2019 Service Year Report of Jehovah’s Witnesses Worldwide

[Tortuga]

3 hours ago, careful said:

Its concerning to me that we spend so much time and attention bringing people in to the organization but at the same time, we have such a huge amount of people being disfellowshipped.

When you reflect on all the spiritual instructions that we receive at our meetings and conventions it is a balanced meal of encouraging us to go in service and stay together as family. Everyone in the worldwide spiritual family receives the same information they need to stay in the family, unfortunately some will decide they don't want to be part of the family and they leave. It is sad..

[McKay]

3 hours ago, careful said:

Its concerning to me that we spend so much time and attention bringing people in to the organization but at the same time, we have such a huge amount of people being disfellowshipped.

It is a concern but it's also to be expected to an extent. Think of the Israelites RIGHT BEFORE they entered the promised land: they lost thousands because of sexual immorality with the Midianites. We can expect Satan to ramp up pressure as he nears his end. It just highlights how much more so we need to rely on Jehovah instead of our own strength to stay strong in the faith.

[jwhess]

Because the "end is near" we work harder to bring people into God's organization.

Because the "end is near" Satan works just as hard to take people out or prevent them from coming in.  He is "upping his game". He is angry.

 

Satan has also made the world around us more attractive to human desires and imperfect inclinations.  And he has made attitudes such that this immorality appears OK to people in general.

[careful]

14 hours ago, Dustparticle said:

It is a matter of concern. Most of those get DF comes back. We always need to keep ourselves in check sis.

ive actually never heard any statistics on how many df ones come back....do you know that "most" is a fact??

[careful]

13 hours ago, Shawnster said:

What more do you think can be done to encourage ones that are in the Truth to either remain loyal or show genuine repentance in the case of wrongdoing?

 

 

I think people need a safe place to talk about challenges of being a witness without risking being marked or avoided for voicing their real feelings.

[Dustparticle]

5 hours ago, careful said:

I think people need a safe place to talk about challenges of being a witness without risking being marked or avoided for voicing their real feelings.

Good point sis. There is a problem with this and it hurts me too. This problem is not going away in this system. In the NW it will.

[Norbro]

11 hours ago, careful said:

I think people need a safe place to talk about challenges of being a witness without risking being marked or avoided for voicing their real feelings.

Yes, it is very important to be able to talk about doubts, etc. The problem is that if you have a public forum dedicated to such issues, it can quickly result in a negative focus and unhappy members fuelling each others' discontent.

 

It is much easier to help a single person than a whole group at once. The elders do not gather everyone who has a problem and try to fix it all in one go. Everybody has different concerns and needs and deserves time dedicated solely to him/her without noise from the sideline.

 

On the other hand, it can be difficult to ask for help, especially if one does not feel close to an elder. Perhaps it would be good if the elders had a weekly chat 'slot' that anyone could use. That way the threshold for speaking with them might be a little lower. Of course, it can also be very helpful to speak with an experienced brother or sister outside of an 'elder setting'. However, we must all be careful to avoid "enjoying discontent", i.e. having 'mates' who like to discuss things that bother them and feed off each other in this regard. It is for good reason the Paul told the Philippians in 4:8 that we should focus on the good and lovable things. Also, the elders regularly receive reminders in the literature about how important it is to be approachable and welcoming.

[BenJepthah]

On 12/19/2019 at 7:10 AM, careful said:

Its concerning to me that we spend so much time and attention bringing people in to the organization but at the same time, we have such a huge amount of people being disfellowshipped.

If Christendom or really any part of BTG actually enforced their  own standards of a generation ago I imagine their numbers would be cut in half by comparison. 

[Dages]

1 hour ago, BenJepthah said:

If Christendom or really any part of BTG actually enforced their  own standards of a generation ago I imagine their numbers would be cut in half by comparison. 

1/10 would be more accurate

[Memeber212]

18 hours ago, careful said:

ive actually never heard any statistics on how many df ones come back....do you know that "most" is a fact??

I guess if you think about your own congregation and nerby congs over past decades you can roughly extrapolate the rate. Those returning are in a majority but some get disfellowshipped several times during their life, so they distort that number.

[Memeber212]

On 12/18/2019 at 3:03 PM, Norbro said:

Sorry, I should have been more clear. It was a long article about her how growing up in the organisation has "ruined her life", basically. No higher education etc. She had found a boyfriend.

 

Sad to say it but I wasn't all that surprised, really. She had told off my daughter (who is a couple of years older, also in her twenties) after my daughter had said it could give the wrong impression that the pioneer and some of her friends planned to go out on town partying on New Year's Eve. Apparently my daughter was "rude" for "criticising" others. They weren't celebrating NYE, the pioneer said...but what would it look like? They did go out to party. I expect she has been reproved numerous times. My wife and I were also surprised at the cold shoulder we got when we met her out and about. We have health problems which mean we can't attend the meetings physically as often as we want to, and she treated us like we were bad associations.

It is very common nowadays. Usually young people get convinced by the world that they made a good decision to leave the "organisation". They get some short attention from the media but there is another news tomorrow and they are left forgotten with the only audience made up of similar people. I imagine it is very difficult to return to the Truth after making those flashy public statements. Especially, that if you know them closely there was often more to it that they reveal to the public.

Edited December 20, 2019 by מתתיהו

[SteEis]

It is online! Yeah!!

[Foxes53]

A quick analysis so far....

Brazil and Zambia had the largest increases in peak publishers.

Brazil and Angola had largest increases in Memorial attendance. 

Ecuador and Malawi passed 100,000 publishers.

Turkey had a 19% increase

Papua New Guinea had a 13% increase.

Most Western/European countries had no increase

[SteEis]

Turkey is very interesting: 2010 were 2000 publishers and last year 4200. Turkey had also the highest plus in per cent in the last year.

[Bek]

15 minutes ago, Foxes53 said:

A quick analysis so far....

 

Turkey had a 19% increase

 

 

12 minutes ago, SteEis said:

Turkey is very interesting: 2010 were 2000 publishers and last year 4200. Turkey had also the highest plus in per cent in the last year.

That is probably in part due to many Russian brothers fleeing to Turkey. I know one brother who serves there and he says that there are four or five Russian-language congs now because of the influx. 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2019 by Bek

[Luigi62]

On 12/4/2019 at 11:49 PM, SteEis said:

Most likely it will be there:

https://www.jw.org/download/?output=html&pub=syr19&fileformat=PDF%2CEPUB%2CJWPUB%2CRTF%2CTXT%2CBRL%2CBES&alllangs=0&langwritten=E&txtCMSLang=E&isBible=0

Its odd this pic isn't with the link.

[My little flower]

It’s here 

https://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&pub=syr19&srcid=share

[Sepie93]

Turkey is very interesting: 2010 were 2000 publishers and last year 4200. Turkey had also the highest plus in per cent in the last year.

It's indeed very interesting! When you look to the number of baptized is also quite high in comparison with the number of publishers.

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[Luigi62]

6 hours ago, My little flower said:

It’s here 

https://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&pub=syr19&srcid=share

Odd 🤔

[blueyellow]

On 12/30/2019 at 11:55 PM, SteEis said:

Turkey is very interesting: 2010 were 2000 publishers and last year 4200. Turkey had also the highest plus in per cent in the last year.

I assume there are a lot of needgreaters moving there. 

[jwhess]

On 12/19/2019 at 7:10 AM, careful said:

Its concerning to me that we spend so much time and attention bringing people in to the organization but at the same time, we have such a huge amount of people being disfellowshipped.

Our job is to be the messenger or watchman with a warning.  It is Jehovah alone who draws people to the Christ. John 6:44..."No man can come to me unless the Father, who sent me, draws him"  No act on our part can get him to invite someone he does not want, nor can we do anything to get him to keep someone who must be put put of his organization.  It is dependent only the individual's relationship between each Kingdom Publisher and God.  They themselves must generate that personal interaction and it is them alone that must maintain it.  It is not about us. 

 

This does not mean our job in not important.  It is very important to our personal salvation in obedience to God.  But God could use "stones" to do the work if we won't.

[Sepie93]

I assume there are a lot of needgreaters moving there. 

It's very interesting what is happening there. They "only" had 3500 publishers. Now they have 4221 publishers.
They had 47 congregations, now they have 52 congregations.

But what really catched my eye was the number of pioneers there. Around 1/3 of all publishers are pioneers!!!! Thats great!

(Whats also possible in regard to Turkey is that it is one of the open doors from the Middle East to a relative save place for Witnesses..)

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[Thesauron]

It's very interesting what is happening there. They "only" had 3500 publishers. Now they have 4221 publishers.
They had 47 congregations, now they have 52 congregations.

But what really catched my eye was the number of pioneers there. Around 1/3 of all publishers are pioneers!!!! Thats great!

(Whats also possible in regard to Turkey is that it is one of the open doors from the Middle East to a relative save place for Witnesses..)

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Turkey has received a great deal of influx from other Middle Eastern countries recently, and that has proven to be a fertile field wherever it happens.

[careful]

1 hour ago, jwhess said:

Our job is to be the messenger or watchman with a warning.  It is Jehovah alone who draws people to the Christ. John 6:44..."No man can come to me unless the Father, who sent me, draws him"  No act on our part can get him to invite someone he does not want, nor can we do anything to get him to keep someone who must be put put of his organization.  It is dependent only the individual's relationship between each Kingdom Publisher and God.  They themselves must generate that personal interaction and it is them alone that must maintain it.  It is not about us. 

 

This does not mean our job in not important.  It is very important to our personal salvation in obedience to God.  But God could use "stones" to do the work if we won't.

yes you are right it is a privilege to do the work we do. so I should have worded my post differently.  There are so many people coming in and sadly so many people leaving.   does that take away the element that you are objecting to?

[Bek]

38 minutes ago, Thesauron said:

Turkey has received a great deal of influx from other Middle Eastern countries recently, and that has proven to be a fertile field wherever it happens.

That is true. There are now half a dozen Arabic congs in Turkey, and there is a huge demand for Arabic-speaking brothers. The brother I know serves in Istanbul where, he says, there are 500,000 Arabic speakers. If you consider the number of Arabs across the whole of Turkey, then there are over 5m of them now, including the refugees. 

 

If it was not for my illness, I would certainly consider going to Turkey after my baptism. I think I would pick up Turkish in a couple of months and possibly try to learn Kurdish and/or Persian, both of which are related and fairly simple. 

 

I also hear that there are congs in other languages such as French, English, Georgian, Azeri, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Russian, just to name a few. 

 

Turkey is like a Middle Eastern hub where people from all neighbouring countries go to study, work and just enjoy themselves. It is an ideal place for a multilingual JW.  

 

 

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by Bek