Hi everyone, Rose here. There's a question that many of us have been asking, maybe not saying out loud, but we're still thinking about it. Who is actually leaving now?
Is it the younger ones under 30? Is it those under 45? Is it longtime elders and pioneers?
Or is something else happening that doesn't show up in obvious ways? There are still baptism numbers. Memorial attendance still appears strong.
And yet some of us have sensed something shifting. It's not always dramatically. It's not always visibly, but it is steady.
So in this video, I want to look at this carefully. Not emotionally and not reactively, just honestly. What does leaving even mean now?
What can we actually observe? Are the younger ones stepping away differently than the older ones? And did co change more than we realized?
This isn't about predicting the future. It's about observing the present because sometimes leaving isn't loud. Sometimes it's just gradual and sometimes it doesn't look like leaving at all.
Before we ask who is leaving, it may help to stop and think about what leaving even means anymore. For decades, leaving was clear. It meant being dysfellowshipped.
It meant disassociating yourself. It meant an announcement from the platform, a visible break. As one of Jehovah's witnesses, we were taught that loyalty was visible, attendance was visible, field service was visible, comments are visible.
So leaving was visible, too. But that's not always what we're seeing now. Because for many, leaving doesn't start with an announcement.
It starts internally with their thinking. It can look like physically in but mentally out. Still attending but not believing the same way.
Camera off on Zoom. Minimal service time. Fewer comments.
Stepping back from privileges. Sometimes it's staying for family. Staying because the cost of leaving feels overwhelming.
Staying because you're still sorting through what you believe. Now, that's not rebellion. For many of us, that was survival or calculation or simply trying to breathe without losing everything at once.
And that changes how we understand what's happening. Because if someone doesn't formally announce a departure, statistics won't capture it. Publisher totals can't measure conviction.
Baptism numbers can't measure internal belief. Attendance can't measure agreement. So when we ask who is leaving now, we might also ask who is disengaging?
Who is reducing participation? Who is complying outwardly while stepping back inwardly? Now that kind of shift is quieter, but it's not insignificant and it's much harder to measure, which means we have to look beyond headline numbers if we really want to understand what's happening.
Now, if we're going to talk about who is leaving now, it helps to look at what the organization actually publishes. Each year, there are global reports. You have the total publishers, baptisms, memorial attendance, number of congregations, and on paper, it can still look strong.
Publisher totals remain in the millions. There are still baptisms each year. The memorial is still presented as the largest annual gathering.
And if someone only looks at those headline numbers, it can seem like nothing significant is changing. But numbers only tell part of the story. Publisher totals show how many people reported time, but what they don't show is how many reduced their activity dramatically, how many no longer comment, how many attend but don't really participate, how many are physically present but mentally disengaged.
Baptism numbers tell us how many people were baptized in a given year, but they don't tell us how old those individuals were, whether they were raised in the organization or came in later. What happens after the baptism? How many of those newly baptized ones are still active 5 years later, 10 years later?
How many quietly fade? how many reduce their involvement to the bare minimum. So when we see a baptism number printed in a report, we're seeing a total.
We're not seeing the full story behind it. The memorial attendance is similar. It tells us how many people were present, but it doesn't tell us who attended out of conviction, who attended for family, who attended while privately questioning, who attended simply because it's what they've always done.
Now, this isn't an accusation. It's simply recognizing what statistics can measure and what they can't. Numbers measure bodies.
They don't measure belief. They measure participation, but they don't measure conviction. So when someone asks, "Are people leaving?
" The honest answer may be this. The publisher numbers don't show a collapse, but they also don't show how deeply engaged people feel anymore. And that's where we have to look more carefully.
So, what we're going to do is look at something specific. Are the younger ones stepping away differently than the older ones are? Because the patterns don't appear to be identical.
When people ask who is leaving now, the first assumption is often it must be the younger generation. And in some ways, that seems logical. Younger ones today grew up with something previous generations didn't have.
Immediate access to information. Historical publications online. Court cases searchable in seconds.
Former members speaking publicly. Archived material that once required physical copies. It doesn't take years to encounter alternative perspectives anymore.
Sometimes it takes minutes and that alone changes the speed of questioning. I've watched younger ones navigate this very differently than my generation did because the axis is simply different. Many younger ones were raised during time of visible adjustments inside the organization.
changes in reporting hours, grooming standards, the tone around certain teachings, the urgency messaging, expectations around education. For someone raised with the idea that the truth is stable and it's unified, visible changes can start raising early questions because if what felt certain begins to shift, what does that do to the confidence about it? For older generations, change may feel familiar for us, something we just need to adjust to, but for the younger ones, it can feel very destabilizing from the beginning.
And younger people often have fewer anchors holding them in place. They may not yet have decades of friendships inside, have adult children still fully active, or have their jobs tied to either someone in the congregation or the community. So when they begin to question, the practical cost of stepping away may feel lower, but that does not mean the emotional cost is lower.
Because for younger ones, leaving can mean losing their parents, losing their siblings, losing their entire social world at the very stage of life when their identity is still forming. And that's not small. So yes, some younger ones may leave faster, but waking up doesn't follow an age rule.
It often follows access, experience, and timing. And not all younger ones leave visibly. Some just start disengaging.
They keep their attendance to the meetings and service minimal. They avoid privileges and they just try to stay under the radar. It's not because they don't care, but it's because they're navigating a lot of risk.
If you're under 45, does this feel familiar? Did access to information change something for you? Or did something else shift inside with your thinking first?
Because if younger ones are stepping away, whether visibly or by their thinking, it may not show up in the annual totals, but it may show up in the energy, in the participation, and in the long-term retention. And that's a different kind of change. So, let's look at the older ones because their pattern often looks very different.
When we talk about the younger ones leaving, it can feel visible. But when we talk about the older ones, the pattern looks very different. For those over 45, especially those who were raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses or who built much of their adult life inside, leaving isn't just a belief shift.
It's a life shift. Because by midlife, this often isn't just what we believe. It's the friends who are at our meetings.
It's the friends who were at our weddings. It's the people who brought meals when our children were being born. It's the ones who sat beside us at the assemblies year after year.
It's the people who helped us move. It's the community our children grew up in knowing is normal. So this isn't just theology.
It's not just belief. It's our shared memory. It's who we are, our identity.
It's our history. For many of us, our weekly rhythm of life was shaped around it. We had meeting nights, service weekends, our assemblies, our conventions.
The calendar wasn't random. It was very structured. So when something begins to shift in our thinking, it doesn't feel like questioning a single teaching.
It might feel like questioning the framework that organized our entire adulthood. For many, the question isn't simply, "Do I still believe this? " It's, "If I say this out loud, what happens to my family?
What happens to my marriage? Will my children feel torn? Will my grandchildren be told I'm spiritually weak or even dangerous?
Will I lose all of my friends and the community that shaped my adult life? And then there's something else that can fill even heavier, our investment. What if we made career decisions around it?
What if we delayed opportunities because we believed the time was short? If you structured your goals around the organizational priorities, meetings, service, assemblies, privileges, etc. Stopping to think about that isn't simple because you're not just evaluating what you believe.
You're evaluating the sacrifice you gave. You're evaluating choices you made sincerely. You're evaluating whether what felt certain still holds.
And that's not a small adjustment. For many in this stage of life, questioning doesn't come from a sense of rebellion. It comes from noticing small things that just don't fit anymore.
A teaching adjustment that felt larger than it was presented, a tone shift that just didn't sit the same, a policy change that required more explanation than before. And when you've defended something for years, sometimes your entire adult life, you don't flip overnight. You wrestle with it gradually, sometimes privately, for a long time before even saying a word.
So when older ones begin to shift, it often doesn't look dramatic. It can look like less urgency, less insistence, fewer strong declarations, more silence in conversations than once felt automatic. And it's not because our faith has disappeared, but it's because certainty around it has changed.
Now, if you're over 45, does this feel familiar? Did your questioning feel sudden or did it build slowly over time? Older ones often don't leave in a visible wave.
They thin out internally. they start thinking different and that kind of shift is subtle but over time it changes the culture from the inside. So let's look at something that affected both generations at once co because that interruption may have accelerated what was already shifting and happening.
There's one more group we need to talk about. They're not publicly leaving. They're not arguing in comment sections.
They're not making announcements. But something is changing. As one of Jehovah's Witnesses, we were taught that loyalty is visible.
You attend, you comment, you participate, you defend. So when someone leaves, it's supposed to be clear, right? What happens when someone doesn't leave loudly?
What happens when they simply start thinking differently? Now, there is a growing group across the age ranges who are still attending the meetings. They're still reporting time.
They're still present at the meetings, in service, at the assemblies, but they're thinking differently. They're starting to question things. They're reading the publications.
They're watching the videos more carefully. They're listening to the talks differently. They're not accepting every adjustment automatically.
They may not identify as out. They may not even identify as doubting. They may simply feel less certain than they once did.
And that matters because belief isn't only measured by attendance and our conviction isn't only measured by presence. As one of Jehovah's Witnesses, many of us learn to align outwardly, do what we're supposed to even when we were still processing or thinking things inside. And it wasn't because we were deceptive, but because the cost of expressing any doubt can be so high.
Family relationships, marriage stability, community belonging. So for some, the safest path is gradual internal shift. They stay physically present, but mentally they begin to separate.
They might think, "I'm not sure about that. " That explanation doesn't feel complete. It It doesn't make sense.
That adjustment feels a lot larger than it's being presented. They may never make a dramatic exit. They may never post publicly.
They may simply stop defending, stop insisting, stop correcting others. And that shift while invisible starts changing the culture over time. Because when certainty about something softens internally across many individuals, the urgency changes, the tone changes, conversations change, not all at once, but gradually.
And this is the hardest group to measure. The annual reports aren't going to capture them. The publisher totals aren't going to reflect them.
But if you sense something different in the way people respond, in the way they speak, in the way they hesitate, you may be noticing the shift. So when we ask who is leaving now, it may not just be about departures. It may also be about disengagement about their thinking differently about people who are still present but not in the same way.
And that may be the most significant shift of all. So when we step back and look at all of this together, the answer isn't simple. It's not just younger ones are leaving.
It's not just older ones are staying and it's not reflected clearly in a single statistic. What we may be seeing instead is something more gradual. Younger ones may question earlier because the access is different.
Older ones may question later because their investment is deeper. co may have accelerated both and across all age groups there may be people who haven't left at all but who are thinking differently than they once did. So maybe the real question isn't only who is leaving now.
Maybe it's how many are staying differently. How many are present but no longer certain in the same way they once were? How many are participating but with more questions than answers?
As one of Jehovah's Witnesses, many of us were taught that unity meant uniformity, all doing and thinking the same. But what happens when uniformity becomes quieter? When certainty becomes softer?
When urgency becomes less automatic? That kind of shift is not going to show up as a headline. It won't always show up in the annual totals, but over time it changes atmosphere.
It changes tone, it changes conversations. And maybe that's where we are now. Not in a dramatic collapse, not in a sudden exodus, but in a gradual shift of thinking.
If you're watching this and you're under 45, what has your experience been? If you're over 45, did your questioning come suddenly or slowly over time? And if you're not one of Jehovah's Witnesses, but observing from the outside, what patterns do you see?
Because this isn't about forcing conclusions. It's about noticing patterns. And sometimes noticing is the beginning of seeing things more clearly.
I hope this video resonated with you somehow or helped give you language for what you're feeling or what you felt. Please make sure to like algorithms and all. It helps this video go out to a larger audience.
And if you really enjoyed it and would like to learn more about the history changing teachings as well as lived experiences, please make sure to hit those like and subscribe buttons. And if you're able to, please share to help others understand the internal teachings and life impact as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. As always, take care of yourself and continue to search for truth beyond the Watchtower Bible and Track Society, which is now known as the Watchtower Organization.
Remember, truth doesn't mind being questioned. But a lie can't handle it. Thank you very much for being here.
