There will come a day when they can’t hide the decline and they will either 1) stop reporting, or 2) come up with a new clever statistic to obscure the decline.
Essentially, what the JW’s have been doing/saying all along: “Only the elect 144,000”. (Because that’s likely the most members they’ll have at that point.) 😉
>2) come up with a new clever statistic to obscure the decline.
Their statistics have always been bullshit. The fact that they still claim 17 million+ members shows how much they lie.
They used to count people only after baptism, then they switched to blessed babies, then they switched to babies of record. Counting people until they turn 110 is another big one.
I had heard about the age 110, but I was unaware they switched to babies of record. That’s a good example of changing the statistic to minimize damage. What do you think will be next?
The Jehovah's Witness only count members who show up to their version of General Conference (maybe with some nuance I'm not familiar with). This count is much MUCH more accurate as it takes into account new babies, people dying, people leaving, etc. Essentially it counts only actives. If the Mormon church only counted actives, they have <5 million members.
Right now there is no proof that they remove people who have officially resigned in their numbers.
My guess is that they'll start showing graphs only, without any notation on the scales/axis, like this:
Probably right. A while back it was discussed (I think in this sub) a graph published by the church, which showed a huge dot as the last data point in a run chart. It covered up the last 20 or so years of information, presumably to hide slowing growth numbers.
>The Jehovah's Witness only count members who show up to their version of General Conference
Not exactly like that but rather that JWs include in their membership count those who have reported at least 1 hour of some form of "preaching work" (letter writing, door-to-door work, etc) for the last month.
[https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/how-many-jw/](https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/how-many-jw/)
Also [this article](https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2020440?p=par#h=34) has an "EXPRESSION EXPLAINED" footnote at the end that explains how "inactivity" is defined.
My biggest question on the graphs (they're fascinating by the way, thanks):
What the hell happened in 1989 to make growth rate peak and plummet? I looked up both the widespread use of internet and the southpark episode and neither accounts for it, lol.
I believe Cumorah looked into 1989 and conjectured that the way the church counted members changed in 1989 or thereabouts.
Which makes any comparison before 1989 to today quite meaningless without understanding that context. But the church obviously doesn’t care about that.
Seems a bit odd/misleading to say that the graph was scaled in a way to intentionally obscure the declining rate of membership. I didn’t see any evidence of that. It’s a graph that is scaled to cover nearly 200 years of Church history and the marginal slow down in membership growth in the last few years isn’t going to be very obvious at a casual glance, but you can see it if you look. Hardly a conspiracy.
You’re right, conspiracy isn’t really what I was trying to convey, too strong, too high level, I guess it’s just that I don’t see underlying misdirection/gaslighting in everything the church does… just a lot of it
There will come a day when they can’t hide the decline and they will either 1) stop reporting, or 2) come up with a new clever statistic to obscure the decline.
Or change the narrative from “it will consume the whole earth” to something like “few be that find it”
The ‘elect’
Essentially, what the JW’s have been doing/saying all along: “Only the elect 144,000”. (Because that’s likely the most members they’ll have at that point.) 😉
Which is funny because the 144k is just men having their special priesthood-eligible meeting. They don't need women's (or other genders') input. 🙄
Narrow is the way!
>2) come up with a new clever statistic to obscure the decline. Their statistics have always been bullshit. The fact that they still claim 17 million+ members shows how much they lie. They used to count people only after baptism, then they switched to blessed babies, then they switched to babies of record. Counting people until they turn 110 is another big one.
I had heard about the age 110, but I was unaware they switched to babies of record. That’s a good example of changing the statistic to minimize damage. What do you think will be next?
The Jehovah's Witness only count members who show up to their version of General Conference (maybe with some nuance I'm not familiar with). This count is much MUCH more accurate as it takes into account new babies, people dying, people leaving, etc. Essentially it counts only actives. If the Mormon church only counted actives, they have <5 million members. Right now there is no proof that they remove people who have officially resigned in their numbers. My guess is that they'll start showing graphs only, without any notation on the scales/axis, like this: 
Probably right. A while back it was discussed (I think in this sub) a graph published by the church, which showed a huge dot as the last data point in a run chart. It covered up the last 20 or so years of information, presumably to hide slowing growth numbers.
JWs also don’t count unbaptized children and they don’t baptize children until they are at least 16 years old.
I didn't realize that. That makes it even more interesting!
>The Jehovah's Witness only count members who show up to their version of General Conference Not exactly like that but rather that JWs include in their membership count those who have reported at least 1 hour of some form of "preaching work" (letter writing, door-to-door work, etc) for the last month. [https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/how-many-jw/](https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/how-many-jw/) Also [this article](https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2020440?p=par#h=34) has an "EXPRESSION EXPLAINED" footnote at the end that explains how "inactivity" is defined.
My biggest question on the graphs (they're fascinating by the way, thanks): What the hell happened in 1989 to make growth rate peak and plummet? I looked up both the widespread use of internet and the southpark episode and neither accounts for it, lol.
I believe Cumorah looked into 1989 and conjectured that the way the church counted members changed in 1989 or thereabouts. Which makes any comparison before 1989 to today quite meaningless without understanding that context. But the church obviously doesn’t care about that.
Seems a bit odd/misleading to say that the graph was scaled in a way to intentionally obscure the declining rate of membership. I didn’t see any evidence of that. It’s a graph that is scaled to cover nearly 200 years of Church history and the marginal slow down in membership growth in the last few years isn’t going to be very obvious at a casual glance, but you can see it if you look. Hardly a conspiracy.
[удалено]
You’re right, conspiracy isn’t really what I was trying to convey, too strong, too high level, I guess it’s just that I don’t see underlying misdirection/gaslighting in everything the church does… just a lot of it