What a Lack of Increase Really Means for the LC

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Terry

If it's asked inquisitively or rhetorically, do elders/co-workers really want to hear an answer?
Just as Nell said, "listen to your critics". I would say there is a "Drip! Drip! Drip!" effect causing attrition and lack of an increase.

• Daystar
• Max
• Philip Lee
• April 1986 ITERO - Elders Pledge of Allegiance
• Doorknocking Flow
• Rosemead
• Concerns of John So, Bill Mallon among others
• Full-TIme Trainings
• Quarantine of TItus Chu

It may not be a whole lot at a single given time, but add it up over the years of 1973-2006 and it's many who had left. Some will point out as Nell had, "look at their fruit". Some have have left for something simple as feeling overburdened and peer pressure to provide hospitality for bi-annual trainings.
Of course, should the elders/co-workers ask, they don't want to hear answers I've given.

I think there are two avenues of attrition in the LC, which you seem to have touched upon.

I would describe most of your bulleted list above as "severing an artery" (save the FTTA). That's one way members are lost en masse. Something significant happens, the ones who know the truth or see the reality leave in large numbers, and the LC faithful term it a "turmoil".

The other way I would best describe as hematidrosis, or bleeding through the skin (actually through sweat glands/pores). It's just the kind of constant loss that happens daily, weekly, monthly as row after row of saints across the churches reach the disillusioned point. It's not the "there was a turmoil" or "there was a coverup", but it's the "I'm just unhappy here and I can't handle it anymore".

There are pervasive issues in the LC that manifest in the spikes that get an official label. It's like being covered in boils or blisters, and the turmoils are just the ones that burst. Well, that's a gross analogy. Maybe a better one is a seismograph.....there are always rumblings in the earth, and it builds until you get the earthquakes.

Anyway, if the underlying issues were addressed, the turmoils wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) occur.

I think the historical stuff doesn't hold as much sway for the church kids who are now leaving as adults, or for the new ones who are caught and then the honeymoon period fades away. It may be that learning about the historical stuff is the final piece of the puzzle, or is the straw that breaks the camels back, but they would already been well into constructing the puzzle, or well into the camel being overloaded. They would already be suffering under the inauthentic relationships, the strange coded language, the same old dry cardboard being spoken at each meeting/conference/training, the lack of love, etc. Those are some of the things I can think of currently causing people to bleed out.