JWs DECREASE THEIR HOURS
(Investigator 218, 2024 September)
(Investigator 218, 2024 September)
Introduction
The Jehovah’s Witnesses Governing Body has removed the hours-reporting requirement for the majority of JWs.
For 103 years JWs counted and reported the hours they spent trekking door to door to promote their religion. Their publications regularly urged them to put in more time, often with the explanation that more hours produce greater results. (The Watchtower 1963 5/15 page 312)
Governing Body member Samuel Herd announced the change at the 2023 annual meeting of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (the main legal entity of JWs). A video of the meeting was publicly posted in November.
Herd said: “Our ministry involves much more than counting time... Evaluating a congregation’s spiritual health or a brother’s qualifications to serve as an elder or ministerial servant will not simply be a matter of computing averages, time spent in the ministry, literature placements and so forth.”
History of the hours
Starting in 1920 JWs (known back then as "Russellites") reported how many hours they spent in door-to-door "service" and how many publications sold.
They reported this "service work" on a daily report form; then after WWII on weekly forms, and eventually monthly. They also recorded the number of booklets, books and magazines they sold or distributed and, after WWII, "Bible studies" conducted.
The individual reports were added up in each congregation every month and the totals sent to the national headquarters. The nation-wide totals were calculated and sent to the World Headquarters in America where the world-wide totals were prepared.
A "Daily" report form from the 1940s reveals a monthly "quota" back then of 60 hours.
The 60 hours quota applied to ordinary JWs such as housewives, students and people in fulltime employment. Armageddon was, in the 1940s, anticipated within "months" and JWs "publishers" (or "ministers") therefore had to make maximum effort to warn the public. The quota for fulltime preachers or "pioneers" was 150 hours, and for "special pioneers", who received a stipend from Watchtower headquarters, 175 hours.
In the 1950s the quotas became "goals" and were reduced to 10 hours for rank and file members, 100 hours for pioneers, and 150 for special pioneers. Further reductions occurred as decades passed and Armageddon delayed. Armageddon was predicted for the 1970s; "this generation" of 1914; within the "20th century"; in "a few years" and "a few years at most"; and failed every time.
A person's monthly reports were the key measurement, along with conformity to official doctrines, of their worthiness for promotion. The reports helped congregation elders judge the "maturity" of members and whether they qualified to pray or preach at meetings or be "pioneers" or "ministerial servants'.
Former members sometimes speak of the pressure they felt to achieve goals, the guilt when they failed, and the shame when "counselled" to do better.
Many JWs also felt guilty and anxious for another reason.
Their publications, citing Ezekiel 33:1-10, regularly reminded them of "blood guilt", meaning that at Armageddon many people may die who could have been reached and saved with more preaching. Therefore, when God exterminates the world's population He will hold responsible any JWs who were slack in the ministry! That's blood guilt.
Suddenly in November 2023, despite the 103-year emphasis on hour-quotas and goals, the reporting of hours got scrapped.
But not entirely.
The requirement to report their hours and the number of books, booklets and magazines sold or given away, ceased only for the majority of JWs. Full-timers in the ministry i.e. pioneers and special pioneers still need to report their hours.
The majority of JWs now indicate on the report form only whether they were active on ministry during the month without further details, and whether they conducted any Bible studies with the public.
WHY SCRAPPED?
Reporting of hours, Bible studies and literature distribution is not mentioned in the Bible as a Christian requirement.
The official reason why JWs had to report was that the tallied numbers, when published, encouraged and motivated. The global totals supposedly also demonstrated that Jesus' prediction of worldwide preaching was being fulfilled and was almost finished and Armageddon very near.
Such assumptions meant that if the worldwide totals, or the national totals in too many countries, declined, the encouragement of the statistics is lost.
Consider the annual hours worldwide. This peaked at 2089 million just before the Covid Pandemic, decreased drastically during the pandemic, but recovered a little in 2022. (Table 1)
Table 1
Hours Worldwide (in millions
Hours Worldwide (in millions
| 1950 |
55 |
2000 |
1171 |
| 1960 |
132 |
2010 |
1605 |
| 1970 |
268 |
2019 |
2089 |
| 1975 |
382 |
2020 |
1670 |
| 1980 |
339 |
2021 |
1423 |
| 1990 |
895 |
2022 |
1502 |
The decline in hours in 2020 was due to government restrictions on public activities during the pandemic. The other decline, 1975-1980, was due to Armageddon not occurring in 1975.
MORE DISCOURAGEMENTS
Another discouragement is that the average number of hours required to make each convert has gotten continually worse since the 1950s. Dividing the annual total hours by the number of baptisms reveals that it's taking longer and longer to convert people. (See Table 2)
Table 2
| Year |
Hours Millions |
Baptisms |
Hours per Baptism |
| 1951 |
62.5 |
63,178 |
990 |
| 1955 |
83.8 |
64,000 |
1350 |
| 1960 |
131.7 |
69,000 |
1910 |
| 1970 |
267.6 |
164,000 |
1630 |
| 1975 | 382.3 |
295,000 |
1300 |
| 1978 |
? |
95,000 |
? |
| 1980 |
339.4 |
114,000 |
2980 |
| 1990 |
895 |
302,000 |
2970 |
| 2000 |
1171 |
289,000 |
4050 |
| 2005 |
1278 |
248,000 |
5150 |
| 2010 |
1605 |
294,000 |
5450 |
| 2015 |
1933 |
260,000 |
7400 |
| 2016 |
1984 |
265,000 |
7500 |
| 2017 |
2046 |
284,000 |
7200 |
| 2018 |
2075 |
282,000 |
7400 |
| 2019 |
2089 |
304,000 |
6900 |
| 2020 |
1670 |
242,000 |
6900 |
| 2021 |
1423 |
171,000 |
8300 |
| 2022 |
1502 |
146,000 |
10,300 |
| 2023 |
? |
270,000 |
? |
Annual baptisms declined after 1975 and after 2000 CE, and the average hours required to achieve each baptism increased. This reflects the disappointment when Armageddon failed to occur in 1975 and in "this generation" of 1914. The latter limit was long described as "the Creator's promise", repeated about 300 times in the Awake! magazines, causing much disappointment when the Creator broke his promise!
Table 2 shows that it got harder to convert people in the 1960s; again harder after 1975; and harder again in the 21st century. The hours needed to make one convert is now equivalent to 4 years of fulltime employment!
The abandonment of hour-counting and of publishing the world-wide hour-totals conceals discouraging data!
The Covid pandemic probably got many rank-and-file JWs habituated to putting in less time. In addition the traditional "spur" of predicting that Armageddon is "just ahead" has become less motivating. Therefore the official cancellation of hours-reporting looks like a case of going-with-the-flow and putting a positive spin on decline already happening.
Another reason could be litigation. Decades ago Headquarters told JWs not to call themselves "agents" of the Watchtower Society. This was to avoid legal actions against the Society if JWs misbehaved on the ministry or suffered accidents. The door-to-door "publishers" are not insured but Headquarters is not accountable if they are not its agents. Ending the hours requirement may be a further safeguard against legal liability.
With the majority of JWs no longer reporting hours, some could potentially report their "ministry" and be counted if they do nothing more than put one leaflet in one letterbox.
JWs teetering on leaving the sect may therefore stay, and more newcomers might start, because being a "minister" is now easy!
GREAT TRIBULATION
Part of the annual meeting in 2023 was devoted to revising prophecy.
JWs used to believe that the chance for salvation expires at the start of the "great tribulation". This belief, it seems, is now void and people can accept JWs beliefs and be saved even as Armageddon engulfs the world. Governing Body member Geoffrey Jackson announced:
"Will
all those living during the Great Tribulation have a full opportunity
to decide either for the kingdom or against it? We don’t know, and we
don't need to know because we’re not the judges. We know that Jehovah
and Jesus are merciful, that they will always do the right thing."
Claiming "We don't know" when for about 90 years they did know, and every JW made the same error from the same Bible version, is weird!
Jeffrey Winder, a new Governing Body member, said that God reveals truth gradually and the Governing Body is happy to have its understanding corrected: "Knowing this, we are not embarrassed about adjustments that are made, nor is an apology needed for not getting it exactly right previously."
Winder, being new in the Governing Body, may not know that doctrines, including prophecy, are called "God's revealed truths" implying infallibility, and on this basis many JWs stopped their kids' education at the legal minimum, gave up employment, sold their homes, and donated money. Changes to doctrines number thousands — about 1300 revisions estimated just for the book The Finished Mystery (1917) — but everything is relentlessly labeled "the truth" and sect-members who criticize this chicanery ostracized.
It is clearly a terrible situation! No "embarrassment" and no "apology" suggest things will stay bad.
CONCLUSION
With millions of lives and billions of hours wasted in promoting ever-changing "Bible truth", the JWs sect is a gigantic social tragedy.
REFERENCES:
Investigator #85 — The Finished Mystery
Investigator #188 — Thousands of Revisions in JW Theology
https://avoidjw.org/news/requirement-to-report-ministry-hours-no-more/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/religion/timekeepers-no-rank-file-jehovahs-witnesses-say-goodbye-tracking-prose-rcna126582
(BS)