How many people have heard of LSM/Lee/Recovery

[Evangelical]

On another thread, it was stated and agreed upon by 2 or 3 witnesses that about 99% of a bunch of other believers have never heard of TLR or WL:

After getting out, I’ve met a bunch of other believers and about 99% of them have never heard of TLR or WL for that matter.

I agree that 99% of believers haven't heard of WL or his church.

Like you said, "99% of them have never heard of TLR or WL for that matter."

It was stated that this is not meant to be a literal number:

Many times people use "99%", not literally, but rather to indicate a small portion. I don't think anyone was attempting to provide statistically meaningful numbers. That was clearly not the intent.

That being the case, I decided to look into it and arrived at a number of 32 million people (10% of 320 million people) have heard about Lee, based on my own modelling to which I received this response:

Originally Posted by Koinonia

Evangelical, you are completely delusional if you think that 32 million people in the USA know who Witness Lee is.

I then explained further how I arrived at that number:


It seems like a lot but that's because you have not considered exponentiation every year for 10 years. I used a model based on the number of bibles distributed each year and a re-distribution factor to account for the bibles distributed in previous years. That's the power of exponentiation and many people underestimate it.

Here's the formula I used:

Np(t) = Np(t-1) + 2 x 140000 + 2 x 290000 + r x Np(t-1).

Np is number of people who know who Witness Lee is, t is time in years.

2 x 140,000 is the number of people reached by the distribution of bibles each year, assuming 140,000 bibles distributed each year (BFA figures) and each one being seen by two people (e.g. a husband and wife). 2x290000 is the number of books.

r is a re-distribution factor - I assumed 5% of all bibles distributed in previous years are re-circulated (e.g. through continued use every year, people leaving them on coffee tables or passing them onto other people). I assume the other 95% are thrown away.

There is no way to know this number but I think 5% is reasonable - the growth rate of Christianity worldwide is under 5% and it is difficult to be saved. It is easy to read the name "witness lee" on a book or a bible compared to adding a member to the church, so I think 5% is being conservative.

I repeat the calculation for proselytizing- assuming 10,000 local church people each tell 1 person every week about Christ, or 52 people per year, for 10 years, it all adds up. I assume that each person will encounter the ministry of Lee either through a gospel tract, new testament bible or book.

I do the math in Excel and over 10 years it comes to 10.8 million people who know about Lee from the bibles and books, and 13 million from evangelism. That's 23.8 million at least. Internet exposure is on top of that - it would have to be as much as the person to person evangelism, maybe more. Add another 8 or 9 million and that comes to 32 million.

If there's a problem with my figures feel free to point it out or propose another model.

[Bradley]

You have way too much spare time dude

[Drake]

-2

Evangelical,

The Radio broadcast “Life study of the Bible with Witness Lee” was and is huge. Having been broadcast on Christian radio stations in multiple geos I’d expect the np(t) to be significantly higher than 32m. Through the radio broadcast I met many christians who came to know Witness Lee that way and some entire congregations would listen to those broadcasts. I fellowshipped with a few of those groups in their meetings. I am sure I only saw the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

That doesn’t include those who have heard of Witness Lee through others like The Bible Answer Man.

My take: Much bigger than 32.

Drake

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by Drake

-2

Evangelical,

The Radio broadcast “Life study of the Bible with Witness Lee” was and is huge. Having been broadcast on Christian radio stations in multiple geos I’d expect the np(t) to be significantly higher than 32m. Through the radio broadcast I met many christians who came to know Witness Lee that way and some entire congregations would listen to those broadcasts. I fellowshipped with a few of those groups in their meetings. I am sure I only saw the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

That doesn’t include those who have heard of Witness Lee through others like The Bible Answer Man.

My take: Much bigger than 32.

Drake

The model only accounts for published figures in the USA for book distribution. Consider the model to be an estimate of the least number of people who have heard of Lee. Many people on here seem astonished by a figure of 32 million.

[leastofthese]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

People that have heard of Witness Lee, either by reading or hearing his name. Even people who have read the name once and forgotten it should be counted in the figure.

In your first post in this thread you made a special point to quote "Originally Posted by Koinonia Evangelical, you are completely delusional if you think that 32 million people in the USA know who Witness Lee is."

So according to your most recent thought, both you and Koinonia could be correct? And you're not counting someone that heard his name once and forgot it?

Long story short, your numbers are meaningless... you've wasted your time.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by leastofthese

In your first post in this thread you made a special point to quote "Originally Posted by Koinonia Evangelical, you are completely delusional if you think that 32 million people in the USA know who Witness Lee is."

So according to your most recent thought, both you and Koinonia could be correct? And you're not counting someone that heard his name once and forgot it?

Long story short, your numbers are meaningless... you've wasted your time.

I think you know how it is in the LC leastofthese. When I was there, there's was this thing called The Vision. What the vision actually was was catching Witness Lee's megalomaniacal delusion about himself.

Witness Lee was so delusional that he thought his movement would take over the whole world in 10 years.

Obviously that didn't happen. It was a delusion. And unbeknownst to our dear brother Evangelical he's infected with it. So he can't help but inflate the numbers.

Let's pray for our dear brother. Only the Lord can reveal it to him.

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by leastofthese

In your first post in this thread you made a special point to quote "Originally Posted by Koinonia Evangelical, you are completely delusional if you think that 32 million people in the USA know who Witness Lee is."

So according to your most recent thought, both you and Koinonia could be correct? And you're not counting someone that heard his name once and forgot it?

Long story short, your numbers are meaningless... you've wasted your time.

I would say the same about the 99 percent figure that 3 or 4 people agreed upon without any meaningful facts or figures to back it up. Meaningless numbers and a waste of time because its just speculation and opinions.

So if one person invents a number and others agree then it must be true.

[leastofthese]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

That being the case, I decided to look into it and arrived at a number of 32 million people (10% of 320 million people) have heard about Lee, based on my own modelling to which I received this response:

So your hypothesis or theory is that a large number (maybe around 32 million) of people have heard of Witness Lee? Or, as Koin said, "know who Witness Lee is"? Or is it how many people have received Witness Lee literature? Maybe it is something else?

[A little brother]

I think your estimation is far from being accurate.

(1) Your assume each book reaches a different person. In fact, most of the 290000 books (if the number is correct) published each year are circulated among the same group of people in the LC.

(2) You assume each RecV distributed reaches a person. In real life, probably some are gathering dust in book stores.

(3) You assume each person who received an RecV will know about WL. In real life, some people who received it never read it. Even they have read it, they might not have noticed WL's name.

(4) Do the LC people preach Christ or preach WL? If "10,000 local church people each tell 1 person every week about Christ", how would the person they talk to know about WL? Shouldn't they know about Christ instead?

(5) As Drake testified in another post, he had been meeting with LC for almost a year and never heard of WL. So even people gathering in LC may not have heard of WL.

If I were you, I would rather believe the estimation is inaccurate. If 32 million people have heard of WL and still the LC had such limited growth in the past decades, that means millions of people know but don't care about WL at all.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
2Tim 3:13 But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

[leastofthese]

Originally Posted by A little brother

(4) Do the LC people preach Christ or preach WL? If "10,000 local church people each tell 1 person every week about Christ", how would the person they talk to know about WL? Shouldn't they know about Christ instead?

Very astute observation. Wonder what Evangelical was thinking on that one....

Drake says he didn’t hear of WL until almost a year. But he also said he’s been with them for 4 decades. From my experience In today’s LC, that would be impossible (that is 0% from a statisticcally valid sample size )

It is the church of Witness Lee - Witness Lee will be preached.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by A little brother

As Drake testified in another post, he had been meeting with LC for almost a year and never heard of WL. So even people gathering in LC may not have heard of WL.

alb,

Yet, 4 decades ago there was no BFA, Radio Broadcast, etc.

Adding the believers in China for the better part of a century last century.....is another whopping category.. granted not in the USA if that is all that is at stake here.

And most importantly, Evangelical's model is based on the last 10 years...... not 4 decades..... I think he has underestimated the 32m in the USA alone.

Drake

[leastofthese]

Well we still don't know what we are actually counting - If we include those who have seen the words Witness and Lee together in the same sentence, then told no less than one friend or relative about the context of that writing, compound that over 40 years, we're talking big numbers, huge.

On a separate note:
Drake, do you believe the local church to have grown over the past 30 years?

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Drake

Yet, 4 decades ago there was no BFA, Radio Broadcast, etc. Adding the believers in China for the better part of a century last century.....is another whopping category.. granted not in the USA if that is all that is at stake here. And most importantly, Evangelical's model is based on the last 10 years...... not 4 decades..... I think he has underestimated the 32m in the USA alone.

It is all just speculation. However I think everyone can agree that whatever the real number is more people have heard of Roy Moore than WL and that is just the last 4 months, not the last 4 decades.

We can also agree that "hearing of WL" is irrelevant to the gospel and the Lord's move. What is relevant is knowing and receiving Jesus Christ.

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by leastofthese

Very astute observation. Wonder what Evangelical was thinking on that one....

Drake says he didn’t hear of WL until almost a year. But he also said he’s been with them for 4 decades. From my experience In today’s LC, that would be impossible (that is 0% from a statisticcally valid sample size )

It is the church of Witness Lee - Witness Lee will be preached.

A person might hear about Lee through any accompanying books, tracts, invites to homes or the meetings. In response to any questions from the person about "which church are you from". Since evangelism is mostly to work colleagues, family and friends, I would expect continued discussions about the gospel, and the name Witness Lee might be heard at least once during that time.

I would not say Witness Lee is preached, only Christ is preached. I am sure the early church was mentioning the names of Peter, James, John and Paul frequently every Lord's Day as people were following their instructions, reading their writings (our scriptures today) etc. Reading the scripture written by Paul does not mean "preaching Paul".

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by A little brother

I think your estimation is far from being accurate.

(1) Your assume each book reaches a different person. In fact, most of the 290000 books (if the number is correct) published each year are circulated among the same group of people in the LC.

That's reasonable. If that is the case, I expect some of these people to share them with people they know who are not in the Recovery. When I first met with the LC we did a life study for a few weeks. I was given copies of the pages. This was before I ever knew there was a Recovery version.

Originally Posted by A little brother

(2) You assume each RecV distributed reaches a person. In real life, probably some are gathering dust in book stores.

Are you saying the distribution was to book stores not people? I assumed distribution is to people, given directly or ordered online.

Originally Posted by A little brother

(3) You assume each person who received an RecV will know about WL. In real life, some people who received it never read it. Even they have read it, they might not have noticed WL's name.

I expect this number to be small. Who receives a bible and doesn't check what version it is?

Originally Posted by A little brother

(4) Do the LC people preach Christ or preach WL? If "10,000 local church people each tell 1 person every week about Christ", how would the person they talk to know about WL? Shouldn't they know about Christ instead?

Preaching about Christ might normally be accompanied by a bible, tract, or book from which they will read the name Witness Lee. Also if the person asks "which church do you belong to" they might hear the name Witness Lee.

Originally Posted by A little brother

(5) As Drake testified in another post, he had been meeting with LC for almost a year and never heard of WL. So even people gathering in LC may not have heard of WL.

Not in my experience. First I was introduced to Watchman Nee, then Witness Lee later. The words were "have you heard of Watchman Nee" or something similar to that. In the Lord's Day meetings Brother Lee is referred to often especially during prophesy time, "brother Lee said...".

Originally Posted by A little brother

If I were you, I would rather believe the estimation is inaccurate. If 32 million people have heard of WL and still the LC had such limited growth in the past decades, that means millions of people know but don't care about WL at all.

Doesn't really matter if the growth does not match the number of people who have heard. I believe it would be proportional to the number of people who hear or know about Christ but don't care. The conversion rate to Christianity is fairly small.

[Koinonia]

There are approximately 15,000-20,000 members of the LC in the United States. All of those people have an average of 5 relatives. That makes a core group of 120,000 people that know Witness Lee. If every year, each of those people have talked about Witness Lee to 1 other person, after only 12 years, nearly half a billion people knew Witness Lee--more than the entire US population.

This is realistic because of BfA, livingstream.com, and the Life-Study radio program broadcast in the US on 12 different stations.

[HBJ]

I have been a Christian since 1964 and in the LC from 1970-1980. Since leaving the LC and rejoining other Christians, I have met one who knows about the LC, from doing street ministry in S. Cal. and that was about a year ago. His comments (my paraphrase from memory), they are rigid and exclusive.

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by leastofthese

So your hypothesis or theory is that a large number (maybe around 32 million) of people have heard of Witness Lee? Or, as Koin said, "know who Witness Lee is"? Or is it how many people have received Witness Lee literature? Maybe it is something else?

People that have heard of Witness Lee, either by reading or hearing his name. Even people who have read the name once and forgotten it should be counted in the figure.

[LifeGoesOn]

[awareness]

I looked thru my files but didn't find it. I must not have saved it, or it's in a book. But I remember Lee, I think in a talk in Taipei, where he projected calculations of how the local churches would take over the whole world in something like 10 years. (Prolly others out here can find it ... it's somewhere on LCD).

I'm with Watchman Nee. When much to Lee's surprise he told him, "Christians lie."

As I see it, it's likely that those in the LC are going to exaggerate the numbers up, while exLCers are going to be inclined to exaggerate the numbers down.

I don't see why it matters. If a lot of people know of Witness Lee does it mean God was working thru him? He's certainly not as popular as Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, and a host of others. So I guess, if numbers matter, these ones were, or are, mighty messengers of God.

[leastofthese]

Originally Posted by awareness

while exLCers are going to be inclined to exaggerate the numbers down.

As an exLCer are you inclined to negatively exaggerate Lee or his "LC"?

I know that I am not so inclined.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Just shine the light

[Drake]

ZNP>”...more people have heard of Roy Moore than WL and that is just the last 4 months, not the last 4 decades.”

I’ll have to concede that is true, ZNP.

In similar type comparison , more people have visited the grassy knoll than have visited this forum.

[Drake]

Awareness>”I don't see why it matters. If a lot of people know of Witness Lee does it mean God was working thru him?”

Awareness,

Hoping this holiday season brings you peace and joy.

I agree that there is little if any correlation between numbers and commission. The Little Flock, though little, was a move of God.

I do not have any expectation that the Lords Recovery will ever become really big in numbers. I believe God, for His move, more often uses a remnant.

Drake

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Drake

ZNP>”...more people have heard of Roy Moore than WL and that is just the last 4 months, not the last 4 decades.”

I’ll have to concede that is true, ZNP.

In similar type comparison , more people have visited the grassy knoll than have visited this forum.

Good point, the assassination of JFK did affect more people than the crimes of WL and his family.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

Good point, the assassination of JFK did affect more people than the crimes of WL and his family.

Yes, but, they both involved equally great coverups of the crimes, and more people were hurt by those coverups than the original crimes.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by leastofthese

As an exLCer are you inclined to negatively exaggerate Lee or his "LC"?

Maybe you haven't seen enough of my posts, but no I'm not disinclined to be negative about Witless Lee.

[Intothewind]

I think the original formula overestimates two things.

1. The percentage of lcers that active in the ministry.

2. The stickiness of the Bibles and other materials. A good percentage I'm sure end in storage or the wastebin...and such folks won't recall the author.

I also am willing to bet knowledge of WL to be extremely patchy and centered around metro areas with strong lcs.

Compared to the infamy of scientology, Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses and the like the lc is nearly unknown