375,925 bapt).  

 

Our song says, "We give our all to save just one."...

[Thomas Walker]

26 minutes ago, jwhess said:

I love statistics.  But my age is showing.  This 2018 total is almost 100,000 LESS than 20 years ago (1998 = 375,925 bapt).  

 

1998 was an International Convention year, I think. That always spikes the stats. Same thing with the last IC. Numbers dropped the year after.

 

Besides, different times. This is the Twitter Generation. Get ready for the number to drop next year with the new Ministry Format.

[Musky]

Wasn't that around the time when the wall went down and we could then count all of the brothers and sisters in the soviet block?

 

 

[pnutts]

1 hour ago, Musky said:

Wasn't that around the time when the wall went down and we could then count all of the brothers and sisters in the soviet block?

nope. That twaz at start of 90's

[Musky]

23 minutes ago, pnutts said:

nope. That twaz at start of 90's

The 90's were the time period when our numbers jumped from around one million to several, due to getting accurate counts from former iron curtain nations, I believe.

[jwhess]

Stats: from yearbook

 

1995=314,818 baptized

1996=338,491

1997=366.579

1998=375,923

1999=316,092

2000=323,439

 

it wasn't until the 2001 yearbook that the number went below 300,000 baptized   The decade ended (no paradise).  Y2K came and went (no Great Tribulation).

[Ferb]

On 12/3/2017 at 12:49 AM, jwhess said:

it wasn't until the 2001 yearbook that the number went below 300,000 baptized   The decade ended (no paradise).  Y2K came and went (no Great Tribulation).

 

But why would anyone have expected that anyway?  What could possibly have been special about the year 2000 from Jehovah's point of view?  The idea of a cataclysm around that time was, I suppose, one that was common in the world at the time, even though it wasn't particularly among God's people.

 

"I'm telling everyone the world will end in year 2000.  My compelling logic is that 2000 is a big round number." - http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-03-24

"The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways.  But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers." - http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-03-25

 

I've heard people speaking about whether it would be 100 years after the setting up of the Kingdom and so on - but I don't remember any time when Jehovah cared what is 100 years after what.  If he's been interested in a period of time, it's been 70 years or 120 years or something like that, or even 2520, but not 100!  That's just an amount humans care about because we have ten fingers!

If there were any particular numerical significance to the timing of the paradise or the Great Tribulation by which it could be calculated, Jesus would not have needed to say that concerning that day and hour nobody knows, since he would surely have had all necessary knowledge by which to make an accurate calculation.

 

Regarding the original subject, it's hard to draw any conclusions from the baptism data.  In general I'd say it's hovered around 300,000 for a few decades, with just random fluctuations on top of that.  Certainly anything that causes people to want to rush to get baptized, like maybe wanting to get baptized at an international assembly, will cause the numbers to rise that year, but dip the next year as people who would naturally have left it until that year are then missed out of the next year's statistics.  But I'm surprised it makes a noticeable difference.  And in fact, I'm surprised the number varies as much as it does at all - with such a large sample size, I'd expect variance to be fairly small.  To get any real information I think you'd need to look at each country individually and see what patterns their statistics show - and how it relates to average birth rates in each country, perhaps revealing any correlation to how many of the baptisms are down to children of witnesses getting baptized, perhaps how it relates to political instability in that country, economic factors - and see what relationships come out of that which might apply to the larger sample, i.e. the world.   But it would be a lot of work, and any such conclusions aren't really beneficial!  Well, not to me, anyway - I wouldn't be surprised if somebody in a branch office has the job of trying to figure out this sort of stuff, helping to determine things like what kinds of ministry have been more effective, and what problems may particularly need addressing.  They probably established that the metropolitan witnessing, for instance, was having a beneficial effect before rolling it out full scale.