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MORMON MEMBERSHIP
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The LDS Church claims that it has 12 million active members. The LDS Church counts members until they are 110 years old. Members who are excommunicated or have their membership removed are still counted among the membership of the Church. Inactive members and those who have moved on to other Churches are also still counted among the membership.
In all reality, Mormon membership is somewhere between 2 and 4 million, the first 2 million being Temple Worthy Tithing paying members. There are currently over 1 million members who have resigned yet are still counted as active.
This topic is here to represent the conflicting numbers offered to the public by the LDS Church on membership numbers.
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The claim that Mormonism is the fastest-growing faith in the world has been repeated so routinely by sociologists, anthropologists, journalists and proud Latter-day Saints as to be perceived as unassailable fact.
The trouble is, it isn't true.
Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths - Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups - have grown much faster and in more places around the globe.
And most telling, the number of Latter-day Saints who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2890645
| If you think the SL Tribune articles on pathetic Mormon Church growth were good, then you should check out this church statistics page:
http://www.cumorah.com/harvest.html
Here are some interesting facts cited from the page:
Twice as many missionaries, half the converts
"The average missionary in 1989 brought 8 people into the church, while in 2000 the average missionary brought 4.6 people into the church. When one accounts for actual activity and retention rates, with the great majority of LDS convert growth occurring in Latin America and other areas with low retention, and only 20-25% of convert growth occurring in North America, one finds that of the 4.6 persons baptized by the average missionary each year, approximately 1.3 will remain active. This declining growth comes in spite of unprecedented increase in opportunity. From 1990 to 2000, the LDS Church opened an additional59 nations to proselyting."
"241,239 LDS convert baptisms were reported for 2004, the lowest number of converts since 1987. Other recent years have also demonstrated decelerating church growth. Over the past decade, LDS missionaries have been challenged to double the number of baptisms, but instead the number of baptisms per missionary has halved."
Church growth down to 3% per year
"The LDS Church is one of the few Christian groups with a large missionary program to experience declining growth rates in spite of widening opportunities. An analysis of annual LDS statistical reports published in the May Ensigns of each year demonstrates that LDS growth has declined progressively from over 5% annually in the late 1980s to less than 3% annually from 2000 to 2004."
Pathetic Mormon presense in Europe
"There are over 570,000 active Seventh-day Adventists in Kenya alone, but less than 570,000 Latter-day Saints (of which less than 200,000 are active) in all of continental Europe, Asia, and Africa combined. After more than fifteen years of proselyting in Russia with the largest full-time missionary force of any denomination, LDS membership has risen to only 17,000, with a fraction of those members remaining active. The same period has seen the number of active Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia rise to over 140,000, with some 300,000 individuals attending conferences. There are more active Jehovah's Witnesses in the countries of Georgia or Armenia than active Latter-day Saints in all of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Russia together. There are fewer than 100,000 active Latter-day Saints in all of Europe, including the United Kingdom."
Based on growth, Jehovah's Witnesses is more true church than Mormon Church
"Given that the Mormons are generally viewed as the world's most successful new religion and had about an 80-year start on the Witnesses, this is an astonishing achievement. It is even more astonishingwhen we consider that, since Jehovah's Witness participation significantly surpasses raw membership alone while LDS participation is only a fraction of raw membership, the number of active and participating Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide far surpasses the number of active and participating Latter-day Saints. In 1935, there were 56,000 Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide and 746,384 Latter-day Saints. Since 1935, the number of active Jehovah's Witnesses has multiplied their numbers by a factor of more than a hundredfold, while LDS membership has multiplied by a factor of twenty, with only a fraction of that number representing active members."
Christian churches growing much faster than Mormon Church
"The Seventh-day Adventist Church was organized in 1849 and recently overtook the LDS Church with 13 million members. Seventh-day Adventists were adding an average of 3,176 new members each day in 2000,15 and have experienced increased growth since that time, adding between 900,000 and1.2 million members each year. In 2004, the LDS Church added an average of 661 converts and 270 children of record each day, from which only a minority go on to experience meaningful church activity. The Assemblies of God are growing at approximately 10% per year, or over three times the growth rate of the LDS Church, while the Seventh-day Adventists report growth two to three times LDS rates at 5.6-8% per year."
Only Four Million Active Mormons Worldwide
"While the Church makes no claims about member activity rates and no official reports of LDS activity rates are published, the Encyclopedia of Mormonism notes: "Attendance at sacrament meeting varies substantially. Canada, the South Pacific, and the United States average between 40 percent and 50 percent. Europe and Africa average about 35 percent. Asia and Latin America have weekly attendance rates of about 25 percent." While various idiosyncratic definitions of activity exist, the definition of members attending church weekly is the simplest and most meaningful. However, rates calculated by dividing church attendance by total membership may over-represent actual activity if nonmember visitors, small children, and other attendees are counted regardless of membership status. By multiplying the number of members in each area by the fractional activity and summating the data, one comes up with a worldwide LDS activity rate of approximately 35%, or approximately 4 million members. This is very similar to estimates published by the Associate Press in April 2003: 'While the church doesn't release statistics on church activity rates, some research suggests participation in the church is as low as 30 percent.' For comparison, Adventist News Network reported in 2001 that worldwide Seventh-day Adventist member retention rates had fallen from 81% in previous years to a still very impressive 78% at present."
Mormonism not sustaining growth from within
"Only about four million of the 11.3 millionLDS members worldwide are active, and therefore likely to raise their children in the Church. Fractional annual proportional increases in LDS children of record relative to growth rates of healthy populations around the world correlate closely with low activity rates, suggesting that a large majority of inactive members raise their children outside of the church. Second, birth rates have declined substantially among the lifetime North American LDS members that have traditionally constituted the core membership of the LDS faith. Active LDS in the US average about three children per family, which represents a large decline from twenty years ago. A fertility rate of 2.1 children per couple is required for population replacement. With only 22% of Latter-day Saints born to active families in the U.S. remaining active lifelong and another 44% returning to the Church after periods of inactivity, the natural growth of Latter-day Saints in the U.S. appears to be below the level required even to sustain a stable population."
Lower levels of Temple Marriages
"The Encyclopedia of Mormonism notes: "The percentage of adults in a temple marriage varies from about 45 percent in Utah to less than 2 percent in Mexico and Central America... For all of South America, with 2.25 million members, less than 1.8% of the total adult membership has been married in the temple." This is a significant finding, since approximately 35% of all LDS members live in Latin America. Sociologist Tim Heaton notes that "Mexico saints have fewer children than the national average." Difficulty in generating new LDS families through temple marriages has been a chronic problem for the church, especially outside of North America, where many young people marry outside of the Church or remain unmarried."
Decline in new church units not because of unit size changes
"In 2002, LDS unit growth fell further to 0.22%, less than one-seventh of the annual rate of world population growth. Those who insist that the low number of new LDS units being formed is a result of policy changes influencing unit size are uninformed: the average number of LDS members per unit has remained relatively stable, going from 439 per unit in 1973 to 431.7 in 1991 and 437 in 2001."
Hinckley lied about the numbers
"In 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley stated: We are experiencing a combined growth of converts and natural increase of some 400,000 a year. Every single year that is the equivalent of 160 new stakes of 2,500 people each. This statement has been widely quoted as evidence of the Churchs rapid growth. In fact, the Church has never yet experienced a net gain of 400,000 members in a single year, nor has there ever been a year in the history of the Church when 160 or more stakes were formed. The highest stake gains ever were of 142 in 1995 and 146 in 1996, which were up from annual gains of 32-78 over the preceding decade. Over the most recent five-year period forwhich data are available (1998-2003), the Church gained a total of 119 stakes, or an average of only 24 stakes per year. The low number of congregations and stakes being formed reflects fractional retention of converts."
LDS Congregational Growth in Perspective
"In comparison to the 26,670 congregations serving the 12.256 million nominal LDS members, the Seventh-day Adventist Church had 12.894 million baptized adult members in 117,020 Sabbath Schools (congregations) meeting in 53,502 churches, while the Jehovah's Witnesses with 6.5 million members list 96,894 congregations in their August 2004 membership annual report. This is not because LDS congregations are particularly large, but because the great majority of LDS members on the rolls are inactive. While on paper the LDS Church appears to be roughly the same size as the Seventh-day Adventist church in terms of members, and much larger than the Jehovah's Witness organization, in reality, the latter two organizations are both far larger in terms of the total number of committed, active, and contributing members."
How are TBMs reacting to the truth about church growth?
| | | The Blame For Lousy Member Retention Rests Squarely On The Shoulders Of One Gordon Bitner Hinckley
Article Archived: Friday, Aug 19, 2005, at 10:49 AM
Stored Under Topic: MORMON MEMBERSHIP
Outside Link To Article: RIGHT CLICK - COPY LINK LOCATION
Original Author Of Article: Anonymous |  | |
Oh lurking COB minions of the most high, TAKE NOTES and give them to your leader.
Gordon is the one who decided to start hiding the more controversial and "peculiar" points of mormonism.
Before he was head old guy, he was head PR spin doctor. He thought he was a shrewd cunning man ever so slightly omitting portions of mormon history..
His plan seemed to be working, but then what happened?
While the Hinckster was unraveling his plan to omit and forget mormon history, the technical world was rolling out something else.
But first in 1966, Polygamy Porter(me, not the beer) is born.
Back in 1969 a communications initiative was launched by the US government known as ARPA-NET which was a wired network of military and science communities via computer mainframes and phone lines. Interestingly enough, the University of Utah was one of the first four universities to connect to the beginning of the internet, the three other universities were in California, University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), and University of California at Santa Barbara.
This silly little ARPA-NET continued to grow along with a new operating system known as UNIX, especially among universities.
1974, Polygamy Porter is baptized into the mormon church.
1976, Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which allowed coaxial cable to move data extremely fast. This was a crucial component to the development of LANs.
Also, the Department of Defense began to experiment with the TCP/IP protocol and soon decided to require it for use on ARPANET.
1978, Polygamy Porter is inducted into the mormon priesthood with his ordination to the office of deacon.
1983, TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol. The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers.
The "domain name" is born.
1985, the National Science Foundation Network(NSFNET)begins roll out of T1 (1.5 Megabit per second) lines for it's backbone.
1987, Polygamy Porter is inducted into the higher mormon priesthood with his ordination to the office of Elder. Shortly afterwards, he takes out his endowments in the Mormon Salt Lake Temple. He is perplexed by many things he sees and witnesses that day.
1990, A faster backbone protocol is launched, T3 which carried 45 Megabits per second.
ARPANET is disbanded and replaced by the NSFNET backbone.
Tim Berners-Lee and CERN in Geneva implements a hypertext system to provide efficient information access to the members of the international high-energy physics community, this was the beginning of the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, the native language of the World Wide Web.
1990 Polygamy Porter marries his hot girlfriend in the mormon temple. While there he realizes the ceremony has changed and things like the sick blood oaths have been completely omitted. He is further perplexed.
1992, Internet Society is chartered.
World-Wide Web released by CERN.
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (45 Megabits per second)
1993, Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois develops a graphical user interface to the WWW, called "Mosaic for X". Marc and other coworker students from NCSA join a new company called Netscape.
1993-1995 Polygamy Porter serves a local stake mission of mostly wasting local ward member's evenings trying to coerce them into the latest version of the "Member Missionary Program" and driving the missionaries to Dairy Queen to get milk shakes.
1995, beta versions of the Netscape browser begin to proliferate. Soon Microsoft will follow with a bastardized version of the original Mosaic browser from NCSA.
1995, Erik Kettunen launches the beginnings of exmormon.org.
1996, the information age explodes. Polygamy Porter moves his family to the Golden state.
September, 21st 1996, Erik Kettunen registers the domain name, EXMORMON.ORG.
Over the next eight years, Polygamy Porter attends the temple for family events, and each time is further perplex at the new ceremony and the changes that occurred in 1990.
Late April 2004, Polygamy Porter uses the Google internet search engine by searching on the phrase "horses+book+of+mormon".
May 2004 - August 2004, Polygamy Porter spends every possible minute researching all of the mormon historical things that Gordon Bitner Hinckley thought that he could omit from my childhood eyes. Temple ceremony changes, not just the 1990 changes but all of them from the beginning. The BoA, JS polygamy, origins of the three degrees of glory, MMM, the real reason JS was killed... etc etc etc etc etc.
August 2004, Polygamy Porter, requests he be released of his mormon church callings and attends his last three hour block of mormon church services.
August 2005, Polygamy Porter posts this message on the now infamous Recovery from Mormonism board on exmormon.org and publicly tells mormon president Gordon Bitner Hinckley that his discernment failed back in the summer of '69... oh yeah, the summer, the summer of 69!
Ya still reading ye minions of the Hinckster?
Good.
Hear this fools, there are tens of thousands JUST LIKE ME, with thousands more every week. Not inactive members who never attended after their coerced baptism, NO... BIC, raised in the church, previously devout members who served missions, held callings, followed the prophet's counsel, married in the temple, started fast and young on childbearing, and paid 10% tithing on gross American wages.
Over the past 4 generations, Gordon attempted to slowly change the view in the rearview mirror of mormonism. Did he not realize we would all find the truth about the real mormon history at the worst time? In our adult lives?
What used to take YEARS in terms of researching mormon history can now be done in weeks, thanks to the internet, the great new Nauvoo Expositor.
In closing I would like to dole out some thanks to those who broght me the truth.
Thank you US military, thank you BBN for constructing the ARPANET, thank you Dr. Metcalfe for developing the TCP/IP protocol, thank you NSF, MCI, IBM, et al. for building the high speed data networks we now call the great infobahn, thank you Tim Berners-Lee and CERN for developing the protocol to request, retrieve, and display truth bearing text and pictures, thank you Marc Andreessen and NCSA for developing a the human interface to the WWW, thank you Netscape Corporation for making the internet so prevalent, thank you Erik Kettunen for having the foresight that Hinckley lacked and registering EXMORMON.COM at the cusp of the information explosion in 1996, thank you Google Inc for crawling the net and finding mormon truths, thank you to all of the authors who have published the real mormon history on the internet for search engines to find, catalog, and display.
One last thing....
Fuck you Gordon Bitner Hinckley. FUCK YOU and your church.
http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agor...
| Keeping members in the fold is one of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley's stated top priorities. But does the church have a problem with members slipping away? A church authority says "no," but a prominent Mormon scholar says the evidence suggests otherwise.
"We are improving the retention rate over time," said Merrill Bateman, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Quorum of the Seventy. "We have seen a nice general upward trend in terms of percent of activity, which means retention is going up."
But Bateman was not willing to provide any statistics showing that improvement. He also refused to define who qualifies as an active Mormon, though he says the LDS Church regularly reviews statistics such as attendance at sacrament meetings, tithing payments and the number of people who maintain church requirements to enter temples.
"What we don't want to do is categorize people as active or less active, let's be frank about it," Bateman said. "Because we always believe we have a chance to work with those who are not coming to church on a regular basis."
Armand Mauss, a Washington State University emeritus professor, said that's exactly what the church should focus on.
"The key to the church's future growth will be at least as much a function of retention as conversion," said Mauss, the former president of the Mormon History Association.
While baptisms continue in high numbers, the creation of new stakes, which house a handful of congregations, has slowed down.
"That is a clear indication of a retention problem," said Mauss, who identifies an active Mormon as someone who attends a church meeting at least once each month.
The LDS Church reports that 1,720,434 Mormons resided in Utah in 2004. About 62 percent of those attend church regularly, according to an analysis using statistical statements by Bateman and activity estimates from Brigham Young University professor Tim Heaton, who studies Mormon demographics. That would mean about 43 percent of Utahns are active Mormons.
Activity in many other areas of the world is much lower than that.
Mauss says the worldwide retention problem stems from missionaries attempting to baptize as many people as possible, some of whom are not prepared for the demands of an LDS life. New members are often not provided the support they need during their first year in the faith.
Bateman agrees with Mauss on that point, saying to increase retention, church members must spend more time befriending converts.
"Over time, what President Hinckley has asked us to do is to really surround that person with new friends," Bateman said.
New Mormons are the most likely to leave the faith, according to Bateman, but he says once those people have children who are raised in Mormon families, the retention rates start to rise.
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/12495...
| One of the things that drives me nuts about the Corporation is their lying about damn near everything.
Click here to see their "Newsroom" and the top two articles are prime examples of what I'm talking about.
The first: New film portrays Joseph Smith as "exemplar". A few "lowlights":
First Presidency input, historically accurate script and sets, vivid cinematography, and a spiritually minded cast and crew all played a role in the creation of the new feature film on the Prophet Joseph Smith now playing at the Legacy Theater at Temple Square. The new film, which succeeds The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd and Legacy, also will begin showing at some visitors' centers at Church historical and temple sites in December.
Elder Ronald T. Halverson of the Quorum of the Seventy, an assistant executive director in the Audiovisual Department, said the film's portrayal of the Prophet Joseph's character, difficulties, and accomplishments will encourage viewers to learn "more in-depth of the Prophet so that their testimony is not shallow, but very solid." He feels that everyone who views the film will be affected. "There is a spiritual impact from watching the film. You can't know of the Prophet Joseph and not be changed." (emphasis mine)
Than again, maybe Ron is on to something there. I know I haven't been the same since I've come to "know" Smokin' Joe.
The second: My favorite, lying about membership numbers in Latin America, in this case Mexico.
From the article which appeared in the Miami Herald's Mexico edition:
Thanks to converts like Gabriel and his neighbors in San Juan Guichicovi, Mexico now has the second-largest Mormon population in the world, after the United States. And it continues to grow. In 1990, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS, counted 617,455 members here. Today, it reports a membership of 1,037,775: a 15 year growth of 68 percent. In Mexico City alone, LDS officials say they are adding 1,000 new members each month.
If they add 1,000 members alone in the capital, that means 12K per year. Which should translate into 6-7 new stakes being formed--anyone know how many were actually created last year there?
As for their million members, the census of 2000 showed only slightly more than 200K self-identified as LDS as opposed to the church's claim of 900K at the time. For them to continue to put out the figure of over one million and imply tremendous growth and retention is nothing less than shameful.
As a follow up, I sent a letter to the editors of both El Universal and the Miami Herald pointing out the deceptive accounting practices as explained in the SL Tribune's series on membership earlier this year, putting special emphasis on the 110 year time limit. I said a woman born in 1897, baptized in 1940 and who never ever returned to an LDS church again before her death in 1960 would still be counted among the million members until 2007.
Come to think of it, I'm going to write a suggestion and turn it into my boss. I work for one of the Big 3 in Detroit--if we used "Morg Math" all our current problems would be over. We'd count anyone who ever bought one of our cars as a current customer, even if their last buy was in the Roosevelt Administration. Happy Days are here again!
http://www.aimoo.com/forum/postview.c...
| Apparently, in the 2000 census, people were asked to identify themselves in Mexico by religion. A book I am reading entitled, "El Fenomeno Religioso en el Occidente de Mexico" has results for the census. 88% of Mexicans consider themselves Catholics. Almost 5% consider themselves Evangelicals. They have a category called "Others" which includes Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. There were over One million people who categorized themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses, about 489,000 that considered themselves Seventh Day Adventists and only 205,000 people that consider themselves Mormons.
So after decades of missionary work in Mexico and all kinds of bragging about growth rates, the LDS badly trail Evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Adventists in members. They've hardly made any dent in the Catholic population. So much for the idea that Lamanites are going to blossom like a rose in Mexico.
The future does not look bright for Mormonism.
| The first fact is, we don't have many actual facts. There is a goldmine of data hidden in the bowels of the Great and Spacious COB, but there is NO way that mere mortals can access that data. It is almost certain that "The Brethren" know *exactly* what the situation is, right down to the individual ward/branch level. (I used to be a ward clerk, and we sent very comprehensive reports to SLC every year.)
But, short of a "mole" infiltrating the COB, we aren't going to see that data.
However, based on anecdotal evidence, and careful reading of the few tidbits of data that are available, and my training as a professional geographer interested in such things, I think that some generalizations *can* be made. (BTW, the *best* source of information continues to be Cumorah.com. It is owned by a TBM, but he is remarkably candid in his analysis of church growth.)
- The actual number of convert baptisms has decreased for several years. This is based on the annual statistical report delivered in Gen. Conference.
- Most of the growth of "The Church" has been, and continues to be in the Corridor. This is based on the creation of new stakes and construction of new temples.
- Most of the growth of "The Church" continues to be natural growth, through births rather than conversions. BUT, baptisms of children-of-record are declining too.
- Growth of Mormonism in the North America (outside of the corridor) and Europe is virtually flat. It is actually declining in some countries.
- With the exception of new "minority" wards being created in some inner cities, Mormonism is dying off in urban centers, even in SLC.
- The number of people resigning from "The Church" every year is probably increasing. This is based on a telephone conversation I had with a nice lady in the Confidential Member Records Office. She was kind enough to tell me how many people work in that office. That number has increased in recent years. More workers means more records to process.
- Although "the media" continues to buy the old "fastest growing church" line, Mormonism is no longer receiving unbridled praise in the news. The recent idiotic move by Larry Miller (refusing to show "Brokeback Mountain" in one of his theaters) is receiving national attention, and once more, Mormons are coming off looking like dunces. (FWIW, I had an e-mail conversation with a reporter for a major network, and he informed me that he had begun some "in-depth" investigation of Mormonism. I don't know what happened to that investigation.)
- Most conversions to Mormonism are in the Third World, and the drop-out rate in those countries is astronomical. Surveys done in Mexico, Chile, and Brazil indicate that less than 20% of the "members" claimed by "The Church" self-identify as Mormons. I suspect that this is true throughout Latin America, and probably in the Philippines as well.
- The drop-out rate among RMs is disturbingly high. Disturbing enough that GAs have asked questions of local leaders about it. (Wouldn't *that* be an interesting stat to get your hands on?)
- Activity rates in most North American non-Corridor wards/branches is right around 50%. Higher in some areas than others.
My professional conclusion: There is a lot more we do NOT know for certain than we DO know. There is simply insufficient access to meaningful data to draw an accurate conclusion. However, the evidence which IS available would indicate that Mormonism is certainly NOT "the fastest growing church", and, in all probability is stagnant. It is NOT declining, yet. There is NO evidence that the overall rate of growth is negative. However, if I were one of "The Brethren", I would surely be concerned with the current situation.
IOW, while not all is well in Zion, Mormonism is NOT on the verge of total collapse. Simple inertia will keep it going, and probably even growing slightly, for at least another generation.
| | | Nearly One Million Resigned Names Are Still Counted In Mormon Membership Numbers
Article Archived: Thursday, Apr 6, 2006, at 07:51 AM
Stored Under Topic: MORMON MEMBERSHIP
Outside Link To Article: RIGHT CLICK - COPY LINK LOCATION
Original Author Of Article: Polygamy Porter | | |
http://home.teleport.com/~packham/growth.htm
Scroll down to June 20, 2001
According to an insider at the COB here is the resignation request growth since 1995:
1995:...........35,420
1996:...........50,177
1997:...........55,200
1998:...........78,750
1999:...........81,200
2000:...........87,500
2001:..........101,454
2002:..........105,763
If we project that growth and estimate at least 110,000 resignations per year for the last three years this would total almost ONE MILLION resignations.
That is significant not only in terms of quantity but more importantly QUALITY.
The people who are resigning are not going to be the inactive/never-active members who were tricked into quick baptisms like a 10 year old Brazillian boy who was baptized so he could play baseball...
The fact that these people are makeing an concerted effort to request name removal would indicate that the people who are resigning are folks who were probably SIGNIFICANT tithe payers, i.e. Americans and Europeans.
The above link to Packham's page claims what many of us have been accusing the church for years, once a member, always a member, at least on statistical records!
The First Presidency is aware of the problem of the "name removed file" growing to hundreds of thousands of names, all still included in the 11 million. It appears that they are reluctant to change the policy, and therefore they still count those people as part of the total membership.
| It's funny that LDS Inc still considers intself the most growing church in the area, a bishop even said so at a DMARC meeting.
Let's evalute that claim.
Two units have been disolved. Des Moines 6th Branch and Des Moines 4th ward. Des Moines 5th Branch (spanish) barely has 50 members. Let's review the outlying units in the stake. Lenox Branch doesn't even have a real place of worship as they meet in a residential home. Oskaloosa and Knoxville are nearly 50% William Penn and Central College students. Osceola Ward is the only sizable unit outside the metro area but that is decieving since it is one of the geographically largest wards in exsistance.
Centerville, Knoxville, Lennox, Des Moines 7th, and Des Moines 5th are all failing units, losing members.
Another important thing to note is that with one exception not a single Bishop or Branch President or counselor in a bishopric or branch presidency was born in Iowa. A majority of the Elder's qourom presidents and Relief Society presidents are either students at DMU medical school or the spouse of a student at DMU medical school. (Would you like to have a high leadership position in the Morg - then come to Iowa! The place in the morg were Utahns are Gods).
Another important thing, there has been zero growth in the past 5 years. LDS Inc has lost more members locally then they have picked up, and they know that there inflatted numbers are just medical students here for 2 years and they know that if the number of Mormon students to DMU takes a slide that nearly 3 units might be dissolved. Also they know that DMU plans to be a more regional school instead of a national school and that there will be less and less students from Utah.
Compare that to the not yet six month old Word Life Community Church. WLCC needs has to buy more chairs because in the past three Sundays we have ran out of places for people to sit, and I don't count heads but I know that I have seats for 120 and another 60 folding chairs. That easily outnumbers any LDS meeting except for stake conferances.
But I think we really beat them in the fact that LDS Inc around here is just "Utah Midwest" for many Utah born and raised Mormons. Utahns run the stake, hold all the leadership positions, and have meetinghouses to gather with their friends from Utah every Sunday. That's why I almost never talk about LDS Inc on Sunday - they aren't even a church here - they are just a club.
It may take years but one day LDS Inc will be just a handfull of nutjobs in rural utah.
| | | TBM Inlaws Admit The Church Membership Is Shrinking At An Alarming Rate
Article Archived: Friday, Jun 9, 2006, at 07:26 AM
Stored Under Topic: MORMON MEMBERSHIP
Outside Link To Article: RIGHT CLICK - COPY LINK LOCATION
Original Author Of Article: Mormon Inc | | |
My inlaws came to visit and they live in Utah Country where LDS meeting houses litter the landscape and more are being built. With all the signs of church growth where they live they admitted the church membership is shrinking.
My father-in-law said the church has tottaly changed in the past 20 years from a local ward with it's own leaders with authority and budgets to followers who are completely under the authority of the Salt Lake beurocracy. This has made the church more steryle and cold and the members no longer feel they are part of building Zion but cogs in a big buerocratic machine that the individual at the ward level doesn't count for anything anymore.
My mother-in-law says the church seems to not need the local members as much because they seem to have plenty of money in Salt Lake to throw at things. She says it all seems like busy work to many people.
Both said the church is completely out of touch with the economic hardships and unsteady employment many members deal with. My father-in-law said he worked for the same company for 30 years but those days are gone. Many people are leaving the church because they can't handle the additional stress the church puts on them in a world that unsteady employment is a reality.
My mother-in-law said the church should not be a burdon but it should be there to help people get through their problems but she said the wards have become like a machine and so impersonal they add to the ill feelings people have about life's hardships.
In short, more and more members feel Salt Lake is out of touch. The ward communities that were a real church asset of the past have been decimated due to the fact that people move so much anymore. Wards are now transient social clubs where a few people throw their authority around and stroke their egos but aren't real communities anymore.
Who's leaving the church? The young people. In droves. The number of people serving missions is way down because of the high costs of college. The cost of living has increased so much the average family in the church can't afford to send their kid on a mission and pay for college. The church seems to be popular with wealthy people with big egos to stroke. The middle class and the poor are leaving the church.
My father-in-law says the church is heading for another apostasy. He still believes in the doctrine but believes the church has become what Brigham Young said it would become in the last days. Wealthy and full of pride.
What's frustrating is I can't convince these people that the whole thing was false. They believe in Joseph Smith still. Oh well, they are right on the membership decreasing.
The modern LDS Church is a product of the post WWII economic boom in the US. The once impovershed Utah settlers now had more money and finally the church was out of debt for good. In the 1950's, the temple building increased as did the number of LDS meeting houses. Right now we are at the end of that trend. A half century of economic prosperity has made the church wealthy and less dependant on it's own members. The attitude from the top shows the individual member means less than cost cutting measures and more expenditure in PR. As the average person in the church feels this allienation more, the more likely they will leave or their kids will leave. The church community no longer has the appeal it used to have.
If the cost of healthcare, college, energy, and living in general continue, there's just going to be less available for church donations. Once people find out the church isn't going to help them but blame them on their situation, more will leave.
| In light of BBC reports about the Romney campaign, which described the LDS Church as the fastest growing church, I thought it would be fun to quick check LDS exit rates according to the General Conference Statistical Report.
Table 1. Official Membership Statistics
Colluvium kindly shared his spreadsheet. Although I suspected inconsistencies, the results were so improbable that I had to replicate a part of Colluvium's data collection. The anomalies persisted.
From the Statistical Reports in the Ensign available at lds.org, I have compiled a spreadsheet that depicts the total number of Mormons, the number of births, and the number of convert baptisms by year between 1973 and 2005.
As the data has been copied and pasted, typos are unlikely. However, I would be grateful if someone would take it upon themself to double check. Please, blame me for any mistakes and report them.
Between 1988 and 1996, the Statistical Reports did not contain data about the births or blessings of children, which required the use of baptismal data instead.
Table 2. Calculating Exit Data
I calculated the exit data by adding the number of births and conversions to last year's membership number and subtracting this year's membership number. The subtraction ought to render the number of people that exited the LDS Church, which may include deaths and resignations.
Amazingly, a negative number of people left the LDS Church in 1975, 1989, 1990, and 1999. Assuming that not one single member died in 1999, for example, 8,456 Mormons rose from the dead to join the LDS Church.
Table 3. Highest to Lowest Exit Rate
The exit rate is the quotient of the number of exiting people and the member totals. Excluding the nonsensical negative data, the exit rate is as high as 2.48 exits in 1980 and as low .16% in 1991, a difference of almost 1,577 percent!
Table 4. Estimates Instead of Measurement
Clearly, this data is not reliable. Notice, between 1978 and 91 births and membership totals and between 1978 and 82 conversions were reported in thousands (zeros), which indicates that these figures are estimates.
The data also cannot dissuade the suspicion that only deaths but not resignations are reported as exits from Mormonism. The LDS Church did not allow for resignations until Norman Hancock settled his law suit in 1989.
Please, take a close look at the dates associated with the highest to lowest exit rates.
Table 5. Highest to Lowest Exit Rate, Again!
The higher exit rates date before 1989. Paradoxically, exit rates decline for the period when resignation becomes a possibility.
According to the CIA World Fact Book, the United States of America had a rate of 8.26 deaths per 1,000 residents. Since Mormons have larger families, especially in the past, it is probable that the Mormon death rate was substantially lower than the American average.
The CIA World Fact Book reports death rates of 4.74 and 2.58 per thousand for societies with more traditional family configurations such as Mexico or Saudi Arabia, respectively.
Table 6. Exit Rates Since 1989
Mormons might be traditional but they are not that traditional. If we ignore the nonsensical negative exit rates and focus on the time frame when resignation is an option, then the LDS exit rate is smaller than Mexico's death rate (.00474) in half the cases.
In 1991 and 1997, the Mormon exit rate is even smaller than Saudi Arabia's death rate of .00258.
Therefore it is implausible that the exit statistics deduced from annual LDS Statistical Reports include resignations.
These patterns create doubt about the capacity of the LDS Church to collect reliable data. It can neither contradict the findings of the CUNY Religious Identification Survey, which documents that the LDS Church is no longer growing in the United States, nor the findings of Mexican, Brazilian, and Chilean census collections, which indicate that LDS membership reports might overstate people's attachment to Mormonism.
When Mormon public relations officials content that the LDS Church grows the fastest, I am afraid that there are no facts that would support that claim.
| As I see it one of the fundamental problems with interpreting the stats is that there is a tendency to do it based on the 13 million membership number LDS Inc continually presents. This is a completely bogus number. We all know that.
However, children of record, and convert baptisms are not completely bogus numbers. These represent real babies somebody had, or somebody for whom a real baptismal certificate was filled out. Considering the dropout rate of new converts, these numbers are problematic as well, but at least they start out as real numbers. 13 million members is pure fantasy by any measure.
OK, so for comparative purposes, I will assume there are 4 million at least marginally active LDS members. Frankly, I think even that is a tad optimistic, but it is close enough for looking at growth trends.
Increase in children of record: 94K. That is slightly more than 2.3% birthrate (based on 4 million members). The last statistic I saw for Utah (which was back in the 1990s, but again, close enough for government work, as they say) was 22 births per 1000 residents, which is a 2.2% birthrate.
So, 94K increase in children of record sounds perfectly reasonable for a church of 4 million members with a higher than (US) average birthrate, but a birthrate almost exactly in line with the Utah birthrate.
272,000 converts. This is a 10% jump over last year. I think part of this can be explained by a drop in anti-American opinion (a change from anger to annoyed pity toward America by foreigners). I bet almost all of that increase is in foreign missions, though of course LDS Inc gives us no information about the demographics of who joins LDS Inc, or where they are located.
In any case, I think that is a respectable number of converts, if it represented real growth. It represents 6.8% growth (based on 4 million members).
Total growth, births and converts, is 9.15% (366K/4000K). Impressive enough.
Wards and branches are reported as a group, and increased by 1.4% in 2006.
Stakes and districts are reported separately. Stakes increased by 44 (1.6%) and districts decreased by 13 (2.1% decrease).
To compare stake/district growth to ward/branch growth, it simplifies calculatiions considerably to combine stakes/districts into a single number. Besides, LDS Inc gives us no way to separate wards and branches.
Total stakes/districts: 3375, difference from 2005, 31. Increase of 0.93% (that is nine tenths of 1 percent, not 93 percent).
So, growth in stakes/districts was similar to growth in wards/branches - around 1%.
OK, HERE IS THE PUNCHLINE - gross increase in number of members was 9% of total (actual) membership. Gross increase in number of wards/branches was 1.4%. If the increase in members times 0.153 equals the increase in wards/branches, then "shrinkage" (deaths, resignations, walk-aways) amounts to 85% of the total growth that year.
Jim Huston did some analysis of expected death rates per 1000 in LDS Inc. The US rate is 8.26 deaths per thousand per year. The lower the birthrate of a population, the higher the rate of deaths per thousand. Low birthrate means a higher percentage of older people, and older people are more likely to die in any given year. High birthrate mean a young population, and relatively few deaths.
Median age for various states ranges from 41 for Maine to 28 for Utah. I think the US average median age is 33 (AARP has a list of median ages by state). In any case, the deaths per 1000 for Mormons is probably somewhere around 6, plus or minus 1. High birthrate will lower it, lower life expectancy in third world countries will raise it, health practices of Mormons will lower it, ice cream consumption of Mormons will raise it... I will use the figure of 6 per thousand as the Mormon death rate. Close enough.
That would be about 24,000 deaths per year (per 4 million members, which I am assuming is the real number of members).
Resignations - this is almost a completely blue-sky number. I've seen a number thrown around on RFM, but with very little supporting evidence - 100,000 per year. I'd say that is right, give or take 30,000. That makes it a pretty mushy number. But it does give us something reasonable to work with - resignations are not 5000 per year (clearly too low), nor are they 500,000 per year (clearly too high). 80,000 is somewhere in the ballpark, and that is the number I will use as my "guess". I'd like to think that is a bit on the low side, but it is still 2% of a 4 million member church, which is pretty astonishing loss via a formal resignation process.
Given that, we can make an estimate of how many people just walk away each year.
- 4,000,000 members (the way regular humans would count members).
- Per year growth (2006 numbers)
- +94,000 births
- +272,000 baptisms
- -24,000 deaths
- -80,000 resignations (admitted guestimate)
- +56,000 net growth (1.4% of membership, based on growth of number of wards/branches)
- -206,000 members who simply "go inactive" (5.15%)(calculated from above numbers) This of course includes "converts" who never really participate, children of record that are never baptized, and TBMs who finally throw in the towel.
Finally, if there are 4 million real members, and 27,500 wards/branches, the average number of active members per unit is 145. This to me was a surprisingly small number. There is not a lot of room for shrinkage in a unit this size, since about half of that number consists of people under age 21, who are generally not available to fill leadership positions in the ward/branch.
I also suspect the number of resignations and walk-aways is higher than the 286,000 number I came up with. I think most new wards are created from members moving out of existing wards into new subdivisions, so many existing wards experience slight shrinkage to create the new wards. While some wards are growing, I believe the average ward is shrinking slightly each year.
Only time will be able to confirm this (since LDS Inc isn't likely to release the stats we know they have, which could resolve the question right now), but I think LDS Inc is already losing a few more people each year than they are bringing in. 9% gross growth. 0% net growth (at best, IMHO).
You can quibble about my numbers, but even if I were to concede all the quibbles, growth would be under 1.4%. I think it is well under 1.4% growth.
| | Subject: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
Date: Oct 07 16:03
Author: substrate
Mail Address: runnertx@hotmail.com
My friend Odell reminded me of the Cumorahcom website, which gives you detailed, if somewhat optimistic, statistics for the LDS church in different countries of the world. Granted, the information doesnt go that far back, but it is pretty illuminating, nonetheless. Probably the most helpful statistic is the number of church units (branches and wards) in a country. The number of functioning units is a good indicator of the churchs relative strength in a given country.
For example, you get a pretty good snapshot of Jeffrey Hollands clean-up job in Chile, where 300 wards were dissolved between 2000 and 2004.
Comparing the increase in units to the increase in raw membership shows you how well the church is retaining converts. In Spain, for instance, there were 144 units of the church in 1992, with a membership of 23,000. In 2006, there were two fewer units (142), though church membership had increased by 17,000 members. Granted, a lot of the branches became wards, but given an activity rate of 25%, the odds are that attendance in the current wards is much more than the previous branches.
Also, the numbers tells us the relative sufficiency of local priesthood (male) members in staffing leadership positions. Again, in Spain there were enough priesthood holders among 39,000 members to staff 142 units of the Church, or approximately 275 members per unit. In Paraguay, with 22,000 more members, there is only one more unit (a branch, it turns out, as the number of wards is identical at 56), meaning there are 426 members per unit. If the web site is accurate in pegging activity rates in both countries at 25%, that would mean that women far outnumber priesthood holders in Paraguay, which would explain the disparity in the numbers of units between the two countries.
Another interesting statistic is the growth or decline of membership (and units) in some parts of the world. I always thought that the church built temples in places where the membership was growing and able to staff a temple (again, priesthood leaders are needed). But such doesnt seem to be the case for Italy, where the church announced on Saturday it will be building a new temple. Italys statistics (activity rate of 25%, 22,000 members, and 110 units) tell us that, with an average unit membership of 200, the church seems to be doing well.
However, approximately 5400 members are active at the moment, meaning that attendance averages 49 members a week across the units. And the number of units has been declining from a high of 133 in 2000. Assuming that the activity rate has held steady, average unit attendance in 2000 was 35, and any Mormon can tell you that a branch will have trouble functioning with that few in attendance. Hence the consolidation of units. Even with an average of 49, Im guessing that most of these units are struggling. Indeed, one active LDS blogger living in Italy mentioned that the unit with the highest attendance in his stake is the Aviano US military ward, with attendance of approximately 100.
The construction of a temple, even one of the new mini-temples, doesnt make much sense against this backdrop of a struggling membership. Maybe the leadership believes that a temple will help people rededicate themselves to the gospel. Of course, that recommitment is usually temporary. The novelty of the temple wears off quickly, and soon the temple presidents are assigning wards and stakes to do a fill the temple day.
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* * Oct 07 16:03 Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (substrate) [Latest: Oct 12 16:40]
o Oct 07 16:26 Such isn't the case in sweden either. (brefots: unregistered)
+ Oct 07 17:07 How is the Sthlm temple doing now that it "lost" Russian, Finnish &c visitors? (nonplussed: unregistered)
# Oct 07 20:01 I have no idea. (brefots: unregistered)
o Oct 07 16:44 Temple Novelty wears out quick in mini temples (confused: unregistered)
+ Oct 07 22:28 There's one near me (YankeePedlar)
# Oct 08 08:19 Many of them are co-located with (anonymo: unregistered)
o Oct 08 10:09 Statistics don't lie. People do. (Stat Man: unregistered)
+ Oct 08 12:34 Mormon statistics are lies. (brefots: unregistered)
o Oct 08 11:37 I was the Member Record Secretary for Norway as a missionary... (Ether Seattle: unregistered)
o Oct 12 16:29 What does it all mean Basil....... (Slick Chick: unregistered)
o Oct 12 16:40 Possible reason for temple construction... (praydude)
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