Thx for clearing this for me, James. Now I’m relieved. I had hoped that this is the case but I feared it might not. Good to know.
In the last weeks we often had these “hoppers” who joined and then immediately left after a few minutes. Mainly on Sunday evening, that’s why I assumed that they were only there to grab the rewards before it’s renewed on Monday.
In our guild nobody could give me an answer to that. So now it’s clear they left because our guild wasn’t the right one for them, with that I have no problems. 
I thought the same thing couple of weeks ago.
When I first join the community, I remember couple of “Recruitment” posts in the first pages. Lately I saw half or 1/3 of the posts are recruitment posts.
Hmmm, my guild generally stays at 27-30 members. Are your requirements easy or hard?
Your issue comes from the fact that gems of war is like a decade old… The other day I went to Google’s play store to link my account to my new tablet and was unable to find gems of war in the match-3 category, even after an hour of browsing. This being a small inconvenience to me because I knew what I wanted, however this means that anyone not typing “gems of war” into the search bar will never know this game exists!!! If you’re searching for new and active players I suggest you start with the marketplaces that have stopped promoting the game.