Actual number of Witnesses

[LakerDad78]

I often wonder how many a actual active baptized witnesses are we?

 

The 8 million + figure includes unbaptized publishers and many of them are our own children and Bible studies.  

Thoughts? Estimates?

[Dages]

1 hour ago, LakerDad78 said:

I often wonder how many a actual active baptized witnesses are we?

 

The 8 million + figure includes unbaptized publishers and many of them are our own children and Bible studies.  

Thoughts? Estimates?

Baptisms and death happens all the time, it's difficult to have a precise number. We can only know publishers numbers really...

[jwhess]

For most of a century, our organization focused on being a "Publisher".  We stressed helping our Bible Studies to become publishers.  When I was young, there was not a firm notion that a Bible Student's success was measured by making a dedication and then being baptized.  The student was directed to join us in our primary work of "witnessing".  If you were going to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses, then you needed to witness and become a recognized publisher.

 

So our Yearbooks and Reports emphasized the number of books and magazines printed and placed around the world and the number of people doing that work.  Look at our field Service Report slip.  Look at the columns and their headings.  There is no column for "baptisms".  Our idea of "serving God" dealt with the concept of Service not a focus on the attitude or motivation centered on devotion.

 

[Pjdriver]

13 hours ago, LakerDad78 said:

I often wonder how many a actual active baptized witnesses are we?

 

The 8 million + figure includes unbaptized publishers and many of them are our own children and Bible studies.  

Thoughts? Estimates?

I believe in Christendom they count any members...even if those members are not active. Catholics even count the babies.

How many of those 2.3 billion or so in Christendom are really actively practicing their faith?

How many are doing the most important work Jesus commanded to be done?

 

We count our numbers by those who are actively involved. I’m sure the Branch office would know how many are just baptized,

but what’s more important is are we active?  That’s the number that tells us what we want to know and what’s important. 

Also consider....I don’t know the numbers, but there are some unbaptized publishers,  but also some baptized, but inactive ones as well.

We don’t count the latter. 

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Pjdriver

[LakerDad78]

54 minutes ago, Pjdriver said:

I believe in Christendom they count any members...even if those members are not active. Catholics even count the babies.

How many of those 2.3 billion or so in Christendom are really actively practicing their faith?

How many are doing the most important work Jesus commanded to be done?

 

We count our numbers by those who are actively involved. I’m sure the Branch office would know how many are just baptized,

but what’s more important is are we active?  That’s the number that tells us what we want to know and what’s important. 

Also consider....I don’t know the numbers, but there are some unbaptized publishers,  but also some baptized, but inactive ones as well.

We don’t count the latter. 

 

I get it. Just wondering since someone isn’t officially a “Witness” until they are baptized. 

[carlos]

14 hours ago, LakerDad78 said:

Thoughts? Estimates?

I think there is no way we can calculate that, even approximately.

We could add all the figures of baptized people of every yearly report. But then, we don't know how many of those are alive. And a number of people are disfellowshipped every year, so they no longer count as baptized Witnesses.

[Brother_Bliss]

Moved to the "Wordwide Brotherhood" forum since there is nothing here that resembles Bible Research, Personal Study, or Scriptural Discussion.

 

I personally assume that it's between the number of publishers and the number of the memorial attendance. Kinda like....

 

8 million active Jehovah's Witnesses

8 million inactive Jehovah's Witnesses

8 million guests

 

= 24 million in attendance.

 

Of course I'm just pulling that out of thin air, but I think there is some logic to it.

[Shawnster]

Some publishers become baptized during the service year and, yet, are also still counted as Bible studies because they haven't finished the publication (at least back in the day.  I assume this still happens with the new Enjoy Life book).

 

So we cant even subtract Bible studies from the equation. 

 

Just too many variables. 

[Ishaya]

On 2/16/2022 at 11:31 PM, LakerDad78 said:

I get it. Just wondering since someone isn’t officially a “Witness” until they are baptized. 

 

When you think about it,baptism is only a public declaration of ones decision to walk with God.

 

That decision can be made long before baptism and acted on devotedly by active participation in the field ministry and regular meeting attendance.

being a witness is not just about bearing the name,its more about commitment to the course.

 

In view of this,it makes sense to count an unbaptized publisher as a witness and rightly so,these unbaptized brothers begin to call themselves Jehovah's witnesses even before their baptism and justifiably alot of them suffer relentless persecutions even before baptism because of the name.

[Ishaya]

On 2/16/2022 at 9:00 AM, LakerDad78 said:

I often wonder how many a actual active baptized witnesses are we?

 

The 8 million + figure includes unbaptized publishers and many of them are our own children and Bible studies.  

Thoughts? Estimates?

 

But do you mind if I ask why you want to know our number?

[LakerDad78]

32 minutes ago, Ishaya said:

 

But do you mind if I ask why you want to know our number?

Just curious. It’s not something I HAVE to know. Just something I wonder. 

[jwhess]

To get a sense of our current feelings (baptism vs preaching), our Songbook has a total of 4 songs about dedication and baptism.  We have 33 about preaching. Plus my PDF search turned up many more with "preaching" of "reaching out in the field".  So just our focus in song shows our concentration in pleasing God by our being publishers of the Good News.  It is an evidence of our devotion, faith and endurance.  It is external and visible. Baptism affects you personally, the preaching affects the entire world.

 

Hebrews 13:15-16..."Through him let us always offer to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of our lips that make public declaration to his name....for God is well-pleased with such sacrifices."

 

We need to make sure our Bible Students realize that becoming an unbaptized publisher is an essential step in spiritual growth but the maturity begins with a dedication and baptism.  It is an essential for life (preaching and hours will not "earn" it for you).

[Anthony]

On 2/19/2022 at 10:51 PM, Dismal_Bliss said:

Moved to the "Wordwide Brotherhood" forum since there is nothing here that resembles Bible Research, Personal Study, or Scriptural Discussion.

 

I personally assume that it's between the number of publishers and the number of the memorial attendance. Kinda like....

 

8 million active Jehovah's Witnesses

8 million inactive Jehovah's Witnesses

8 million guests

 

= 24 million in attendance.

 

Of course I'm just pulling that out of thin air, but I think there is some logic to it.

Never thought about that. I was just about to say that the number of baptized witnesses are probably a significant amount more than 8million because of the number of inactive. 

[Brother_Bliss]

On 2/16/2022 at 5:31 PM, LakerDad78 said:

I get it. Just wondering since someone isn’t officially a “Witness” until they are baptized. 

To be a witness of Jehovah, you have to be witnessing. This would include unbaptized fellow servants.

[careful]

im confused about this subject.  if you ask someone "are you a witness?" you are really wondering if they are a baptized person who has make a dedication.

but because we consider a person a witness when they are actually baptized......, at the same time, if you ask them "are you witnessing?"  you can be wondering if they have been made an unbaptized publisher yet who is turning in time.   So im confused when we say the current amount of witnesses there are worldwide,,,are we saying that is how many have turned in time or that is how many baptized people are out there.  certainly, we cant mean how many baptized ones since we have no way of tracking baptized individuals to see if they are turning in time,(there are those who have died, those who are inactive, those who are disfellowshipped),,so we must mean that is how many  are turning in a report each month, (but that would include those unbaptized who are just learning or our any children who are not yet mature enough to get baptized)....maybe my confusion seems strange to some, but i dont get it.

 

to the above post by dismall bliss,,,,"to be a witness of jehovah you have to be witnessing ",,,,this is very true but to be witnessing, you dont have to be baptized.   so What are the actual facts about the number of witnessess?   i think this subject also includes the problem of the many who are inactive among us who have drifted away or stepped away and are no longer witnessing but, in number only, they have been replaced by new ones.

[carlos]

18 minutes ago, careful said:

 So im confused when we say the current amount of witnesses there are worldwide,,,are we saying that is how many have turned in time or that is how many baptized people are out there.

Technically "a Witness" is a baptized person. Unbaptized publishers cannot be disfellowshipped, for example, because there are not full members of the congregation.

 

Yet that definition is useless if we are discussing numbers. As you say, there is no way to know the number of individuals baptized as Jehovah's Witnesses who are alive today. So when the brothers give a figure, they don't speak of "Witnesses" but of "publishers", that is, people associated with the congregation who are actively joining the preaching work. When they say we reached a new peak of 9,000,000 publishers, that's publishers, not baptized Witnesses. (Of course, it can be argued that anyone who witnesses is a witness, and anyone who is inactive is not as Bob said, but that is a different definition of the term.)

 

Trying to determine how many baptized Witnesses are there is quite tricky. What about disfellowshipped individuals, should they be counted too? Or those who have been inactive for many years and live a worldly life? They are baptized but not considered part of the congregation. It's much easier to simply count those who are active in preaching.

[LakerDad78]

3 hours ago, carlos said:

Technically "a Witness" is a baptized person. Unbaptized publishers cannot be disfellowshipped, for example, because there are not full members of the congregation.

 

Yet that definition is useless if we are discussing numbers. As you say, there is no way to know the number of individuals baptized as Jehovah's Witnesses who are alive today. So when the brothers give a figure, they don't speak of "Witnesses" but of "publishers", that is, people associated with the congregation who are actively joining the preaching work. When they say we reached a new peak of 9,000,000 publishers, that's publishers, not baptized Witnesses. (Of course, it can be argued that anyone who witnesses is a witness, and anyone who is inactive is not as Bob said, but that is a different definition of the term.)

 

Trying to determine how many baptized Witnesses are there is quite tricky. What about disfellowshipped individuals, should they be counted too? Or those who have been inactive for many years and live a worldly life? They are baptized but not considered part of the congregation. It's much easier to simply count those who are active in preaching.

This is right on point. So when we hear that Jehovah’s Witnesses number 8 million, that’s not entirely accurate. There are 8 million publishers. But they’re not all officially Jehovah’s Witnesses. 
 

In our FAQ on jw.org it explains how we count the number of witnesses: “This includes those who have been baptized as Witnesses as well as those who, though not yet baptized, qualify to share in the preaching work.”

 

However, when it comes to other things our definition of “a witness” changes. Perhaps that’s where the confusion lies. 

 

 

[carlos]

2 hours ago, LakerDad78 said:

In our FAQ on jw.org it explains how we count the number of witnesses: “This includes those who have been baptized as Witnesses as well as those who, though not yet baptized, qualify to share in the preaching work.”

That's just to simplify things. Technically that's the number of publishers, but non-JW readers are not aware of those shades of meaning.

 

How many Catholics are there in the world? How many Muslims? How many Witnesses? While other religions count practicing and not practicing followers, we only count those who actively associate with the congregation.

 

 

[careful]

thank you for these explanations...i see how it is "counted"   However, i guess, to know the actual number would require that each congregation send a tally of how many baptized people they have actually associating and turning in a report of activity. would that be more accurate?  of course, that would be alot of work but maybe just once a year.

[Witness1970]

What about the elderly.  I knew a sister in Georgia that had her elderly parents and aunt in the house with her.  Her father had been a CO (called a circuit servant back then) and her aunt was a Special Pioneer.  None of them were able to attend meetings or get out in Field Service.  They were not active, but we can be sure that Jehovah counted them as his servants.  That's 3 people in one congregation that would not show up on Field Service reports.  Did they not count as Jehovah's Witnesses?

[carlos]

15 hours ago, careful said:

thank you for these explanations...i see how it is "counted"   However, i guess, to know the actual number would require that each congregation send a tally of how many baptized people they have actually associating and turning in a report of activity. would that be more accurate?  of course, that would be alot of work but maybe just once a year.

That would be more accurate either. There are many people who were baptized but no longer associate with the congregation. There would be no way to count those.

 

Every year there are statistics of the number of baptisms. One could add those. But then one would need to substract those who have died and those who are disfellowshipped. And then add again the disfellowshipped ones who are reinstated. There's simply no way to do that, even approximately.

 

[Jan Brad]

As others have said, it would be quite difficult to estimate the total number of baptized Witnesses around the world who still identify as JWs.

It's far easier to estimate the number of people who merely identify as Witnesses though.

Just look at national censuses. 

Phililppines(so hard to spell) has 235,000 publishers, but in 2015, 438,000 identified as JWs.

New Zealand: 14,500 publishers

                         20,000 in census

Brazil: 900,000 publishers

            1.4 million in 2010 census.

We can guess that the total number of baptized JWs who still identify as such is somewhere between the peak publishers and census figures.

 

Globally, I would say that the number of people who identify Witnesses is between 10-12million.

 

Edited February 23, 2022 by Jan Brad

[Witness1970]

23 hours ago, Witness1970 said:

What about the elderly.  I knew a sister in Georgia that had her elderly parents and aunt in the house with her.  Her father had been a CO (called a circuit servant back then) and her aunt was a Special Pioneer.  None of them were able to attend meetings or get out in Field Service.  They were not active, but we can be sure that Jehovah counted them as his servants.  That's 3 people in one congregation that would not show up on Field Service reports.  Did they not count as Jehovah's Witnesses?

The father I mentioned died in 2012.  The mother died about 2016.  I haven't heard much from them since I moved hundreds of miles away. in 2018.

[Eejay]

Its one of those things, (like the day and the hour), that we just can't know for now.

 

Compare Rev.7:9:

 

"After this I saw, and look! a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes; and there were palm branches in their hands."

[jwhess]

4 hours ago, Witness1970 said:

The father I mentioned died in 2012.  The mother died about 2016.  I haven't heard much from them since I moved hundreds of miles away. in 2018.

One very loving thing our organization has done is allowing these older, infirm or disabled publishers to simply say they are "active" on a field service report.  there is no need to clain a "15 minute" time on the report.  They might just say something encouraging to a health-care worker or the postman or whatever.  They can continue to be "active" and be counted as a publisher...💗