Upon returning from volunteering abroad, Jennifer Eirhart, her husband and two teenage children continued to experience the joy of giving by sharing comfort and hope from the scriptures with their community in Butler, Pa. That abruptly changed for the family in the spring of 2020, when Jehovah’s Witnesses suspended their in-person public ministry, meetings and large conventions.
Two years later, Eirhart said she feels that the flexibility of virtual visits helps her connect with her community even more. “If you told me two years ago that I could help my neighbors through letter writing, phone calls and video conferencing, I don’t know if I could have imagined it,” Eirhart said. The pandemic has not stopped the Eirhart family from benefiting from weekly meetings with their congregation either. “We meet together to worship, to take in knowledge and to encourage one another. Through our virtual meetings, we still get those things.”
With this historic change, the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses grew 3% in the United States in 2021 alone, matching the most significant increase for the organization over the past decade and the second-largest percentage increase since 1990.
“Staying active in our ministry while remaining safe has had a powerful preserving effect on our congregants and communities,” said Robert Hendriks, U.S. spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses. “The wise decision not to prematurely resume in-person activities has united us and protected lives while comforting many people in great need. The results speak for themselves.”
For congregants like Eirhart, the virtual pivot has made it possible for her family to stay safe and continue serving their community together, despite the challenges of life during a global pandemic. “This is what has helped our family stay happy. We feel like we’re still doing what we did before. We love helping people,” she said.
Eirhart regularly shares scriptures with community members and conducts free Bible courses via telephone and Zoom. “Some have expressed that it just felt good to hear something hopeful because people are overwhelmed with anxieties for themselves and for their families,” Eirhart said.
Last year, the international organization reported all-time peaks in the number of people participating in their volunteer preaching work, increased attendance at Zoom meetings and more than 171,000 new believers were baptized. In the past two years, more than 400,000 have been baptized worldwide.
Some whose ministry or attendance at religious services had slowed because of age and poor health said they feel reenergized with the convenience of virtual meetings and a home-based ministry.
Like many octogenarians, Sarah Fuoco, 88, deals with memory loss and diminished energy. Yet she and her 81-year-old husband, Joseph, have been given the nickname “the dynamic duo.”
The Fuocos use Zoom to worship twice a week with their Hollis, New Hampshire, congregation and regularly join online ministry groups to comfort neighbors and family through phone calls, letters, texts and email.
“What could have been quite a disadvantage, we’ve made into an advantage,” Joseph Fuoco said. “The fact that we can work right from home is a great advantage. I’m happy with it.”
By sharing the Bible’s hope remotely, the fewer than 3,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Alaska can rapidly preach across the 586,000 square miles of their sparsely populated state. “We’re talking to more people in a day than we did in a month,” said Marlene Sadowski of Ketchikan.
The official website of Jehovah’s Witnesses, translated into more than 1,000 languages, has also leveraged the organization’s outreach.
After starting a free self-paced Bible course on jw.org in December 2019, Lisa Owen requested a free, interactive Bible study over Zoom. She was one of nearly 20,000 baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses last year in the United States in private settings, including backyard swimming pools, tubs and even rivers.
“JW.ORG gave me somewhere to learn, somewhere to land, and to start living the way God wants me to. It taught me so much,” said Owen of Moriarty, New Mexico.
To start an online Bible study course, receive a visit or attend a virtual meeting locally, visit jw.org.
I just want to say I am so proud and thankful to Jehovah God, the Almighty, that he continues to look after his dear people no matter what happens; and to help us comfort our neighbors.