Lies, Damn Lies and the Annual Service Report

Jehovahs Witnesses have recently discovered the internet and now they are exploiting it to extract money from their congregation members in the way TV evangelists have been doing for years.  They have released articles asking their devotees to give cash, valuables, pensions, life insurance, stocks, shares and even pocket money from the children.  Recently they wrote to all the congregations releasing those that had debt with the society from it but, what they give with one hand, they well and truly took back with the other.  They have asked every congregation to make a monthly donation to a central fund for the society, recommending that each Kingdom Hall keeps three months running costs plus the equivalent of $5000 for unexpected expenses and send the rest to the Governing Body.

Apparently this is to fund the preaching work and the Kingdom Hall building program;

JW.ORG Do You Know the Happiness That Comes From Giving?

When the building program began in 1999, some 40 countries with limited resources were included. Since then, the construction program has been expanded to encompass 116 such lands, involving more than half of the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the world. In the past five years, more than 9,000 Kingdom Halls have been built under this arrangement, an average of more than 5 new halls each day! Still, in these 116 lands, there remains a need for 14,500 new Kingdom Halls. With Jehovah’s blessing and through the willingness and generosity of Witnesses around the world, it is hoped that there will be enough funds to meet this need.—Psalm 127:1.

Wow  -14,500 new Kingdom Halls are needed, that must be backed up by the 2015 Service Report.

2015 Service Report from JW.ORG

Branches of Jehovah’s Witnesses: 89

Number of Lands Reporting: 240

Total Congregations: 118,016

Worldwide Memorial Attendance: 19,862,783

Memorial Partakers Worldwide: 15,177

Peak of Publishers in Kingdom Service: 8,220,105

Average Publishers Preaching Each Month: 7,987,279

Percentage of Increase Over 2014: 1.5

Total Number Baptized: 260,273

Average Auxiliary Pioneer Publishers Each Month: 443,504

Average Pioneer Publishers Each Month: 1,135,210

Total Hours Spent in Field: 1,933,473,727

Average Home Bible Studies Each Month: 9,708,968

Now most JW's would look at these figures and think wow, look how many bible studies we have and boy we've had a 1.5% increase - Jehovah must be blessing us.  But take a step back and think about these figures a minute.  Most Kingdom Halls are made up of predominantly families.  If we took a conservative estimate of 60% families that would be around 2.5 million married couples.  Now take an average of 2 children per couple and you get 5 million bible studies.  Multiply 5 million kids having a bible study each week of 1 hour and you get...well you see my point.  The figures the Governing Body publish are wildly inaccurate because a massive percentage of the hours, bible studies, memorial attendees etc are children who have absolutely no choice in the matter.  They are forced to listen to their parents brainwashing techniques every week and then the Organisation trot them out as part of the 'Service Report for the World Wide Work'!

Memorial attendees are another figure that simply cannot be taken seriously.  So many ex-Witnesses and even ex-studies attend the Memorial each year though they have absolutely no intention of ever becoming a JW again.  Within each congregation it's almost a league table of who can get the most people through the door for the memorial.  What's the point?

Going back to families in the congregations, statistically if a couple are married for 60 years and have two children they will have 1 child every thirty years (obviously this equation simply takes into consideration the amount of children divided into the years of marriage and in reality they would normally have been born within a shorter time period.  However some will argue that many couples in the congregation are older, even old and so we need to include all married couples within our calculation.)

Given this very conservative statistic there will be 83,333 babies born to Witness families in 2015 which means that a very similar number of children will also be baptised in the same year, representing over two thirds of their reported growth (1.5% or 120,000 people) for the year!

Now look at the number baptised: 260,273 minus the 1.5% growth figure of 120,000 leaving a figure of around 140,000 people who were either disfellowshipped or disassociated themselves during the year.  That is another 140,000 people who are now cut off from friends and family, another 140,000 who are in despair at the situation this so called loving organisation has put them in.

Getting back to the theme of this blog the Governing Body are requesting funds to build 14,500 Kingdom Halls but after factoring in children of current Witnesses being baptised that only leaves an extra 40,000 people.  That is just 2.75 people per new Kingdom Hall!  Even keeping the children in the equation 120,000 people between 14500 new halls is only 8.72 people.  In fact if you take all the people baptised last year and didn't factor in a single person leaving the organisation each new Kingdom Hall would still have only 18 people in it!!

Someone once said; there are lies, damn lies and statistics. The Governing Body of Jehovahs Witnesses seem to have taken statistics to a whole new level!