LDS Attendance - How Many Mormons Show Up

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Actually, 2009 was the third-worst year for membership growth in the LDS Church during the past 59 years at only 2.34%. The two years with lower growth rates since 1951 were 2003 and 2005 at 2.25% and 2.32%, respectively.

LDS Church growth has been slowing during the past 20 years. Here are average annual growth rates, decade by decade, since 1951:

1950s - 4.30%
1960s - 5.65%
1970s - 4.71%
1980s - 5.29%
1990s - 3.61%
2000s - 2.54% (first nine years)

During the past six decades, the year with highest rate of growth was 1989 at 8.74%. This followed President Ezra Taft Benson's plea in October 1988 General Conference to flood the world with the Book of Mormon.

If the growth rate in 2009 was the same 8.74% as in 1989, the LDS Church would have increased by 1,180,644 members instead of the actual number of 316,345.

I suspect the Mormon Church has taken a cue from the Scientologists, who count everyone who has ever bought a copy of Dianetics or taken a course with them as a "member." It used to be that Scientology PR flaks would blandly claim 8 million members and the press would just write that down and regurgitate it in reports. Now, there are hard numbers--the latest American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) shows there are likely only 25,000 Scientologists in the USA.

What does ARIS have to say about Mormons? (Remember, these are people who self-identify as Mormon.) Based on the survey, these are the estimates:

I served in Hong Kong, China from 2005 to 2007. Everybody is so excited about the church going into China, but the reality is is that about 85% are non-active in Hong Kong. Most baptisms are young kids who are desperate for friends, like the missionaries, or low-life people who are likewise desperate for friends.

Nobody with friends talked to us! Nobody with an education talked to us, if they did, it only lasted a few days before they figured we were nuts. About 20 chinese are baptized per month but David Bednar came to re-organize the stakes and actually had to downsize, eliminated one whole stake.

Every missionary apartment had one, really thin active member book and two, massive, thick, inactive member books. With about 22,000 members, only 3000 are active. They temple is virtually empty besides a handful of regulars. The church is not filling the world. Every conference, the church brags about how many members are now in the world, but most don't even go, especially in foreign countries, and especially in Asia.

I was told in casual conversation with a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy that all growth in the church has stalled. He said the only thing that keeps the church from imploding is it's born in church membership. This guys talked very matter of fact and didn't seem to care if he told the truth.

"But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie.

Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled.

In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot.

And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain."

For the October 2006 Ensign, the Church published this graphic depicting Church growth:

1. All of the values are actually sitting on top of an additional 15 pixel-high shadow. This adds about 2/3 of a million members to each column.

2. Now I said "about 2/3 of a million" because it turns out the interpixel distance between lines varies. I got out a graphics program, blew up the image and got the y-value in pixels of each line counting down from the top. (Where they appear as doubled lines in the graphic, I chose the brighter row of pixels.)

The average (not including the shadow height) is 22.3. The interlinear difference between the 11 and 12 million lines is 16.4% greater than the average. That means that the height in that section of the graph was stretched by about 1/6 to hide the falling off in the last few years in Church growth.

The changes are subtle but clearly demonstrate manipulation for the purpose of quelling member questions.

The percentage growth figure for 2006 is much lower than in recent decades, is below the growth figures for the depression and World War II and is only higher than the figure for the Mormon reformation of the 1850's.

It's amazing what you can hide in a plot of "exponential" growth, especially when you cheat. Good catch.

It was probably over 25 years old when they decided to just eliminate it and go back to just one "Tacoma Stake" in the entire Tacoma, WA area, which is kinda bizzare, since the population of the area has vastly increased in the past 25 years, while the "Tacoma Stake" withered on the vine, shriveled up and was in danger of dying. The "South Tacoma Stake" had been stagnant for decades, but at least it wasn't dying, so they "consolidated" the two stakes, which amounted to disolving one stake and going back to just one.

Things had been so stagnant in Tacoma for so long that the members I know who are used to seeing the glass as half full, saw this as an exciting change. The delusion is deep, but as long as they believe the PRopoganda coming out of the COB, they will remain in denial and see themselves as fullfilling the prophecies of Isaiah and taking over the world and paving the way for Christ's immanent 2nd coming. (never mind the fact that we can't get missionaries into the entire middle east, or that they've never set foot in the most populous country in the world, which is a prerequisit for Christ's return according to LDS theology.)

Of myself and my eight siblings, all B.I.C. and raised by devout parents, five of us are entirely out, one disbelieves but attends due to his marriage situation, and three are T.B.M., one of which gets financial assistance from the church.

Six of my nine girlfriends of the last fifteen years are out. Five of the six exmo's were faithful members at the time we dated (in the beginning anyway, grin). One of them recently left, along with her husband. They have three kids, all B.I.C., who will now grow up in a post Mormon household.

Another of the aforementioned girlfriends has five siblings. Four of them have left the church, leaving only one T.B.M. sib. More significantly perhaps, both her mother and her scientist father, are now out.

I am a Utah native. I live in the corridor. My core circle of friends is now comprised of all ex-Mormons. Many of my long time friends who were once faithful defenders of the faith are now out. These people I'm mentioning did not leave due to sin or the desire thereof. They had strong testimonies and deep conviction, but at some point, the bullshit just finally burst the bubble. These aren't marginal members leaving. These are intelligent, professional, core members leaving. The intriguing thing to me is the suddenness and depth of their apostasies. It is as if a switch is thrown, and once they see outside the box, there simply is no going back in. Certainly it is an accelerating trend. I believe we have probably crossed that point when Mormons who have left the church are influencing more people away from Mormonism than faithful Mormons are attracting converts. That of course is mere speculation.

On another note: I'm not plugged into the popular culture much, but even from the sidelines it seems like Mormonism is popping up a lot in the main line media feeds these days, between off the cuff jabs at Mormon culture in movie scripts, to Mormon characters in movies and plays, and it seems like the tone tends to be on the mocking side.

I'm sure some of you saw it, and there was probably even a thread about it on this board, but Andrew Sullivan blogged about the Mormon garment on Slate, and even posted a photograph of models wearing them in all their glory. He later removed the photo, but retained a link to another blog which kept the photo up. The Mormons of course, took offense.

I just take a lot of joy in finding myself able to have expanded conversations with these people about much broader topics, and with the former boundaries thrown down. It is wonderful, marvelous.

Brazil is a cluster as well. I left my mission in 2002 and the baptism rate was down to 20-30 baptisms per month. I can say that in my mission, Sao Paulo East, Mormonism has reached a saturation point.

It got so bad that we had to start being "creative" with our numbers. They wanted numbers, numbers, and more numbers, so we gave them the numbers they wanted. We would teach a principle of a discussion in a contact and count it as a discussion. We got guilt trips that people weren't getting baptized due to disobedience to dumb rules and playing with little factories.

There's no net membership growth in the urban areas anymore. You have to go to the backwaters of Brazil to get any significant baptisms and even then you have little or no net growth.

TSCC (The So Called Church) claims 800,000 members, yet only 200,000 self identify themselves as Mormons.

I had one area with 1200 people on the ward list and 30-40 people in church on Sundays. There was 5 exmo bishops, lol.

This summer Lynn A. Mickelsen visited my parents ward. He was visiting a friend of his and came to church not in an official visit but as a visitor. He of course sat on the stand and volunteered to do a G&A session during Sunday school.

Lynn A Micklesen says Church not growing.

Elder Mickelsen was one of the most laid back General Authorities I have ever met in the church. He was a very likable guy. He was also halfway honest and said things I have never ever heard a top church leader say.

Elder Mickelsen said the main job of a Seventy is to regulate the church. He went into some examples of how the church in different areas gets off track and how keeping it in line is a constant struggle. He said one ward in California had the Aronic Priesthood wear special uniforms to pass the sacrement. How another ward signaled the sacrement was done by playing a little ditty on the organ.

He said the people and leaders in the church are well meaning but some get carried away. He gave the example of stake patriarchs going to far in the blessings like telling the recipient they will be General Authoritys in the future. He said we all can get too carried away trying to do a good thing to where we are no longer in harmony with the lord.

He also told the story of how some of his collegues in Salt Lake looked real depressed one day. It turns out they just came from a meeting where Gordon B. Hinckley chewed everyone out for the church's low growth numbers. He said right now the church loses almost as many members as it brings in. He said the biggest growth factor was having babies in the church.

He also said the second comming wasn't going to be anytime soon. There's too much work to be done.

Most of the sheep in Sunday School said they really felt the spirit and blah blah blah. What brainwashed fools! Here we had a GA sayings the church is losing members like a sieve, you partriarch may not be inspired, and all the last days hype of the 1980's is gone. Jesus ain't comming anytime some because Mormonism hasn't conquered the earth yet.

These people still worshipped the dude because he was a GA and basqued in their group think worship. The guy could have said anything and they still would have lapped it up like a thrirsty kitten.

SCARY! I had more respect for Elder Mickelsen than the members of the ward. He at least was laying it down halfway truthfully. Hope he doesn't get in trouble if Gordo reads this. LOL!

I have a brother-in-law who is bishop in a Salt Lake City area ward. We were golfing yesterday and in some of the discussion we had I made the comment that the church seems to be shrinking. He said it is and that's why Salt Lake has been jumping all over the stake presidents to focus on the hometeaching program more than ever. It's no longer about missionary work, it's about retaining or reactivating members (another good reason to have you records removed if you haven't).

My brother in law said in his ward, they don't have the high priests nor the elders who are willing to fullfill all of their home teaching duties. He also said he has an alarming number of members telling him they are losing their testimonys and the younger couples want his permission on getting a divorce.

So it sounds like the Mormon popsicle is melting and Salt Lake just guilt trips the local members that they aren't doing their home teaching and that is why the church losing members.

I think many members go to their bishop hoping he will get mad and think they aren't worthy of church callings. I think many members are starting to crack, they want the pressure off their back. They go to the bishop and say they don't believe in it and they think the bishop is going to go, well if that's how you feel, don't come to church then. It's kind of like when I was on my mission and wanted to be sent home for being sick. In a way, the members are getting to be like Klinger on MASH where they want the bishop to give them a Section 8. LOL!

Well, telling the church leaders you have you your doubts will only bring their attention on you more, and unless you've committed a huge sin like embezzling church funds, they aren't going to boot you out but assign the best home teachers to you and give you a calling that will keep you in line.

The members want to be kicked out of the church because they seem to lack the fortitude to leave. They tell the truth to the bishop hoping he will get angry and take all the church duties away from these people. Then they can spin it and blame their exit from the church on the bishop. It's a face saving thing. Subconciousely, they don't want to be the ones who bolted from the church because they didn't believe it. Nope, they want to say the bishop being out of line is why they are no longer in the ward.

In short, people more than ever want out of the church pressure cooker. A small minority leave and are honest about why they left. The majority want to blame someone for their exit. I think the reason is they fear what their friends and family will think if they tottaly come clean and say they don't believe it.

Mormon families will tolerate a family member not going to church because they have dissagreements with the bishop but they are intolerable on family members who flat out say, "Mormonism is all bullshit!"

What's going on now is the members are rebelling and going to their bishop saying,"I'm losing my testimony." What they are really saying is they want out of the Mormon pressure cooker and they want to be released from their calling.

These people are searching for the safest way out subconciousely. They are starting to crack.

From June 2000 to August 2002, I was a ward clerk in the Olympus Cove area in Salt Lake City. The membership in the two stakes in olympus Cove started dropping rapidly about 25 years ago from normal demographic shift as the kids who grew up in the first houses of the new subdivisions up here began to leave home.

The two stakes (as of the time I was fired from the ward clerk job) had dropped to a combined total membership of less than three thousand. The SPs and the Bishops are having a very tough time staffing their stakes and wards. In one instance, the 6th and 7th wards combined their primaries, yw and ym programs so they could have enough people to staff and have classes. In 2002 the 7th ward had a total membership of only 258 with an average age of 63 and only ten members under 25.

For along time there have been many members up here wanting to consolidate the two stakes and make big enough wards to operate effectively. To no avail: the church will not consolidate here and eliminate units.

In Feb of 2002 Henry Eyring showed up at Stake Conference and had a revelation for us in the Priesthood leadership meeting. He prophesied to us in the name of the Lord that it would be wrong to consolidate because the church in this area was going to grow back up to its 1980 numbers in the next 5-8 years. But, true to form it was one of those "contingent" prophecies.

So when it "comes to pass" that in 2006 the two Olympus stakes are still shrinking, it won't be because Henry's Prophecy was horse shit. It will be because the people here were not "faithful" enough, didn't provide the mishies with enough referals, didn't search around when houses in our neighborhoods came up for sale to find mormons to buy them. Or maybe it will be because all the mishies assigned to this area were masturbating too much. I'm sure you all know the drill.

The Montgomery, Alabama stake was created in 1975. The two branches which had existed there since 1955 became two wards, meeting in the stake center. Around 1990, the church built another chapel and created a third ward in the inner city with the intention of attracting thousands of formerly accursed Canaanites to the now-not-racist one true church. A few dozen blacks joined, and a few became contributors, but most of them soon went inactive, as do most converts everywhere.

So after years of struggling to make the small ward survive, the boundaries were realigned, and the three wards in the city of some 200k population were combined back to its original two. So you've got this humongous stake center with only one ward meeting in it, and another large new-style chapel with only one ward. The city still has the same number of LDS units it had in 1955, the year I was born. And let's keep in mind that over this 30-year period, the Montgomery area has exploded in population and economic progress.

Also, Prattville, which is a few miles northwest of Montgomery, and has been a boomtown for at least 40 years, still has the one ward that was created there in 1975. Even though a whole generation has passed for the ward's children to grow up and make the ward increase, it isn't growing. Either the children are growing up and moving away, or they're leaving the church.

The church claims a tottal of 26,670 congregational units. This would be the grand total of all wards and branches in the church. In the Mormon Corridor a large ward is 500 members but many wards are only 300 members. Branches are considerably less.

This being the case, all of the 26,670 congregational units would have to have close to 500 members in them to get the total worldwide church membership it claims. Basically, the church is saying every ward and branch has as many people as a large ward in Orem, Utah does. Dream on!

I'm not aware of a single ward in the UK witha membership of 300. A large ward in the UK would have about 150 members. A typical branch may have 20 members.

That means that the other wards and branches in the world must have >300 members per ward/branch.

Most large cities (over one million population) in Japan have a ward or two in them. Each ward has probably around 600-700 names on the list, but you only get about 50-60 people showing up each week. That's makes home teaching really tough.

I remember when Elder xxxxx came by for stake conference and he chastized the elderly retired guys for not home teaching 30 families a month. He basically called them out during the meeting and told them that they had free time now to do the lord's work.

From my days in Bishoprics and Branch Presidencies I would have to say that at least 30% of the members the church carries on it's records identify themselves with other or no faiths. Amother 10% leave their names on the records but really have no attachment to the church. Another 10% belong to the church but maintain a personal religion that is only peripheral to LDS.

The church probably has the typical 40% attendence rate. A large number are children who attend because of the parents. Some adults attend for reasons other than a devotion to the faith.

I have looked for a table of membership stats online that goes back to the 19th Century and haven't been able to find one.

Anyway, lacking a table, I went to LDS.org and created one of my own from the conference reports that goes back to 1973. I found a few interesting things.

Church membership has grown about 370% since 1973, from 3.3 million to 12.3 million. But lots of statistics have not shared that positive growth.

Children of record being baptized went from 48k in 1973 to 99k in 2004. That is only double, not keeping up with the pace of the growth of membership.

One would expect (and the church would hope) that as wards and branches were added, the number of members per unit would either stay about the same or drop (due to higher activity levels). But right now there are 460 members per unit, highest in the period I studied. In 1980, the figure was 368.

One would thing (and the church would hope) that the number of members per missionary would stay around the same. But in 1977 (the first year the church reported the number of missionaries in the conference report), there were 157 members per missionary. In 2004 that number was up to 240, the highest on my table.

Converts per missionary dipped below 5 in 2000 and hasn't been over 5 since. It had never been below five in the years that both membership and missionaries were reported. There was a high of 8.03 in 1989.

Back in the 1970's and early 1980's the church would report the number of priesthood holders. In 1979, the church reported 1,094,000 priesthood holders, an increase of 107,000 over the previous year. The next year, 1980, they reported 1,083,000 priesthood holders and proclaimed it an increase of 42,000 over the previous year. Somebody must have caught their math error and let them know, because that was the last time they announced the amount of increase over the last year. They stopped reporting priesthood numbers completely with the 1986 report.

To sum up, the church membership statistics show dramatic growth over the last three decades, but also a distinct shift toward high inactivity levels and unproductive missionary efforts.

So the increase in membership from one year to the next should be the total of the first two minus the total of the second two. That means the increase each year should always be something less than the sum of the first two -- even if the church doesn't report the numbers for deaths or excommunications/resignations. Even given the near-impossibility of a year passing with no members dying or being removed from the church, the increase can never be more than the sum of the first two.

But there are several years where the increase in membership is more than the sum of child and convert baptisms -- sometimes radically more. Clearly, someone is fiddling with the numbers.

In 1989 there was the biggest membership jump ever, yet the baptism numbers don't support it. One theory is that the church redefined "member" to include children of record. But that doesn't explain the anomalies since then.

Among the many stats that they don't report are the numbers leaving/excommunicated, number of living temple endowments, or *anything* that has to do with $$$$. As you say, they have stopped reporting the number of PH ordinations. That figure, along with living temple endowments, would be the best indicator of "activity". Obviously, both figures are down, or else they would still be reporting them. I suspect that they also continue to report those of us who have resigned in the total church figures.

You will also note that growth in the # of stakes and wards, which is pretty hard to fake, doesn't keep pace with the reported # of convert baptisms. IOW, you really can't trust *any* stats that come from the Great and Spacious COB. The closest thing you will find to reliable stats can be found at www.cumorah.com The guy who maintains that site is a TBM, but he's about as honest and objective as guy as you can find in Mormondom.

Years	Wards & Branches	Members	Members/Ward, Branch
1980	12,591	4,638,000	368
1990	18,090	7,760,000	428
2000	25,915	11,068,861	427
2001	26,084	11,394,522	426
2002	26,143	11,721,548	448
2003	26,237	11,985,254	456
2004	26,670	12,275,822	460

Note the increasing number of members per congregation over the years. Why is it that in 1980 the number of members who filled an average congregation was 368, yet in 2004 the number of members to fill the average congregation jumped to 460 – a 25% increase over 24 years?

Where did the room come from to absorb these extra members? True, the church could be making Wards and Branches more “member-dense“, but the more likely explanation is that this room has been generated by: (1) an increasing number of inactive members or, (2) members leaving the church but being kept on the rolls or, (3) a combination of these two.

Year	Stakes	Members	Members/Stake
1980	1218	4,638,000	3808
1990	1784	7,760,000	4350
2000	2581	11,068,861	4289
2001	2607	11,394,522	4371
2002	2602	11,721,548	4505
2003	2624	11,985,254	4568
2004	2665	12,275,822	4606

I'm in Sacramento area - grew up in Bay area. They are scrambling with reorganizing boundaries, etc to make it appear that there is no decline, but there really is.

We moved away from this area for 3 years and when we got back they had "reorganized ward boundaries and our ward is so tiny they can't fill the callings needed.

They have combined stakes in Bay area and I know of at least 3 wards that have been dissolved/rearranged into other wards just in my Mom's stake - they always re-name the wards or stakes so that they can claim that they have created a new one instead of dissolving one. LOL! It's a great PR ploy - makes the members think the church is growing when it's not.

CA is really rough for younger people to afford to live here. The younger generation is not replacing the older ones in the church. This could be playing a major part in it - finances. I know we sure have had a hard time getting on our feet here. Thankfully we're solid homeowners now. - Jennyfoo

For years the Morg didn't even have missionaries in the District of Columbia at all because it is has an overwhelming black majority (black men couldn't hold the priesthood). A few decades and modern revalations ago, they said they were going to take over D.C. by storm. So far, there are only a few small branches in the District and they are rather pathetic. Turnover is VERY high among "converts" to the Mormon church in D.C. The missionaries still avoid large sections of the city (either because of "homosexual problems" or crime).

The only "growth" is in the outersuburbs. The oldest wards in the innersuburban rings within the counties Arlington (VA), Alexandria (VA), Montgomery (MD) and Prince George's (MD) are stuggling. Mormon-syle people are being forced further and further out as immigrant communities move in and housing prices go up. The Morg is building new buildings in further out in Virgina and Maryland, but the old buildings typically only service one ward and one branch and they struggle with attendance problems. The big increase in hispanic population has helped increase conversions a bit, but these branches suck the life out of the stakes that have to support them.

Convert retention is an enormous issue in the National Capitol area. Less than 10 percent of converts are active two years after baptism. I don't know of any traditional families that have converted. It is usually individuals with a lot of temporal needs. They come at first and drop away after a few months. The new push is to reactive people, and then get them to the temple.

The Washington, D.C. temple used to be the pride of the East Coast. Very busy and robust. With the new mini temples in the east, the Washington temple is actually struggling. Endowment sessions get cancelled all the time. Wards temple nights are sparsely attended (if at all in many instances). One area authority called temple attendance the area's worst problem.

I don't know about all of the D.C. metro area, but our ward is a Little Piece of Zion. Most of the active people in my ward moved here from Utah/Idaho or have family in Utah/Idaho. So even in the Nation's Capitol, Mormonism is still a Utah religion. - WashingtonExmo

My observation in New Mexico When you say decline or stagnant does it means low growth or decline compared to state population?

I live in NM and many UT, CO, ID and AZ people are moving to Albuquerque. In fact MorgCorp has seen an upswing in membership in NM due to the economy and employment rates compared to other states. We have new LDS buildings, wards and our own McTemple but this isn't due to "NEW" members or converts. It's because all of those D*mn Morgbots are moving here. If the membership growth here was compared to the population increase of state and city then the rate would probably show New Mexico was declining in Mormon membership and baptisms. The ratio of MorgBots to normal people is actually dropping. - Didymus

There were no baptisms whatsoever, and there was no leadership to handle the handful of Lamanite members still left. - New Mexico Too

We recently moved from San Diego to Florida. I was in 3 wards over the last 7 years and all of them were really struggling. The one ward we lived in that did okay was also very affluent. But on any given sunday most of the people attending were folks on vacation just going to sacrament.

Our last ward there was the most pathetic. We tried to organize an event and only 10 people bothered to show up. Even my TBM (true believing Mormon) hubby at the time was puzzled.

As for Florida, we don't attend here. I do have to drive by the church each day and on sunday it seems to be well attended. I believe it only has one ward though.

I had moved from a very affluent young family Ward in San Diego to an middle class blue collar Ward in East San Diego. I couldn't believe it was so small besides the fact that I had nothing in common with the other members because the only people that seemed to go were seniors. In speaking with other friends who have moved from my hometown, the concensus is the same. Less people are going. With fewer members, whomever is active and able bodied gets stuck with not one or two demanding callings, but three or four plus regular visiting/home teaching of several people. Much easier to go inactive than take on that kind of workload. Also, once inactive, you don't have to pay tithing and I know by where I live, most of us can barely pay to put gas in our cars. - Kamali

We've been here 10.5 years and have seen one split of our ward (about 4 years ago when I was in the bishopric). During this time, a new stake was created and I think it probable that another one is in the offing (our stake and the one next to it each has 11 units). I can think of four new buildings built during this time (one stake center) and ground has been broken for what is supposed to be another stake center. Sounds like a poster-child for the work rolling forth, no?

But where are all the new members coming from? Out of state (and, in the past anyway, often to work for my employer, the largest single one in the county). From what I've been able to see, the baptismal rate is pathetic and retention of the few converts (virtually no families) is almost non-existent.

So the new buildings are simply to spread the load out a bit (reducing a building from 3 or 4 units to 2 units) and to create a cushion for the hoped-for increase to accompany the on-going construction of new homes. One of my co-workers is the bishop of a ward in an older, established area. That ward isn't growing at all - shrinking a little, in fact.

Although I am out of the Morg, I am in boundries of the Ashburn, VA stake. Most of the people here are from, or have families in the Mormon corridor with many high level Morg connections from that region. A lot of young families, and very, very, yuppie.

In fact, the whole Ashburn stake is growing by leaps and bounds and there will be a ward split this Sunday. No converts to speak of, the whole stake is rather an inbred, ethnic Mormon ghetto. - Skybolt

Bergen County NJ with a population of over 900,000 people just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.....wealthy and expensive. MORG has 3 small wards. No growth in 30 years. I passed the one chapel recently.....built in the early 1960's. It was very dated and almost looked abandonded. Grass the overgrown and the shrubs were unkept.

Just to the north in Orange County, New York. Fastest growing county in New York State...two small wards. The chapels are tiny and I hear poorly attended. No converts to speak of.

The MORG brags about growth in Manhattan, especially in Harlem. They are building one small chapel in Harlem. With a population of literally millions of people within a few miles...this is nothing to brag about. - StMatthew

Church growth here in Manhattan is very interesting. We have a few converts in our ward, lower Manhattan, but most tend to be single-parent families. But the main driver for growth is people moving from Utah to come here, most of the time temporarily. Now we have a temple here and everyone is all in a dither about it. I have no idea in the world what has possessed the Church to build a chapel in Harlem, and, mind you this is no "small chapel". It's four or five stories. (I have now idea how they plan on using the building.)

There are also plans to buy/build a new chapel on the Upper East Side as well. We recently moved to our new building on 14th Street last year. I have no idea what is happening out in the other boroughs, but I do know that the Bronx still is not a Stake. There are a lot of Latinos in Queens and Brooklyn, so I think that there is some marginal growth there. - fill

My local ward in Seoul is one of the very first wards established in this country.

We meet in one of the very first LDS stake centers built on the Asian continent. Old, but still a nice, large building with all the amenities of a stake center in the states.

Sacrament meeting attendance last week: 26 adults, not counting two full-time mishies. And one of those 26 was me, a full-blown apostate attending because my wife asked me to.

There have been zero convert baptisms in this ward the four years I've been here.

Only one ward meets in this building because there is no need to share the facilities. There just aren't any other members around to use it.

Same thing for the Seoul temple. It's full to capacity on Friday nights, but go any other day of the week and it's either closed completely or the temple mishies are doing the ordinances themselves.

And it's not a long drive. It's right in the middle of downtown Seoul with bus stops and subways stops conveniently located nearby. You can see the Mormoni statue in the distance from over the rooftops of one of Seoul's well-known shopping/hanging-out districts.

According to my local mishies, who visit me periodically to get me to come back, there are only 30 or so convert baptisms in Korea per month these days. Less than 400 per year for a country of 47 million people. And of course, as is the case with the Philipines, most of these are 15 year old girls who go inactive as soon as the mishies leave the area.

After years of observation, I believe that the true destruction of the Mormon church will come from the same force that is hurting other fraternal organizations, APATHY.

The Lions Club, Rotary Club, Elks Club, IOOF, VFW, Masons and other organizations have seen a decline in membership as the current members get older and are not replaced.

The same trend is happening in the Mormon church. Though "growing" in size by conversion and births, the true test of vitality is attendance and participation. You notice the new charge from the leadership of the Mormon church is activation and fellowshipping. Even Gordy has spent valuable pulpit time talking about how it doesn't serve the Mormon god to "baptize" new members who soon go inactive. Other signs of implosion is the lack of volunteers in Mormon church directed activities such as "ward parties", "cannery assignments", "temple attendance" and other time wasters. More and more members are finding excuses why they cannot participate in these "Mormon" activities.

Most telling of the apathy is that the members are not supporting directed activities needed by the Mormon church to function. The evil part of the assignments is that most are made to help the Mormon church from having to hire full time employees. Things like janitors, secretaries, researchers, etc. is full time work that is for the benefit of the Mormon church only and not the World. Just look at the number of "Service Missions" posted in the foyer of the chapel and you will notice that they are all to support the Mormon church daily administrative functions.

No, the modern Mormon doesn't have time to support such nonsense. They would rather give of their money than their time.

I think you all have too much time on your hands. If you hate the church so much why do you spend all of your time talking about it? Why don't you just go find a new church and spend time uplifting your new faith instead of bashing on a perfectly fine religion? I had a roommate who was "Catholic" and guess what, she only went to church twice a year (Christmas and Easter). But she still claimed to be Catholic. Just because people are less active than others doesn't mean they should not be included in the total population of that religion. It would be quite hard to get a number for the "die hard" mormons in the world. What would be your criteria to get an acurrate number? Furthermore you would have to get that criteria for all other religions to get a true count. Don't act like LDS people are the only ones misrepresenting their numbers. I know a lot of other people from other faiths that are not "die hard" members of their faith but they would still check off the appropriate box! on the census form.

These graphs of LDS membership distribution sure helps put things in perspective.

About half of all Mormons -- 5.5 million -- live in the United States, where they represent about 2% of the population.

Five countries -- the US, Mexico (1 million), Brazil (809,000), Chile (520,000) and Philippines (496,000) -- represent 70% of church membership.

In Mexico, Mormons are about .98% of the population. In Brazil, about 0.5%. In Chile, about 3.3%. In Philippines, about 0.6%.

The top 20 countries (the top 5 plus Peru, Argentina, Guatemala, UK, Canada, Equador, Colombia, Bolivia, Japan, Venezuela, Honduras, Australia, New Zealand, El Salvador and Uruguay) represent 89% of church membership.

The remaining 11% of church membership is spread out across 225 other countries.

30 years ago there were about 4 billion people on the planet and 3.5 million Mormons on the books. That works out to about 0.08%

Now there are about 6.3 billion people and 12 million members, which is about 0.2%.

At a measly 8% relative growth rate over the past decade, Mormon 'growth' in the US is vastly outstripped by Catholics (+11%), Presbyterians (+12%), Episcopalian/Anglican (+13%), Pentacostals (+38%), Churches of Christ (+47%), Assemblies of God (+68%), and Congregationalist/United Church of Christ (+130%).

And while the Seventh Day Adventists have fewer US members than Mormons, internationally their numbers have recently passed the LDS members, making 7DAdventism the "largest home-grown American religion", not Mormonism. (Incidentally, 7thDay-Adventism was founded later than LDS, so given that they've now surpassed Mormon memberhsip numbers, that makes them a faster growing church than Mormonism.) - 09/12/2004 - by Langdon

I have been intrigued with questions about the number of church members around the world, and also provided links to census material that shows a large discrepancy between the number of members claimed by the church and those that profess to be so.

This got me started thinking about the church here in the UK. As of this afternoon the church claims on its website that there are 178,920 members of the church in the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).

We had our ten yearly census in 2001. The question regarding religious affiliation was voluntary. Below is a link to a PDF sample of the census form.

As you can see there are a number of tick boxes, including "christian" which is the second one, or at the bottom there is "other" with a space to write in the specific denomination.

The results show that out of a population of 58,789,194 there were 42,079,417 who considered themselves to be christian, 178,837 who were "other" and 13,626,299 who were "No Religion / Religion not stated". The link is below.

I emailed the census people and asked them if there was a more detailed breakdown of the "other" figure which people then filled in voluntarily. I was told that this information was available. The reason it was a voluntary question was because it had been specially commissioned to be included in the census, and as such wasn't included on the website when they presented all the other data. There was no problem with me having the data, i just had to agree to certain conditions before it could be sent out. A copy of these conditions are here.

I emailed back to accept the conditions and just after lunch today i received an Excel spreadsheet with the information on it.

Now remember the number claimed by the church is 178,920. The number of people in this country that indicated they were members of the church was 12,722.

There are a number of observations I could make. I have to say up front that I think there are more active members than this, i.e. that attend on a regular basis. One of the big problems that the church faces in this country is being perceived by and large as some American cult (and we scratch our head and wonder how people could think that!)

Some members of the church may have wanted to specifically identify themselves as "Christian" by ticking that box. To balance that, quite a number of Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, etc. also skipped the "christian" box and specifically identified themselves by their denomination.

Being TBM (true believing Mormon) at the time, my (frustratingly still TBM) wife and i wanted to do our bit to bring the church out of obscurity and darkness by indicating that we were LDS on the form.

And as for the Obi-Wan Kenobi reference in the subject line? In the months before the census there was an email that went round telling people that if more than 10,000 people identified themselves as being a "Jedi Knight" on the census then the government would be "forced to accept" it as an "official" religion.

It was complete bollocks of course, but how many of my fellow countrymen, and women, so indicated? 390,127. Thats right folks, we have thirty times more Jedi Knights in the UK than LDS!

Note of interest/caution. The number of 390,127 is larger than the figure given as the total listed as having ticked the "other" box (178,837). I think from the looks of the numbers that they took the people who indicated a christian denomination in the "other" section and just added them to the christian total, and did same for others, e.g. "Jewish". As Jedi clearly isn't a real religion they prob put this with the "No Religion / Religion not stated" total. This is speculation and i have emailed them to clarify this.

I've posted most of this info here before, but since the Church seems to put out the same BS frequently it is worth posting again.

The PR hacks at headquarters are trotting out the tired old story about Spanish speaking Mormons.

Once a predominantly U.S.-centered religious institution, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has become international. Of its 12 million members worldwide, more than half -- 6.4 million -- live outside the United States, the majority in Spanish-speaking countries.

I went to the Church's website and got population stats for all the Spanish speaking countries. Taking their numbers at face value I got a total of 3,328,723 members they claim to have in South America, Central America, Mexico and Spain.

The two with the highest claimed Mormon populations are Mexico and Chile, with 952,950 and 527,900 respectively.

These also happen to be the only two countries in Latin America that have Mormon as a category in the religion portion of their national censuses.

The Mexican census(see link below) shows that some 205,229 Mexicans over the age of 5 claimed Mormon in the census; 21.5% of the Church's number.

The Chilean census(see link below) paints a similar picture. Some 103,735 Chileans over the age of 15 claimed Mormon as their religious preference. As the Church counts everyone over 8 as a member we can probably add 10,000 the the count and make it an even 113,000 and not be too far off. Again, that yields 21.4% of the Church's number.

Keep in mind this is not the percentage of active members, but merely people who consider themselves to be Mormon. It stands to reason that active members consider themselves to be LDS, but also added in there are inactives who for whatever reason think of themselves, for census purposes, as Mormons.

I think these numbers are the upper limit for percentages of baptisms that consider themselves LDS. Mexico and Chile have each produced more mission presidents and general authorities than other Spanish-speaking countries. Mexico has the most temples outside of the US. That would seem to indicate the Church is stronger there than in countries like Uruguay or Paraguay.

So I'm being generous when I apply the 21.5% rule to the Church's numbers to calculate a total number of Spanish speaking people who consider themselves to be Mormons; truth be told if we include countries like Nicaragua and Costa Rica the number would be lower still.

21.5% of 3,328,723 gives us 715,675 Spanish speaking Mormons who consider themselves such. Remember that the next time someone in your ward starts popping off about more members speaking Spanish than English--if that is indeed true they're in worse shape than they think.

Think of all the man-years given to preaching the gospel in Latin America. Think of the tons of intestinal parasites endured by thousands of misshies. The money spent by them and their parents. The years of sleepless nights endured by their mothers while their kids lived in hovels, drinking polluted water and getting shot at. For what? After 80 years of presence in South America and over 120 years in Mexico not even one million people consider themselves LDS. So much for the gospel filling the whole earth.

In fact, the referenced article paints a grimmer picture. They speak of 144,000 Spanish speaking Mormons in the US and some 428 congregations. That yields an average of 299 members per unit. Quoting from the story as it appeared in the Dallas Morning News, "...the 45 people in attendance nodded in agreement."

Those of you who went to missions down there can figure it out actual activity rates fairly easily. I am very familiar with Chile as my in-laws live there. The Church claims 527,900 members in 713 units. That works out 741 members per unit. The most I ever saw at Church was 100, and that was at one of the oldest most affluent wards in all of South America. I typically saw 50-70 active members in a ward. That would seem to indicate an activity rate of 10-13%.

My brother went to Costa Rica; claimed membership of 32,563 with 76 congregations for an average of 428 members per congregation. He never saw more than 40 active members in a ward or branch.

It almost seems that kids who want to serve their fellow man and grow the Church in Latin America would be better off signing up for the Peace Corps and going to Church every week while there. They could help provide badly needed leadership and lead by example.

Here's a little tidbit I found on the growth of the church in Latin America. A recently returned missionary (now on BYU's football team) told a reporter about the growth of the church in Nicaragua.

Assuming between 3-5,000 active members per stake, that translates to between 6-11% activity rate. So, there are between 6,000-10,000 active Mormons in a country with a population of approximately 5,000,000. The percentage of active Mormons in Nicaragua is somewhere between .12% and .2% of the population in general.

That stone cut out of the mountain without hands sure is taking its time as it fills the whole earth, huh? Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it marvelous?

I don't think Chile is that different from other developing countries where the Church experienced tremendous growth.

If you look at the Chilean census of 2002 you'll see clearly where the problem comes in: there are only 14,000 self-identified Mormon males between the ages of 30 and 44, and only 7,089 between the ages of 45 and 59. There are 682 wards, 168 branches, and 111 stakes.

That means local leadership at the stake and ward level alone takes up nearly 15% of self-described LDS males between the ages of 30 and 59. This is before we start calling EQ presidencies, mission leaders, gospel doctrine teachers, etc....And we are also assuming that all these men are active and hold the Melchizedek priesthood. If even 10% of them don't then nearly 20% of those who are active and hold the priesthood are involved in bishoprics, stake presidencies and high councils, and branch and district presidencies.

Given the socioeconomic realities in Chile this is just not enough people to create and sustain vibrant Church units.

Figures you published about the number of Mormons and Mormon converts (which were probably provided by the church) are misleading, for several reasons. The Mormon church (unlike many other denominations) does not make public the number of people who resign their memberships or who simply stop participating. The church claims 800 converts per day; but - according to unofficial inside sources - at least 250 Mormons per day are resigning their membership, and an additional equal number are estimated to be leaving without taking any kind of official action (meaning that they are still counted by the church as "members").

A Mormon sociologist (Armand Mauss) has estimated that of new converts in North America, 50% are no longer participating a year later. The figure he gives for other areas is 75%. The low retention rate is quite understandable in light of the fact that Mormon missionaries pressure investigators to commit to baptism after only a few weeks of indoctrination, before they have an opportunity to learn the negative aspects of Mormonism.

My TBM (True Believing Mormon) brother shows up for a visit and drags me to Saturday night General Conference Priesthood Meeting. We arrive about 20 seconds early and see the satellite count down. There are about about a dozen others in attendance: The temple presidency (3) geezers, mishies (4), 2 hardballs from the EQ, two hopelessly single singles and the retired Stake Patriarch.

Where is everyone he asks? I rub it in. I point out who is conspicuously absent: The Stake President who lives in our ward, the entire Bishopric including various clerks, the entire High Priest and Elder's Q. Presidencies although hardball number one could soon be called to fill a vacancy there, 4 or 5 members of the High Council from our ward, the entire Young Men's Presidency and the entire Aaronic priesthood for that matter, the ward mission leader, and various other officers as now constituted.

He looks at me and says: You live in a different world. I respond you don't live in the real world out there in Utah.

Now I didn't play entirely fair. He was under the impression that this was a Stake Meeting and not one ward. And I did sit up front so he didn't see a couple dozen more sneak in late.

By the end of the meeting the Stake President had arrived about 1 hour late, one Bishop's counselor, two High Priests, one of the High Counsel and teenage son, and total attendance was about 30-40 or so. Not bad.

The bad news breaks, and the Board of Directors calls an emergency meeting in the Upper Room of the Temple. Sitting around the table, the following responses are heard from the Board members, all present and accounted for:

Boyd K. Packer - "I knew this would happen when they started playing with their little factories."

L. Tom Perry - "I really don't know what to say without a teleprompter. But, if you want, I can go out and smile a lot."

Neal A. Maxwell - "This imploding is a foreboding of our lives corroding, as our connection with perfection cascades into tangles of misdirection, as we sense the power of the divine and sublime unfolding yet exploding, much like a mosiac of floating tiles upon a tumultuous ocean of devolving devotion filled with commotion, locomotion and of false hopes for perpetual promotion, thus seeing and being seized upon, supercalifragilisticexpeealidocious . . ."

Russell M. Nelson -"Don't look at me, Brethren. I'm may be a doctor but I can't fix a system that's rotten to the core."

Dallin H. Oaks - "Legally speaking, we have here what appears to be a no-win situation. That said, my reading of the statutes of the Utah state constitution--combined with a close examination of the case for Book of Mormon historicity--does allow, in a strict but technically defensible sense, for the burning down of the Salt Lake Tribune, on the grounds that it constitutes a public nuisance; i.e., a threat to the peace and tranquility necessary for the survival of our revealed form of iron-fisted theocracy."

M. Russell Ballard - "Well, boys, this can't be good for stock prices. I could use a beer."

Richard G. Scott - "I solemnly testify that these are numbers too sacred to speak of here."

Robert D. Hales - "Maybe if I rub my CTR ring, a genie will appear and help us."

Jeffrey R. Holland - "We used to have the same problem when I was president at the Y. It all has to do with too many members living off-campus."

Henry B. Eyring - "When I was the Church Commissioner of Education, we would just ignore bad numbers that didn't add up, like poor Seminary attendance. So, I know that if we close our eyes and think happy, bland thoughts, this will all go away."

James E. Faust - "What will this mean for my planned trip to visit the Bahama branch of the Church?"

Gordon B. Hinckley - "Marvelous. This is just friggin' marvelous. Get Larry King on the phone."

Let see, LDS church increases at a rate of membership of about 1000 per day so even if 150 leave per day, that is still a net increase of 850 per day. That is still pretty good. - 02/06/2004 - anon

The problem with that 1000 a day conversion rate is that the long term retention is about 5%. So the way I calculate it:

1. The church gets 50 new active members daily,
2. It looses about 950 newly inactive members daily,
3. And only 150 of those names are taken off the roll daily.

This explains why our ward roster is 30 pages thick and we get about 50 people to Sacrament meeting. Home teaching routes approach 16 per active person (800 divided by 50) which translates into >32 per companionship. If you go out every day you might make all your monthly visits, but you won't reactivate anyone.

The missionaries get exactly what they pray for, baptisms. They seldom get actual conversions who go on to be productive contributing members. The growth of the church is stagnant and the members are groaning under the enormous and ever increasing burden of trying to deal with the hordes of inactives who do not want to be bothered. The leaders are pretending all is well in Zion because they don't know what else to do, like be honest and confront a real problem for once.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. Popularity was never a measure of what is true. - 02/12/2004 - anon

I had just got done telling my TBM friend all about how only 25% of the 11 million members in the Church even are "Active". And how only half of those few have ever been endowed, and how only half of those endowed even have a current temple recommend and how only half of those that have a current temple recommend even go to the temple regularly (min. 1x a month). That takes the 11 million down to only 250,000 who actually are following what the Church DEMANDS -- which is to go to the temple, make death-penalty-like covenants and attend the the temple faithfully.

Well........obviously she outright refused to believe what I said until she heard it from the STAKE dude's mouth today in sacrament. I couldn't believe my ears that they were telling the members these grave statistics. I know it was in effort to get more people to feel guilty and go to the temple as well as (as he mentioned, pay more tithing, pay more fast offerings, etc) Sound familiar, eh? More money.

Anyways, waht do you think that those faithful on the pews are thinking right now to have heard that "Only 50% of those ever endowed hold a recommend" I guess that might not be enough to bring the point home since they didn't get the overall # of how few are even active, and how fewer are endowed, but got that only 50% of endowed have a current TR, but missed getting that even fewer go regularly. All of which are obvious logically, but the members don't ever look for glaring signs that their church isn't growing let alone, that no one is doing what they are supposed to do as faithful LDS members.

Weird -- so many people blindly "follow the prophet" or atleast say they do, but yet they don't go to the temple. (Ofcourse, I know a few that say they got scared and don't want to ever go back. I bet that's alot of those 50% that are MIA)

In 2001 & 2002 the church converted 49,000 people in the Philippines, but only 1000 of those people 'remained active'.

I guarantee you that the church still counts all 49,000 as members when they claim they are 'one of the world's fastest growing churches'

Fascinating comparison. You have made one very serious calculation error. You used statistics quoted by the church in General Conference for 1990 & 2001. But those reports are made in May of 1990/2001 and they give 1989/2000 data.

So you are comparing membership numbers from the church in 1989 with membership numbers from the CUNY survey in 1990. Same error in 2001. In a rapidly growing church this difference in one year could generate enormous discrepancies.

Total members in 1989 (stat report 1990) 7.76 m
Total members in 1990 (stat report 1991) 8.12 m

Total members in 2000 (stat report 2001) 11.4 m
Total members in 2001 (stat report 2002) 11.7 m

(To be totally anal we need to find out what time of the year the survey was done and pro- rate it between these numbers but lets not go that far.)

So that gives us an additional 300,000 or more total members in the church statistics in both years. Divide them down as you have previously here-to-for done and that still gives you something significantly more (you do the math) than 100,000 adult members according to the church. And that means that YOUR POINT IS EVEN STRONGER!!! and that the number of missing Mormons is at least 100,000 higher than you calculated, well over a million for 2001.

With liars, critics and clowns like this bunch, no wonder the Mormon church comes out smelling like a skunk instead of something worse.

From the land of reggae (Jamaica). The Morg (slang for Mormon Church) has failed to establish a new collective (Stake) there. Last week, (I think 06 Dec 2003) Elder H. Aldridge Gillespie was in Jamaica to create the first Stake. Instead, during the meeting he stood up and said "We had hoped to progress in establishing the first Stake in Jamaica, but that will not happen..."

Well, it looks like Jamaica is not ready to be assimilated into the Morg collective.

I was not there, but people I know were. We don't talk about the LDS church anymore. All I know is they were there, excited about the prospect (having ties to the island), and came back upset that the announcement about "no stake" was made in public to the members who were anticipating the creation of their 1st stake.

There was a link on SLDrone's post on growth to an "American Religious Identification Survey". This survey looked at the religious affiliation of adults in the US in 1990 and in 2001. I've seen this survey before, but I never sat down and put some numbers to it. I did so tonight and came out with some interesting information. Here's the link to the survey:

Be aware, of two things. First, this survey only asked US adults their religious affiliation, not necessarily their membership or their activity rate. So, this won't be useful in determining actual resignations, but it will be useful in giving us 'directional' information (as my old boss used to say).

Second, I did this relatively quickly and I didn't have time to do a lot of research and verify (from multiple sources) all the numbers. I also made a couple of assumptions, so if anyone notices any 'faulty logic', let me know and I'll revise the numbers.

	1990	2001	Total Growth
Total members world wide	7,760,000	11,394,522	46.8% (assumed 55% in 1990, 50% in 2001 - anyone have better %s?)
USA members	4,268,000	5,697,000	33.5%
Total members over 18	2,816,880	3,760,192	33.5% (According to the census, UT has 32% population under 18 - I assumed 34% for the Mormon population)
Survey Mormons Total	2,500,000	2,787,000	11.5%
Survey Mormons 18-29	675,000	808,230	19.7%
Survey Mormons 65+	325,000	418,050	28.6%
Survey Mormons 30-64	1,500,000	1,560,720	4.0% (this is calculated - the survey only included 18-29 and 65+, so I put the balance in this 30-64 group)
Missing?	316,880	973,192	207.1% (this is the difference between 'official' Mormon numbers and the survey numbers = i.e. 2,816,880 - 2,500,000 = 316,880)

Total number of 'missing' members increased by 656,312 (207%) over the 11 years or almost 60,000 per year. How many of these have officially resigned? Who knows?!?! But keep in mind that this is only in the US! International membership is roughly equal to the US and the attrition rate is probably higher (no facts off hand to back it up, but just an assumption based on what I've read in the past), so you could conservatively double that number to 120,000+ annually to account for the worldwide membership.

The big defectors seem to be in the 30-64 age range (matches my own personal experience). This group only had a 4% increase in ELEVEN YEARS according to the survey!

I notice that the fastest growth rate was among people over 65. I am guessing that that reflects an increase in longevity.

The church is probably getting older, on average. It would be interesting to see some current birth rate information. It is my understanding that Mormons, like others, are marrying later and having fewer children, but I would like to see some hard stats on that. If there are fewer babies, and older people are increasing in number at the highest rate of any group, then the church is getting older.

Our stake just created a new ward by splitting ours, and dissolving a dead one. The net effect is same number of wards, with long-term effect still TBD.

In typical fashion, the stake officials focused only on balancing # of MP holders. The dissolved ward had no youth, and so our previously healthy ward had its YM/YW program split 50/50. The kids are complaining that they no longer have effective mass for enjoyable activities.

Still to early to say what the effect on "metrics of holiness" will be. Our avg sac meeting attendance seems to hover around 150, in a ward with 470 nominal members. This is just slightly lower than previous to the consolidation.

Stake avg home teaching "numbers" are around 40%, while our ward, prior to the split, was usually above that. No real sense yet of how we're doing, since it's still too early to tell, but my gut feel is that we have dropped below the stake average.

My gut reaction on hearing the announcement of the consolidation was that we were taking on a cancer in terms of the number of inactives, losing youth, and doubling the geographic square mileage of our ward.

My parents spoke at the Kingwood Stake Conference, and my mother wrote me in her weekly letter, that the Houston temple is running at only 42% capacity! This was mentioned at the Stake Conference,just as the new temple presidency started that same week, the last week of October. I thought that this figure would interest all here, in regards to the already known fact of low temple attendance. Did you all hear or read about the Samoan temple burning down, it was being remodeled. I don't mention the above to be disrespectful, but just to show the direction Mormonism is going. Thanks, again.

I concur with EnglishSue below. I'm from Croydon, south of London. My ward (Croydon 2nd) had about ninety regular attendees every sacrament meeting in 1988. Shortly before I left to serve my mission in 1989, we were merged with the Caterham branch and renamed Selsdon Ward. It was the largest ward in the stake, with some 130 people attending Sacrament Meeting every Sunday. Throughout my mission, I got regular letters from ward members telling me how many new members were joining -- I remember my bishop writing to me saying that they were having a new baptism pretty much every week. Two years later, when I returned from my mission, normal attendance was EIGHTY, with just a couple of new faces -- all of them recent converts.

Also, during my mission in the brand-new France Bordeaux mission (my companion and I were the second and third missionaries to be sent to the new mission), I also tried to institute a Lost Sheep program, and got from the bishops and branch presidents membership lists. In every case, there were hundreds of names (in the case of Perpignan, over a thousand) with, at most, (Perpignan again) seventy attending regularly and, at worst (La Rochelle) twelve. In La Rochelle, we found there was a good reason why one 'less-active member' wasn't attending any more -- he was dead! I know this because we found his grave in the public cemetery. Very pretty it was too, and distinctly Roman Catholic in style.

I am on an email list from the Philippines Missions where I slaved myself for the Morg 33 years ago. Here is what I got today:

"Over the last two years, the rapid growth in church membership for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines has declined with the missionary focus largely on retention and reactivation.

Out of the 49,000 converts who joined the church in 2001 and 2002, only 1,000 remain active," said Dave Brinsfield, former senior missionary for the Manila Philippines mission.

Dark Sparks calculates that at a 2% activity rate. Woo Hoo! The fastest growing church in the world!

My wife got back yesterday from visiting her relatives in Chile. We were discussing this same thing--I made her promise she would 'return and report'.

Seems the big push to close stakes and consolidate units came from the local members, and that some of the more outspoken ones gave Holland a good blast when he asked for their input when he first arrived. That they were tired of multiple callings, division of barely functioning wards, and being made to care for the baptisms of careless misshies. Not to mention being coerced into feeding the little bastards, sometimes once a week.

She said the active members in her home stake--the whole stake--are really just the same ones who were active in her ward when she left 17 years ago. And that many were tired of the load the church has put on them to support their growth on paper.

The famed Perpetual Education Fund has done some good. But it is not a grant, it is a loan that is repaid at interest. And the loan is through a local bank, not directly from the church. But those who take one have to take an additional church calling as well--a young man in her ward who has one has to visit 'inactive'--in all reality never active--youth who are of seminary age and try to drag them back to church..

And Holland hasn't been seen in her part of Santiago for some time. Her words in Spanish were 'nadie ha visto al guatón ese'--nobody has seen the fat guy....

"During the decade of the 1990s, many rapidly-growing churches, including the Adventists, Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, and numerous Pentecostal groups, reported accelerating growth trends throughout the decade, while The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints experienced persistent trends of decelerating growth. In fact, 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."

I live in the suburbs of a large city in the Eastern half of the USA. I rode in the support van (with my girl friend) for a large Varsity Scout troop not attached to any particular church in the July Fourth parade. The route was about 3-4 miles and took about 2 hours to travel.

The entire route was lined with people, mostly young families with a few children, mostly decent folks with jobs, a few minorities represented at about the same proportion as live in the area. The newspaper said that attendance at the parade was several hundred thousand. I saw a total of 3 active Mormon families and there are about a dozen who live in the area.

I was impressed with the general goodness and decency of most of the throngs of these people. I realized better than I ever have before why America is such a strong nation; we have so many good people living in this country. I realized that almost all of them at the parade live within the boundaries of our ward. What perplexed me most was why we have been unable to convert a single decent intact family in this area in spite of intense missionary effort in the past decade and beyond. We have a dozen missionaries and a heavy emphasis on missionary work at church. It is one thing to sit in church and talk about missionary work. It is quite another to slowly drive through crowds and crowds of good folks, waving at them and wondering why not a single one of them has accepted the gospel message.

I asked my Baptist girl friend, who I have brought to church a few times and had the missionaries teach, what she thought about this question. She replied; what have you Mormons got to offer them? I responded; the restored true gospel of Jesus Christ, the saving ordinances of the temple, opportunities to serve one another in the ward.

1. Is your music any good? That is the first thing they hear when they walk in the front door.

2. Are your sermons well prepared, insightful and inspiring? Are your "preachers" well trained and good speakers? Do they have anything to say?

3. Are your classes informative, relevant and lively? Are there many different options and an exciting cirriculum?

4. Does your primary really touch the children and do they enjoy going? Are the adults who work with children trained, aware of and willing to deal with abuse issues and do they have CPR training and criminal background checks?

5. Are your teenage youth programs excellent and fun and yet teach the youth to stay out of trouble. Do your youth bring their friends from other churches to your activities without outside prodding?

6. Do you provide summer camps in even one of a variety of areas that might actually attract young people from other congregations?

7. Do you have anything for the additional enrichment of the adult members or do you just expect the active adults to give and give and give some more?

8. Do you support a Scout troop for either boys or girls that is so good that it draws mostly people who are not members of your congregation?

9. Does your ward do anything for the community? Like sports programs, or private schools, or music and dance instruction, or a community center, or organize any support groups or organize any other specific volunteer programs?

10. Does your ward do things that are likely to run people off and irritate them, like a constant emphasis on guilt and shame, always asking for more and not giving anything back?

11. How much is your ward into control? Does it try to dictate everything all the time? Does it treat its adults like children? Does it allow people to be less than perfect and yet help them do better and explore their own paths of spirituality?

12. Do you really care, as a community, about all the other people who are never going to join your church or are they all just going to hell so why bother? (Hiding behind a remote history of persecution is a crutch that allows you Mormons to do this).

13. Is the entire focus of your church to just get every possible person to join it so they can suck everything out of them? Is there anything of substance beyond just belonging and trapping others into the scheme to get yet additional others involved?

I had to admit that our ward was not doing very good. In fact we suck in most areas and we don't do anything in the others. We just can not compete with any of the other churches like this and we don't even try. She told me; then why would anyone want to join your church? Or even consider an honest investigation of it? No one with any sense would join with you Mormons, from what I've seen, unless God hit them up the side of the head with a board. And for some reason God is not going around with a board and smacking people into Mormonism. That is not God's style.

I went to church with her today and I can see exactly what she means. They can answer a resounding yes to almost every one of those questions she posed. I would advise all TBM Mormons to never set your foot into another church with your eyes opened even once, or you will see how ersatz and hollow we are. I can't imagine what my Bishop will have to say when I tell him of my recent thoughts and experiences. I don't know what to do now.

Reading some of the posts here recently regarding the implosion of the Morg made me remember something Charles Didier told us during mission conference.

During my mission in Brazil we had to spend every Thursday "buscando membros perdidos", or, wasting an entire day trying to find inactive members to see if they still lived at the address on their church records.

Charles Didier was the area president at the time. He told us that during any given week, church headquarters in Sao Paulo would get the same number of lost member records as they did convert baptisms... i.e. a net growth of zero. This was in 1985.

Another interesting thing happened during one of my post-mission visits to Brazil. Six or seven years after my mission I ran into a former companion of mine who now lived in the area where we served and was a Bishop. He said he'd be lucky to get 75 people to sacrament meeting in a ward that had over 900 members. Ouch.

My brother is an Stake President on the east coast, and we very rarely talk about the church as part of our agreement. However, last weekend I flew back to see his one son graduate from college and his daughter from high school.

On the way back from the airport he made this comment, “It is people like you that are making my life terrible.” I asked “what people”? He said all these people who are resigning from the church and ones that I have to hold “Courts of Love” for.

His comment was that he receives about 25 resignation letters a month. Over half are from people who have never attended in the area, the rest from inactives. They are holding on an average of one Court of Love each week.

He asked why do people resign in such great numbers? I tried to explain that is was the only way to get peace and quiet from the church. He explained that under the new directives that each person or family that submits their resignation letter must be visited by a Home Teacher or be interviewed by the bishop before they can be released.

I asked why. He stated that the church wanted to know why they are losing so many members. I asked are they going to do anything about once they find out? I love this comment. "Well that will be up to Gordon B Hinckley. Then he went on to say that since they don’t have enough Home Teachers to handle all of these, sometimes it is taking up to 4 months to get them processed.

I gave him an idea of just approving them and send them a letter. He said “I can’t. That would be against church policy". About that time we arrived at his house and the conversation ended.

He can’t understand why people are leaving in such numbers. His stake is down 25% since last year and the inactivity rate is about 40-50%. Now that is according to him. So much for the fastest growing church.

Utah itself seems to be becoming less and less Mormon. The LDS church claims that 70% of the state is LDS, but the county I live in, Davis county, shows something else. Granted, Hill AFB is nearby, but still.

According to officials at my old high school, the amount of LDS students is shrinking all over the county. My graduating class, back in 2001, was said to be about 50% LDS, counting the people who ate drank, and made merry on the weekends and cannot be classified as active Mormons. A trend that my principal reported is that all over the county the amount of Mormon students in the public schools was going down.

This can also be seen by the many, many Protestant and Catholic churches that seem to be growing in abundance, as well as the growing amount of Wiccans, Buddhists, and Muslims in the area.

Also, there are reports of people, some I know, who were devout Mormons that decided to come out of the closet and got thrown on the street by their paranoid parents.

I've been looking forward to the stats in the Stockholders Meeting er, I mean General Conference for several weeks. Looks like the church lost 5 stakes and added 23 districts and has the lowest growth percentage in over two decades! In all of 2002 the church added a whopping 59 wards/branches. How can TBM's (true believing mormons) believe that this is the fastest growing church? Not even close! The growth truly is slowing down. I predict (and I can predict as well as the CEO) that the growth rate in the US will slow to zero within 15-20 years and then the membership will begin to decline. The church has hit it's high note. TBMs believe that radio/TV came for the use of the church. They also believe that the internet also is here to help the church grow. I believe that the internet is what will kill the Great Whore of all the earth. The US membership will decline because of it. As more people become internet savvy in other countries and spread the truth, the membership in those countries will eventually decline as well.

Oaks addressed a Priesthood Leadership session in the Lethbridge Sportplex and he said emphatically that the church was losing more people than it was gaining. He prefaced this remark with a comment that what he was about to say was for the ears of those assembled and not for public discourse or publication. Many people were stunned by this frank admission and later engaged in mental gymnastics trying to rationalize the failure of the members/church in this.

I attended as the EQP (Elder's Quorum President) at the time. It was the priesthood session of a multi-stake regional conference for Southern Alberta. I don't recall the exact date but will do a little research to try and determine it. It was probably about 8-9 years ago and Oaks was the visiting apostle at the time. It is significant that this was already a problem even that far back. Today at least some people are aware of this problem but you have to realize how big of a shock this was to the faithful in pre-internet days.

Of course Oaks was a newer member of the 12 then and likely a little more free with this kind of statistic. He is probably a little more cautious with that kind of info nowadays, keeping his cards closer to his vest.

A few years ago I went to LDS.com and put all the info from the yearly statistical reports in a spreadsheet. They can be found in the May issues of the Ensign which go back to 1973.

One of the stats that is reported is the number of "children of record" baptized each year. I believe the Church defines "children of record" as kids born to members who are on the books.

I ran a calculation where I took the number of "children of record" baptized in a given year and divided that by the number of church members 8 years previous (when most of those kids were born) to see what kind of trend I could see.

In 1981 (the first year the calculation can be made because the Church has been reporting this since 1973) the number of "children of record" who were being baptized expressed as a percentage of total church head count the year they were born was 2.8% It has declined from that high for each consecutive year to an all time low in 2001 of 0.8%

That means that less than a third of the families in the Church are actually baptizing their kids, compared to 1981.

This is a clear and unmistakable trend that really shows how badly the Church is leaking members. If a family can't be bothered to baptize their kid into the One True Church, that family is indeed inactive.

I read a comment posted by Tufus dated July 2002 regarding "The Lost Sheep Program." I went on a mission to Manchester England from 1992-1994 where my mission piloted this program. We were personally trained for the program by Apostle Ballard and Elder Pinnock. They gave us boxes upon boxes of print outs with names of "Lost Sheep."

We were instructed to look for these lost sheep in our tracting and at the same time offer to share a gospel message. A few areas had only a hand full of names, but most areas had hundreds of names. The mission (only 4 or 5 stakes) was given at least 3,000 to 4,000 "Lost Sheep" names to locate.

As missionaries, we also included in our weekly numbers how many "lost sheep" had been found and/or reactivated. If a lost sheep was located and contacted, we were instructed to invite them back to church and baptize their families. If the lost sheep asked for their name to be removed from the records, we were supposed to ignore the request. This was straight from the mouths of the General Authorities that would come and train us on the new program. Incidentally, Elder Ballard preferred to call this program "The Plan of Happiness".

Quite a bit of information about the "Lost Sheep" was included on the lists. It appeared that most of the lost sheep were baptized from the 1960's to the 1980's. In the 60's, missionaries would set up baseball games and baptize many neighborhood kids - hence, they have since been dubbed the "baseball baptisms".

The mission baptized a lot of people while I was on my mission - I baptized about 80 myself. From what I know, not one of them is active in the LDS Church.

I was a member of the Preston England Stake when you were on your mission. The old members were not very happy about all the baptisms knowing that they would leave when the missionaries did. You're right most of them didn't stick around long but some did and a few moved to the States and as far as I know are still TBM (True Believing Mormons). There are still hundreds of members on the lists with only a few who attend church. One of my friends was a 'baseball baptism' (a bit before my time) and was TBM until a few years ago.

I served a mission in Peru from 97-99. I have lots of firsthand info with this stuff.

In the seventies and eighties, the church experienced huge growth in Peru. Some of the baptisms were real, some were fake. One young man I met in Moshoqueque, for example, was baptized after a soccer game. The missionaries offered him a cool bath after getting all sweaty in the game.

The church in that time was only concerned with numbers. The more people that were baptized the better. Wards and stakes and branches divided rapidly as soon as the minimum number requirements were met. Before you knew it, you had lots of wards and branches with the minimum number of members and leaders.

Financial hardships hit the members. MANY MANY (I cannot overemphasize this) bishops were excomunicated for stealing tithing funds. This really hit the leadership pool.

Another complication is that to be a bishop you must be married in the temple. In northern Peru, the closest temple is in Lima, a grueling, expensive, 12-hour bus ride away.

It has come to the point there that if you are married in the temple you are qualified to be a bishop. Many terrible bishops (men that were great at driving other people inactive for their zealous behavior) were in place because there was literally nobody else who qualified for the position.

Nowadays, there are wards and branches that have 300+ baptized members on the roles but only 6-15 active attendees every Sunday. Missionaries would often give the sacrament meeting talk, bless the sacrament, teach the sunday school lesson and priesthood meeting lessons.

The reason there are so many branches as opposed to wards is that the leadership requirements to make a ward are much stricter than those for a branch. Leadership is so sparse that in several wards and branches that I attended, excommunicated former bishops were asked by the current leadership to teach lessons, offer prayers, or give talks. There just wasn't anyone else who could do it.

I always got upset whenever the Ensign ran those "Oh, the church is so strong in South America" articles. I knew it was hiding the truth.

1) Why do so many go inactive?

There are lots of different reasons why baptized people go inactive there.

The primary reason is that their missionary is transferred. A lasting friendship really develops between the elders/sisters and the investigators. In the Chiclayo mission, we baptized more single mothers than any other demographic. I think this is because the single mothers were looking for a good, stable male figure in their life both for themselves and for their children. Missionaries are generally well-dressed, respectful, and are devoted to a good cause (god and their religion). Plus, the elders are willing to spend long amounts of time with investigators during the teaching process. And of course, the missionaries are extra-nice to investigators because they want them to get baptized (Some elders in my mission gave away brooms, trash cans, etc. to get their investigators to commit to baptism). Inevitably, the missionary will be transferred. And many many many converts stop attending church within a couple of weeks of the missionary's reassignment. The great majority of them never come back. All of the people I baptized do not attend church anymore.

Many new members are insulted or offended by the veteran members. When a new convert joins the church, they are often unaware of all the "normal" things members of the church do. The new men may attend sacrament meeting without a white shirt and tie, the women may come without a dress, etc. Many of them will do this because they simply can't afford to buy new clothes and haven't been baptized long enough to save the necessary money. Sure enough, some member of the ward will take it upon themselves to castigate the new guy for not getting with the program. The new guy will feel ashamed and never come back. Some bishops and branch presidents, in the spirit of getting their members to be more obedient to the church, were infamous for driving their wards to inactivity. (One bishop in Chiclayo was so dense he thought the "keys" of the priesthood were the actual physical keys to the chapel.)

The members never really "found out the church wasn't true." I don't know why, but the concept of a "true" church as opposed to a "false" one never really sank in for a lot of people. Maybe it's the Peruvian culture or the huge influence of the Catholic church. I think the fundamentalist black/white, God/Satan, true/false view of religion is unique to United States culture. Also, there isn't nearly as much "anti" literature in Spanish like there is in English.

Family pressures are another big factor. Some LDS converts still had their babies baptized in the Catholic church to please relatives. Family traditions and unity are huge in Peru, so it's not easy to join a new religion and suddenly have everyone talking poorly about you and your new faith.

2) Why is it hard to attend the temple?

You hit on most of the main problems. Tithing is the single most difficult issue for all members of the church in Peru. People can hardly buy bread for their children, let alone donate 10% of their income to their church. The poverty there is staggering. Imagine living in a house made of cardboard and newspaper or having to wait in line for three hours to get fresh water. They simply don't have any extra money. Like I mentioned earlier, many many bishops were excommunicated for dipping into tithing funds.

Because the members don't pay tithes, the church doesn't build more temples. The members closest to the temple in my mission had a 12 hour bus ride. Outlying provinces could tack on another 4 hours to the trip-- each way! Imagine having to ride 16 hours in a bus each way to do endowment sessions... or to get married! Many wards or stakes will have an annual "Caravan to the Temple." They rent a bus to take them to Lima and spend all day doing endowment and sealing sessions.

Also, going to the temple as a first-generation member can be even stranger than for those that were born in the covenant. Many of those that make it to the temple have no idea what the garments are before they are endowed. One member in the Las Americas ward taught his primary-aged children the signs and tokens after being endowed. I can imagine the look of surprise the missionaries had when those kids gave them the "sure sign of the nail."

The December 29, 2002 Salt Lake Tribune article, "2002 Utahn of the Year Gordon B. Hinckley," repeats the oft-quoted myth that the LDS Church is "the world's fastest-growing church." Though this may have once been true, it is no longer the case among even Christian churches.

LDS researcher David Stewart comprehensively addresses LDS Church growth in a paper located at www.cumorah.com/report.html from which I take the following statistics and quotes: "[The] . . . LDS Church ranks 23rd among the 149 participating denominations in overall U.S. growth rate . . . " and further, worldwide, "The Assemblies of God are growing at approximately 10 percent 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 percent per year."

In fact, LDS Church growth rates have declined from 5 percent to less than 3 percent since the late 1980s. Additionally, the LDS Church does not adjust its membership tallies to reflect those who no longer identify themselves as members, or who are no longer actively participating. Were it to do so, its membership would drop by an estimated 65 percent to approximately 4 million participating members.

It is clear that the LDS Church is not the world's fastest-growing religion.

Mary Ann and I left the Church in 1993. Three out of our four children were baptized members when we did so. There was some anxiety felt by our kids when we left the Church. They feared that if they left with us, they would be ostracized by their friends, condemned, isolated and judged. In other words, they were somewhat hesitant to immediately bail from a system of life and social support that was the only network they knew.

So, Mary Ann and I decided to ease them out gradually. We allowed them to stay in the Church for a year after we left, although we did not take them to Church--and they did not go. During that time, we concentrated on building and strengthening our relationships with them, underscoring that our family was their safety net and pulling together around them.

There was, unfortunately, some negative reaction toward our children from some in their Mormon peer groups, who warned that now that we, the parents, had abandoned the faith (and assuming our children would, too), our kids would be left with no moral compass to guide them through life and would fall into all kinds of nefarious activities and lifestyles.

Nonetheless, after a year, our baptized children were ready to leave the confines of the Mormon fold. During the period of the previous year, they had discovered who their true friends were, realized that they had our love and support at home, and felt confident and happy enough in "the outside world" to make the formal transition out of a cult system of control and condemnation into a world of acceptance, personal freedom, broader humanity and self-actualization.

As their parents and legal guardians, we wrote letters for each of them, in their behalf and with their input, directing the Church to take their names off the rolls. They, with us, signed those letters.

It was a deliberate and careful process in which our first priority was to protect the psychological well-being of our children. Today, our family is doing fine (with all four kids living at home, as several of them are going to local colleges and universities, working and trying to save money for school by avoiding rent). We face all the same thrills, chills and occasional spills of raising children in the real world. But we would never go back, for all the Jello in Utah.

Mary Ann has written, I feel, very eloquently and movingly on this experience of coming out with our children from the Morg, as well as on other personal aspects of our lives that were affected--and how we coped with it all.

You can go to Ex-Mormon Updates and click on her remarks, where they are archived They are written in a way and with a sense of sensitivity and realism, I think, that might be helpful and healing for others in similar situations with their own children. They certainly have been as much for us. Peace.

This is what the Seventh Day Adventist lists as statistics on their website for year end 2001:

2000 year end 11,687,229
baptisms 931,335
Deaths (44,298)
Dropped (153,121)
Missing (91,823)
(6488) other adjustments
2001 year end membership 12,320,834
year end 2001 congregations 51,086
year end 2000 congregations 48,987
net increase in congregations 2,099

Here is what the Mormon Church is reporting according to their church news and 2003 church almanac

2000 year end 11,068,861
convert baptisms 292,612
children of record 69,522
??? (36,477)
2001 year end membership 11,394,518

year end 2000 wards/branches 25,921
year end 2001 wards/branches 26,084
net increase in wards/branches 163

The 36,477 is less than what the SDA is reporting for deaths. Considering that both churches are about the same size it looks like the LDS does not adjust for people who have dropped their membership. Also look at the dismal number of new wards/branches the LDS has for 2001. The year 2002 is looking even worse for the Morg. Only 18 new stakes through December 20, 2002, according to the Church News and 16 stakes dissolved through October 1, 2002 according to the 2003 Church Almanac. The LDS will be lucky to break even. What would one expect for all the time and money the average member puts into the LDS the only thing they get is a lousey temple recommend which allows them to dress up in a Pillsbury doughboy outfit and recite a rote ceremony borrowed from the Masons.

There is an excellent, comprehensive report on church membership demographics at: http://www.cumorah.com/report.html I, was pleasantly surprised by the bleak statistics.

The stake president in one of my former stakes (Walnut Creek) has decided to consolidate 3 wards into 2 wards. This stake was considered to be a vital and healthy stake with many faithful members. This move is not a popular one. The ward that is disappearing was the wealthiest ward, the "country club" ward. The SP is from this particular ward, so it took guts to dissolve the unit.

I'm sure that this is not an isolated incident. I've posted before about consolidation of wards and stakes in the midwest, but this is the first first-hand example I have seen here in California, tho I've heard of other stakes "disappearing". The mormon church is real trouble, folks.

I am not at all surprised to see so many stakes dissolved in Chile. I would guess that 80% or more of the membership down there is on paper only. The mission I served in was not as successful as those in Santiago (we had only around 100 baptisms a month, compared to their 1,000 or so), but we found it impossible to retain the few baptisms we had. While hearing of the outrageous conversion success of our colleagues in the capital city, I had no doubt that those baptisms were essentially a hoax perpetuated by desperate 20-year-olds vying for A.P. Chile is has been so incredibly saturated with the Mormon message, and the conversions there have been so half-hearted, that I'm completely convinced that the membership there can only shrink from now on.

The most interesting statistic I think is how many attend Sacrament Meeting but not Sunday School/Priesthood Meeting. I think this number is well over 50% in my ward and includes the Bishopric. Pretty cynical (sin-ical?) for the Bishopric to think that Sunday School is almost never worth attending. And don't give me that "they are too busy excuse." I am a busy person too, what I do is important and we all have the same 24 hours in each day. How we spend it is mostly a matter of our priorities.

These are people who are committed enough to pay the price in time and effort to show up to church but who then find what is offered there on a week by week basis so bad that they either sit in the foyer and gossip or leave early. Some exceptions due to work schedules, family gatherings, etc., are expected. But 50%?

Another related statistic is how many show up late for Sacrament Meeting and how many leave early? How many pinch a small child to make it squawk so they can take it out? How many, who do attend these other meetings, prolongue their conversation in the foyer or wander around on the lawn and make every passive effort to minimize exposure time to "instruction?"

September 11, 2002
There are three kinds of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Then, in a class all by itself, is the line of total bullshit the Morg feeds us. I've compiled LDS membership data made available to the public every year at general conference (source: www.lds.org), and it's clear that the numbers are being fudged.

Whether it's incompetence on the part of ward/stake clerks or a deliberate wagging of the dog by the big boys in SLC, who knows. I suspect it's some of both. In defense of the ward and stake clerks, though, my guess is that most of them are trying to do the best job they can, but all they're given when they receive their assignments is a manual written by old men in Salt Lake and getting told to pray.

Not only do the numbers not add up, but the categories the Church reports on has changed over the years, too. I think what they're doing now is counting children, regardless of age, as members, and then re-counting them again when they're baptized at 8 years old. I’m not 100% sure this is what they’re doing, but that’s the best guess I can come up with given the available data and trends.

The "increase in children of record" has been reported every year since 1997, after not having been reported since 1989. Also, the amount of baptisms of eight-year-olds was reported every year until (and I know this will surprise you) 1997. Before and including 1989, both statistics were reported. This is clearly an instance of the statisticians wagging the dog. IMO, the stats being reported keep changing simply because the Church is trying to hide its declining numbers. Less children are being baptized, less children are being born, and the number of converts annually has hovered around 300,000 (give or take approximately 10%) since about 1989, yet in that same time span total LDS Church membership has grown from about 7.3 million 11.4 million, if you accept what the Church reports at face value. :)

So, the percentage of total membership at the end of the year who were new converts during that year has declined rapidly. All else being equal, as the Church grows and its missionary force increases in size, shouldn't the amount of annual converts grow, too?

Ah, but all else is NOT equal. In 1989, there were 318,940 converts and 39,739 full-time missionaries on December 31. In 2000, there were 273,973 converts and 60,784 full-time missionaries on December 31. So clearly missionary “effectiveness” is going down – but why? Keep in mind that about half of new converts (at least in areas of the church where I grew up) go inactive within the first year.

Interestingly enough, one year later on December 31, 2001, there were only 60,850 full-time missionaries in the field. With Church membership allegedly growing so much, shouldn't there be more prospective missionaries? Ah, but Mr. Hinckley has found a way to get around this - they've decided to "make it tougher" for people to qualify for mission worthiness. Theoretically that might mean less, but more effective missionaries, but clearly the numbers say otherwise.

Why should the Church have to lie about its numbers? I think we all know the answer to that one... I wonder how much their spin doctors are getting paid.

September 13
Note that in 1999, 1990, 1989, 1985, 1981, 1979, and 1975 there was a negative member loss. (Theoretically, membership increase during the year is equal to convert baptisms plus baptisms of children, minus "member loss" which is comprised of deaths, excommunications, and voluntary name removal.)

This means that during those years there were fewer new members (converts plus children) than there was total membership increase. Clearly this defies all logic, since there should always be a positive member loss because there will always be some people throughout the course of the year who die, are excommunicated, or choose to have their names removed. Where did these “extra members” come from?

Also, the Loss per 1000 should remain relatively stable, since it represents the fraction of total membership that is lost each year due to death, excommunication, and name removal. Death rates do not fluctuate significantly from year to year. The only sources, then, for fluctuation of "Loss per 1000" would be due to changes in the amount of members who are excommunicated or have their names voluntarily removed annually. This begs the question of why these rates would fluctuate so wildly - so wildly that, again, logic is defied.

Publishing the amount of annual excommunications and name removals would certainly help to clarify this ambiguity. The Church did publish death rates from 1973 to 1983, so the rate of excommunication and name removal can be easily calculated by comparing the death rate and the member loss rate, since the member loss would equal deaths + excommunications and voluntary name removals. We can clearly see that this calculated statistic varies so widely that it is highly unlikely it would be accurate – but its calculation is based on “accurate” data provided by the Church! There is also no way of knowing whether this is accurate, though, since the LDS Church refuses to provide this data. The death rates from 1984 onward were not published, but there is no reason to believe that the Church’s death rate would vary significantly from that of the U.S. and global death rates.

Another interesting thing to note is the precision of data provided. From 1977 to 1991, membership was rounded to the nearest 1,000 or 10,000, while during the same time period children baptisms were rounded to the nearest 1,000. Convert baptisms were rounded to the nearest 1,000 from 1978 to 1982. In every other year in all categories, the reported statistics were not rounded. This clearly shows that the Church had the ability to do a more accurate numbering of its people, but instead chose to use the less accurate method of fewer significant digits.

Furthermore, while the annual increase in membership hovered around 300,000 (give or take ten percent) from 1989 to 2001, the rate of increase in new units has dropped off. In mathematical terms, this shows that the number of members per unit (wards, branches, and stakes) is increasing. The Church would only increase the number of members per unit for a specific reason, most likely to keep its units functioning due to increased inactivity of its members. The church creates or collapses units to keep its active membership in those units at a relatively stable level.

Also note the change in categories reported and when those changes took place. It seems that a change in which categories get reported is made when there has been a steady decrease over time in a particular category. Since 1997, only the “increase in children of record” has been reported; from 1992 to 1996, only eight-year old baptisms were reported, and in years prior to and including 1991, both eight-year-old baptisms and increase in children of record were reported categories. Moreover, the Church does not specifically define who counts as a member and who doesn’t. It is unclear whether children, regardless of age (over or under 8) or actual baptismal status, are being counted or not. Additionally, over time, the Church has significantly decreased the statistics it reports on. In the early seventies, the statistical report was quite lengthy. In the past few years, however, the statistical report was very much condensed.

October 17, 2002 It is also very interesting to note how in some years, certain categories are very specific in their numbers, but others do not have many significant digits. Clearly, there has always been the capability to have an accurate count, so why haven’t they? However, the LDS Church continually redefines its own standards, so that makes it even harder for anyone else to know whom they’re counting in what categories.

For instance, there was a time when it appears as though only people who were actually baptized were being included in membership numbers. Now, however, it looks as though any children of members (whether they’re new, TBM, or haven’t gone in 10 years) are being counted as members, regardless of their age or baptismal and/or blessing status. It’s sickening to think, for instance that my 20-month-old niece is probably counted as a member, even though she’s rarely, if ever, even been in a church, nor have either of her parents in several years.

I need to look up the average death rates in Census and other records and compare that with member loss. That would be an interesting way to attempt to infer the number of excommunications and name removals there are annually.

If anyone would like to see that actual numbers, please email me at patrickusu@hotmail.com and I would be more than happy to pass them along to you. The great apostasy is picking up speed – isn’t it great? ?

I contacted the Single Adults leader in this area (CA)when I moved and was told that there were 800 single older adults here in this county. At the many firesides I attended, more often than not, roughly 20 people would show up, possibly 4 of them men. - 09/06/2002 - anon

As a missionary in Brazil, I was the district leader in a growing branch with 2 Elders and 2 Sister missionaries. The sisters were teaching a guy who had gone to church once and had accepted baptism and I was in charge of the baptismal interview. The branch president and zone leader were really pushing for this guy to get baptized. I found him unworthy (still smoking) and wanted him to go to church at least twice before baptism and found his testimony weak (he couldn't even read so he had no testimony of the BOM). Finally, I said no. I told the ZL that this guy would go inactive for sure. The ZL approved him for baptism because we needed male baptisms. Sure enough, he was baptized (the ZL did the interview) and he never went to church again and was never confirmed. I wish I had been wrong. I remain a True Believing Mormon but this story still makes me sad. - 08/11/2002 - anon

I'm a stake clerk in a city where eight years ago we had divided two stakes into three stakes in preparation for "prophesied growth". That growth didn't occur. In fact, we continued to lose members due to "ethnic change" in our area (blacks and Hispanics displacing whites). We recently (a year ago) reversed that action and redivided three stakes back into two stakes. Several wards were in trouble having little or no leadership so they had to be combined as well. It appears this may be stabilized the situation for the time being.

No one has mentioned the "Lost Sheep" program instituted by the church a couple of years ago. Thousands of membership tracking sheets were distributed through the stakes to the wards. Our stake processed about 400. These sheets came from the church membership department and each represented a "lost sheep", someone for whom there was a membership record but no current address. Our stake was the last known address for these people. We were asked to inquire of neighbors, older members of the ward, relatives, or anyone else to get a lead on where these people might be. It was a pretty much a futile effort as the trail was so cold. We found scant information on 2 or 3 in the stake. If this program was worldwide, there must be close to a million "lost sheep". And these represent just those that have been turned in by ward clerks tired of having them on the ward records.

What was called the "Activity and Inactivity" study done for the Church, with Stan Albrecht as the lead investigator ("Consequential Dimension"), found some very interesting things, and happily most of these findings have been published in sociology journals. Data from this study are among the strongest we have, from a scientific point of view.

Strikingly, of every 100 people born in the Church, only 22% remain active throughout their lives. That means 78% are inactive for a year or more at some time. Most, 44%, return to activity, while 34% remain inactive. When President Hinckley emphasizes activation and retention, he obviously understands how vital it is that we keep our members active and strong.

Those who become inactive usually do so during the teenage and young adult years. Those who return usually do so during young adulthood.

Lifestyle issues, which usually involves some degree of disobedience to commandments, are major reasons why people drop into inactivity, but members give many different reasons for their inactivity. Lack of social integration into the ward is also a major cause of inactivity.

If young Latter-day Saints grow up in a religious home in which many gospel principles are practiced, 44% will remain active their whole lives. I find that figure amazingly low and quite discouraging-if the parents are doing everything they can, there is still over a 50% chance their children will become inactive for a year or more. On the other hand, of the young Latter-day Saints who grow up in an inactive home, 13% of them will remain active. That figure is much higher than I would have guessed. There are some people who do marvelously well even with poor parental examples.

Another major finding of the activity/inactivity study was the relationship between education and religiosity (Albrecht & Heaton). In their report of this study, Stan Albrecht and Tim Heaton first showed that for the American people as a whole, people with a grade school or high school education are more likely to be religious than those with a college education. For LDS people, the opposite is true. For men, the more education they receive, the more likely they are to attend church and to be religious in other ways. The same is generally true for women, except that women with a graduate school education are slightly less likely to attend church than those with a college education. On other dimensions of religiosity, the trend is not as apparent. I can only show a little of this research. On the dimension of gospel study, men with higher education are likely to study more. For LDS women, those with the least education spend the most time in gospel study, a truly non-intuitive finding.

The authors say [quote] "having a calling is a key link between education and attendance," [end quote] and that the lay character of priesthood organization leads to the greater activity of well-educated men. The serious concern, here, is that the Church does not do as well in providing success experiences and encouraging the activity of men with a lesser degree of education.
http://fhss.byu.edu/adm/hickman_lecture.htm

I am currently waiting for my official exit letter from the church...however I have resided in Waco, Tx for the past 13 years, and at this time, there are only 2 wards, the same 2 wards have existed for 25 years...absolutely no growth, emotionally, spiritually, or physically as for as LDS...other non Mormon churches are growing in abundance..To be frank, I think it is because the wards are very cliquish. There are "in groups" and the "out groups"...so sad...But i do remember 6 years ago the than RS president circled the number 16 on the black board, and told us this is the number of women in the ward who requested their names be removed from the rolls of the church... In this area a bishop has served 3 times, and another 4.

When they cut out janitorial employees for ward/stake houses and temples, you know they are sending a loud message.

I heard that ward and stake budgets were cut back every year for several years now. (Anyone know for sure?)

I have heard that bonuses were not handed out to church employees last year. Raises were not given out. (Anyone know for sure about this also?)

They have had to hire at least two more people to process the resignation letters.

Tithing is down, which has a huge trickle down effect. Investments are not making it. (Mine either!) You can tell when they are having problems as the leaders will start talking about the importance of tithing in every meeting!!!

The members are having smaller families, fewer are remaining active members, fewer of the missionary age ones are going on missions, the seniors cannot make up the slack, even though people are living longer now. Even when they do go on missions, very few convert baptisms result and when they do, they drop out within a year.

The only core left for Mormonism is the generational Mormons and they will eventually die out. My guess is that the next generation will produce only about 10% TBM's.

The church statistics show that the church membership has been stagnant for about 10 years.

They have been building temples at an fast rate, now unable to keep them in use. I heard that the temple president and wife from LA area were making the rounds a couple of years ago, crying in Sacrament mtg. about how the temple is not being used.

I know from personal experience they are making calls to retired people (any temple recommend holder will do) over 100 miles away to be temple workers. They do not care if the wife is a member or not, they just need bodies and desperately.

I noticed that the schedule has been getting shortened each years. Number of LA Temple sessions are down about 10% or more.

I heard that they are so desperate for people to go to the temple they will accept any partial tithing and give out the temple recommend. Have a problem with WofW, well, brother, work on it, go to the temple anyhow.

I went through a stake directory recently and could find no new members in five years or more. Also looked like the same 35% to 50% are still not attending. They combined two of the wards (several years ago) because there was not enough temple recommend holding male leadership or enough youth to sustain a ward.

I was the Elders Quorum secretary less than 3 months ago. The list of Elders was over 100 names and we had between 5-10 show up every Sunday. This was not counting the full time missionaries. Half the time, we didn't even see the counselors to the president and the teachers were never prepared for their lessons. It was always a sad sight to see so many people not show up to church, and the ones who did show up, bail out after sacrament. - 05/31/2002 - from Ganesh

From the April 1980 Ensign under Statistical Profile, I found some interesting projections. (old Ensigns are at www.lds.org).

LDS Missions
Projection - 190 in 1980 to 460 in 2000
Reality - only 333 missions at 12-31-01. And the number of missionaries actually declining. Foreign missionaries signing up is lower than desired (hence the new perpetual education fund - available primarily to foreign RMs). USA missionaries on the decline (perhaps due to lower birth rate - LDS women not the prolific rabbits of past generations)

LDS stakes
Projection - 1,190 in 1980 to 3,600 in 2000
Reality - only 2,607 stakes at 12-31-01. And they only added 102 over the past 4 years. At that rate they'll be lucky to reach 3,600 by the year 2040. And true solid growth of committed members is probably slowing even further!!

According to the statistics I dug up, TCOJCOLDS is projected to be 40 YEARS BEHIND SCHEDULE in forming the 3,600th stake!!!

In 1980, they thought it would take 20 years to reach 3,600 stakes. In reality it looks like it will take over 50 years!! And if the decline to the rotting foundation of LDS Inc sets in quicker than expected, they may never see 3,600 stakes this century!!!!! Or ever in history!!!!!!

LDS Wards/Branches
Projection - 9,550 in 1980 to 29,000 in 2000
Reality - 26,084 Wards/Branches at 12-31-01. They fell short. But keep a few things in mind. Much of the church growth over the past 20 years has been in poor, uneducated third world type countries. Inactivity rates are very high. Of necessity they form smaller wards. And some "branches" probably consist of 10 active members with 100 or more inactive. Even in the USA, wards typically consist of fewer active members today than 20 years ago.

Members
Projection - 4.6 million in 1980 to 11.1 million in 2000
Reality - 11.3 million at 12-31-01. They are close to schedule here. But it's bogus as hell. Inactivity rates are skyrocketing in many places around the world. Of the 5 million in the USA, maybe only 3 million active. Of the 6 million out of the USA, maybe only 1 or 1.5 million active with many on the verge of dropping out at any given time. This is a tiny portion of the world's 6 billion and not growing fast at all. (less than 1 active Mormon per 1,000 human beings)

Melchizedek PH holders
565,000 in 1980
????? They won't tell us in 2000 !!!!!!
This statistic became secret !!!!!!!
Who knows - maybe there's about the same as 20 years ago. The vast majority of foreign male converts drop out long before getting the higher of Joe Smith's imaginary priesthoods.

In 1980, they projected church membership in 2000 at 11.1 million and wards/branches at 29,000, considering the logical number of members per unit. Note that this number was 383. If activity rates decline, then the ideal head count per unit must rise. This is exactly what happened. In 12/01 there were 433 members per unit, an increase of 13%. We can conclude that inactivity rates have increased by about 13%. This is probably an underestimate, though, because LDS growth has been concentrated recently in places where the church is new, meaning that there's a large number of new branches. This would suggest a lower number of members per unit. But we actually see the opposite.

The ONLY way to account for lagging stake creation and yet have achieved the membership total is that a good chunk of the membership is inactive and/or the church cannot account for its membership (dead, no address, etc.) and/or I think we are all seeing this ... the Church is NOT subtracting the number of those who request name removal. More than likely it is a combination of all three. You can't create a stake if nobody shows up on Sundays to lead and/or attend the meetings!!!

Cuxhaven is a fishing town on the North Sea in north-western Germany. Population in the mid 1960's was probably ~ 50,000.

The local branch had about 100 members with maybe 15 active. There was one Elder, the branch pres., and one aaronic priesthood holder, the branch pres' son.

In ensuing years the branch pres died, his son was made an elder and then branch pres. Shortly thereafter the new branch pres had an extramarital affair and leaves the church. A few months ago the remaining missionaries were pulled out and the branch meeting house closed.

I don't know the present membership total but with no priesthood leaders, no meeting house, and no missionaries, and with most of the members I knew now dead, it appears that Cuxhaven is headed for the dust bin of Mormon history.

There have been missionaries in Cuxhaven for most of the past 100+ years. I busted my buns there for eleven grueling months, and now there's nothing to show for it. In a way I'm glad!

I'm a convert. I was active for 20 odd years. Very active (my sins notwithstanding). Now I am for all intents and purposes inactive. Served a mission as a single member convert...and had my eyes opened. A lot of the baptisms were young girls between the ages of 15-25. I personally never heard of a an elder getting in trouble with one of his baptisms. And in all the while I was serving only one elder ever got sent home. Many baptisms went inactive almost immediately. Mine included I regret to say. Yet the emphasis continued to, as I put it in a letter to my MP, 'baptize, baptize, baptize!' Nothing wrong with baptizing mind you...so long as they stuck with it. Honestly I could tell right away if someone was going to stick or not.

The result of this over baptizing was a) for the immediate moment it looks good on the records; but b) you create a tremendous backlog of inactive members. We had a 'concern' program and in each district one of the elders served as a 'concern coordinator.' (Ordinarily we had apts. of four to six elders. The most 'worthy' was the DL. Whatever was left was the CC. This established a hierarchy amongst the elders and one knew his place and future in the mission immediately simply by whether or not his first companion was a DL or a CC. Mine was a CC.)

Every companionship had a list of about 4-5 'concern' members which we were to visit each week. Our MP thought this would be a boon to baptism since, because these were new members and filled with the Spirit, they would be referring their friends and neighbors. Sorry, Prez. There were two chances of that happening--slim and none.

What's my point? We were baptizing on evidence of testimony NOT on fruit meet for repentance. Having the DL sign off on your baptisms is something akin to the fox guarding the hen house. The local leadership should sign off on baptisms as they are the ones who have to deal with these inactives after they join the church. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen though.

But there is a slightly more insidious side to the high number of inactives. (Insidious might be too strong a word. I'll search for another.) With massive inactives amongst the baptisms that leaves the dyed-in-the-wool BIC born-and-raised-in-the-church as still, to this day, the main source of the strength of the Church. It's working...for now.

You can not judge the growth or lack of growth of the Mormon church by the number of new stakes created each year. The good old boys in Salt Lake could artificially combine every two stakes into one and cut the number of Stakes in half tomorrow. They might have some stakes with over twenty wards and others with under five wards. Alternatively they could cut the size of a ward down and decrease the number of wards required to form a stake and double the number of stakes in one day. How big stakes and wards are is partially a local decision about whether they want people to serve in more stake callings (many small stakes), or to serve in more ward callings or to have fewer callings.

By the way, for the skeptic who thinks the numbers on the table below are made up, you can verify them on the church's official website at www.lds.org/ and click on gospel library then church magazine. Then type in the search box "statistical report." (spelling statistical is the hard part.) It gives you the membership data for each year, published in the May Ensign conference report, in a rather odd order and you might have to search for specific years, like "statistical report 1986" to get all the data for the last 30 years. You will see that at times the total number of stakes jumps up and at other times they grow slowly as they are doing now.

All those formula with p values tell you is whether data is variable due to randomness or whether you can be confident that the changes are real. And you'd have to be mighty thick between the ears not to know that a drop from 142 to 39 is more than just a statistical accident. The statistical tests do not imply how or why the changes in the numbers might occur. Hell, some of them stakes might be translated up into heaven with the city of Enoch for all we know.

If you look carefully and compare year to year figures beyond the first entry (number of stakes) you will find some very interesting things about the membership data. Like sometimes the total jump in church membership for one year is almost a couple hundred thousand greater than the sum of the number of baptisms of children of record added to the sum of new converts and that doesn't include subtracting out number of deaths and excommunications. One is forced to conclude that large numbers of RESURRECTIONS must be quietly adding to the total membership of the church!

My take on it is that all of the yearly published membership data is grossly (at least 20%) inaccurate, possibly contrived and can not be trusted because it doesn't add up. I suspect widespread incompetent ward clerks and bean counters at headquarters are more responsible than any massive conspiracy from the higher levels.

Bottom line is we really don't know that much about church membership and growth. If we can't trust the simple numbers given to us at conference to be accurate, then how can we be expected to believe the more complex ethical, theological and spiritual messages?

I know a little bit about the Iowa City Iowa Stake creation. That was simply an artificial move of creating a bunch of little branches in small towns so that Davenport and Cedar Rapids looked like they were ready for a new stake. It is actually a joke. If this is how they are going about building stakes they are going to weaken the church even more because stakes soak up so many people for leadership. - 09/30/2001 - Tired, from the recovery bulletin board

Rather than use a Urim and Thummum to translate this statistical formula, you may just click here to see the graph image: New Stake 1995 to 2001

data: year and stakes
t = -7.1134, df = 5, p-value = 0.0008513
alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0
sample estimates:
cor
-0.9539772

As you can see, the data show very good predictive value corr= -0.95. A 1 or -1 would be perfect correlation, a 0 would be no correlation. The p value is also highly signficant. In other words, you can have a very high degree of confidence that these results are not a fluke.

Praising the entrepreneurial spirit of two ex-Mormons and their web site the brethren are publicly pleading for the masses to download their own temple recommends and the "Come On Down!" to the holy temples.

The brethren however are warning the public to learn from the brethren's own mistakes and to do no proxy work for Jewish people. The Mormon Church has narrowly avoided two major lawsuits brought on by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League over the Mormon's practice of baptizing Holocaust victims for the dead.

There are currently two locations on the internet where you can print off a temple recommend. We look forward to seeing you in the temple.

09/20/2000 - anon from Southern California
As a matter of fact the "great divide" 3 wards from 2 is falling apart. Many people are moving out of 2nd and 5th ward to my ward 4th ward the biggest of the three. 1st ward is losing a lot of people. Time will tell to see what happens.

No new buildings, no stakes dividing, no growth here. It is easier to convert and attempt to keep them than re-activate inactives. It is real interesting to watch.

I believe (as opposed to knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt) that the morg is hanging all hopes of survival, growth and of "being special and unique in the world" on its "Magic Wand", "Ace up the sleeve", "trump card" - the temple. They are desperately trying to retain converts and get them to the temple so that the converts will "stick with the program." The morg is building McTemples in hope of hooking in more adherents.

I believe that this effort will fail in the long run. Here is some evidence which was forwarded to me by a "closet exmo" currently serving in priesthood leadership in California. More about the inside tactics the morg leadership uses to prod and poke the faithful into action will follow in later posts.

Elder John B. Dickson, First Counselor in Area Presidency (notes taken from his speech)

To see the face of God, we must have these ordinances. Temple attendance as the Los Angeles temple has dropped nearly 50% since 1989. Even if you factor in the San Diego temple, attendance is still dropping. Just since 1993, we've gone from 194,111 to 164,457 deceased endowments.

What would be a reasonable goal for 1998? (The group agreed upon 200,000.) This breaks down to 50,000 deceased endowments each quarter. We have 75 stakes in our temple district. If each recommend holder did just one more endowment more than last year, we would be there easily.

1. Bishops inform stake presidency about those who have let their recommends lapse, stake presidency should interview them.
2. Get a good ward temple committee together and get them involved in temple trips.
3. Call more ordinance workers in each stake - they become cheer leaders for temple work. The wards with the highest number of temple workers have the highest temple statistics, in general.
4. We must get converts and less active members to the temple for baptisms. If a new convert can do temple baptisms within a couple months after baptism, retention goes from 40% to 80%.
5. Take a friend or two each time you go to the temple.
6. Do multiple sessions when you go to the temple.
7. Family history center temple trips with family names.
8. Do an endowment each time you go to the temple for a sealing.
9. Stake and ward temple excursions.
10. Increase home teaching - this is essential! If home teaching increases, temple attendance will increase.
11. Stake Presidency Personal Priesthood Interview with bishops need to happen each month until temple attendance and home teaching improve. Home teaching needs to be in the 80% range.

Too many people only come to the temple once. We have done temple work for only 0.02% of those who have lived on the earth. If we don't get our people to the temple then we are no better than any other denomination.

Within 6 months after the church stopped tracking temple attendance by stake, temple attendance dropped 12%. In the next few months, the number of sealings and own endowments dropped 18%. Temple baptism nights for new converts have been expanded and will be further expanded, if necessary. Stake Presidencies should give members a goal card for temple attendance at temple recommend interviews.

If the temple is so wonderful, why does it take cattle prodding, coercion and manipulation to get people to go the first time and keep on going? When will lay priesthood leaders get completely fed up with full time General Authority church employee types telling them that are failing miserably in their callings even though the lay leaders are working full time, supporting their families and spending 20 plus hours a week in church work. When will members consider it a violation of confidentiality and privacy invasion for their bishop to "fink" on them to the stake president when they let their temple recommend lapse. If going to heaven or the Celestial Kingdom is based upon free agency and choice why all the heavy handed tactics to get people there?

I say cut all the hoopla and just have Hinckley do the proxy work for just one man and one woman representing all of human kind and call this "insane work" done. Let people spend their time doing something real like serving in their local communities.

My source for this temple attendance data says that he currently has seen no perceptible change in temple attendance figures, in spite of this supposed push by the brethren. I hope to verify this some how by other sources because accuracy is important here.

Answer: None that I am aware of. Just rushing through new members to the temple after one year. The push is to push them through. One set of missionaries was assigned to go and search out the YSA inactives in the mission. At least here in (a southern California city).

-7/15/2000 - Simon
Just before I left the church, they introduced a new item into convert baptismal services. When the Bishop welcomed the convert into the church the last thing he was to do before sitting down was to mention the temple and testify of its blessings. Immediately after the closing prayer, a mature couple in the ward assigned to family history and temple work, was to greet the convert and arrange a time when they could come into their home and teach them about the temple. Their sole aim was to commit the convert to go to a MacTemple in a years time.

Even as a Bishop I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable about the behind the scenes planning and scheming that goes on. The most irritating thing was the fact that the church had produced carefully worded dialogue to help commit the convert to feel a need to learn about the temple and to go there ASAP.

Every three months your Bishop and Stake President submit a report to 47 East South Temple that includes the following:

1. Total members
2. Average sacrament meeting attendance
3. Total families
4. Families visited by home teachers
5. Total Melchizedek Priesthood holders
6. Melchizedek Priesthood holders not attending any priesthood meeting
7. Total prospective elders
8. Prospective elders not attending any priesthood meeting
9. Total women
10. Women not attending any Relief Society meeting
11. Women contacted by visiting teachers
12. Total adults in their first year of membership
13. Adults n their first year of membership not attending any priesthood or Relief Society meeting
14. Men in their first year of membership who have not yet received the priesthood
15. Total endowed adults
16. Endowed adults without a temple recommend
17. Total young men
18. Young men not attending any priesthood meeting
19. Total young women
20. Young women not attending any Young Women Sunday meeting
21. Total children ages 3 through 11 years
22. Children on line 21 not attending any Primary meeting
23. Total children ages 0 months through 2 years.

Quarterly report submitted to Lucifer, Cain and Ed Decker by the angels in heaven "silent notes taking"

1. Total members sneaking out after sacrament meeting instead of attending whole meeting block
2. Total parents getting their kids to bear a testimony thus avoiding the ordeal themselves
3. Total lies to Bishop during personal interviews
4. Total members who lie about their temple attendance
5. Total members who just pretend to believe
6. Total members who admit to dis-belief
7. Total members who we have totally fooled into believing
8. Total endowed members making love at least monthly without their garments on
9. Total endowed members making love a least monthly with someone other than their legal and lawfully wedded spouse either with or without garments on
10. Total subscriptions to Church magazines
11. Total magazines recycled or donated to Deseret Industries without being read
12. Total members demanding that the bishop pay their rent and buy their groceries
13. Total members on Prozac
14. Total members on Zoloft
15. Total members on Welbutrin
16. Total members on Lithium
17. Total members on Viagra
18. Total members who do not close their eyes during the church prayers
19. Total adult youth leaders molesting those under the age of 18
20. Total Relief Society leaders pretending to let the male members govern the ward
21. Total Gospel Doctrine teachers smiling while deviating from the lesson manual and doing their own thing
22. Total male members spending 20 hours or more a week doing church work in order to avoid their wives and children
23. Total number of couples whose most significant time together is sitting next to each other in Ward Correlation

04/09/2000 - Vangelis
I have traveled widely in the country where I reside, Australia, and have often had callings that allow me access to membership information. Believe me when I say that all is definitely not well in Zion! membership in many areas is stagnant, retention and attendance is atrocious. Many converts are never seen again after a few weeks and attendance in many sacrament meetings hovers around 30-40%

03/08/2000 - anonymous ward clerk East coast USA
My ward in the eastern US has over 1000 names on the roster. We have several move in each week and we seldom see them at church. We assume that many on our list have moved out but we lack the personnel to chase them all down.

Sacrament Meeting attendance runs around 200, and total Sunday School attendance is 80 to 90 each week. That means about half the congregation leaves after one meeting.

The Elders Quorum is lucky to break 20 and a couple years back when we had a real hard-core Elders Quorum President that laid the law down on Home teaching, the attendance dropped to under 10 on many weeks. There are not more than 10 men in the Elder's quorum who are serious enough about home teaching to actually go out and do it regularly.

It has been more than a decade since the Quorum has made more than 50 Home teaching visits each month although the Quorum Presidency may visit perhaps another dozen each week. The High Priests do only a little better. The ward has at least 30 baptisms each year and some years back peaked at 90 baptisms a year.

Retention at one year is under 10%. Temple attendance is hard to gauge but on ward temple night we might get 20 to 30 out. General conference is listened to in the chapel at about the same time as church and so Sunday session attendance is similar to sacrament meeting attendance because most people generally forget that it is conference and show up anyway.

I've never been to a Sat conference session but I suspect attendance is well under 100 and probably under 50. Our ward does not have a magazine rep and does nothing to promote the Ensign. Judging from some remarks that are made in meetings, I doubt that anyone reads the Ensign much at all. We have problems keeping the various positions staffed and go through primary presidents, Elder's quorum presidents, YM/YW presidents, Sunday School presidents, etc. at the rate of 3 or 4 a year. "Lesser" callings such as teachers are generally only half-staffed and the presidencies often fill in or combine classes etc.

I was told by the financial clerk that the annual tithing paid is almost 2 million dollars from our struggling ward and our ward budget is about 11 thousand dollars. I am told that our ward is the strongest of the five in our Stake and about 40% of the stake officers are drawn from it along with a few other key people to serve in other wards. In spite of all of this a core group of devoted members, probably 20-30 families max are managing to raise up the next generation and every once in awhile we are blessed with a really good convert. So the church is growing and increasing in strength, admittedly not as fast as those PR boys in SLC claim. That's the grim truth. I am the ward clerk.

01/19/2000 - Lisa
When I was Relief Society secretary about 2 years ago, the number of sisters in my ward was around 175. Total Relief Society attendance hovered around 30. Attendance to Sacrament for that ward was kept a very close eye on, because we were hoping to get a building upgrade. At the time I moved out of the ward, we were trying to break total attendance of 200 for three months in a row. That was out of a ward membership of 453, I believe. The interesting thing is that for Sacrament especially, every week we had many members from other wards attending. We lived in a very popular tourist area. So in any given week our own ward members in attendance ran about 150.

More recently (approx. 6 months ago) , in another ward I was in, Relief Society attendance was approximately 20-25 women -- again out of about 170 female members. Hope this helps!

Line	Pixel height	Difference with next value
12000000	37	26
11000000	63	22
10000000	85	20
9000000	105	22
8000000	127	22
7000000	149	21
6000000	170	23
5000000	193	20
4000000	213	23
3000000	236	22
2000000	258	24
1000000	282	23
0	305	15
"shadow"	320	n/a

Year	Total membership that year	% growth achieved over the previous decade
1830	6	---
1840	16865	280983.3
1850	51839	207.4
1860	61082	17.8
1870	90130	47.6
1880	133628	48.3
1890	188263	40.9
1900	283765	50.7
1910	398478	40.4
1920	525987	32.0
1930	670017	27.4
1940	862664	28.8
1950	1111314	28.8
1960	1693180	52.4
1970	2930810	73.1
1980	4639822	58.3
1990	7761207	67.3
2000	11068861	42.6
2006	12560869	23.5 - normalized properly by taking it to the 10/6 power.

New Stakes Created	Year
142	1995
146	1996
128	1997
81	1998
37	1999
39	2000
26 (estimate for 2001)	2001

Attendance - How many attend soul saving meetings/activities.

2009 was the third-worst year for membership growth

Mormons take cue from the Scientologists

Mormonism went around the world but nobody wanted it

General Authority admits Church growth stalled

Orwellian Adjustments to LDS Church Statistics

Church publication manipulates graphic to imply continuous growth

Eliminated an entire stake in South Tacoma, WA this year.

Mormons who have left the church are influencing more people away from Mormonism than faithful Mormons are attracting converts

It's getting bad in Brazil too. 20-30 baptisms/mo

Elder Lynn A. Mickelsen said the church is not growing and Gordo is chewing people out because of it.

My bishop-brother-in-law said he's getting bombarded by ward members who are losing their testimony

Olympus Cove area in Salt Lake City - Tale of Two Stakes

Montgomery Alabama stake created in 1975

26,670 congregational units = 12.5 million members? I don't think so!

Church Membership Stats that don't add up

Official Church Statistics Indicate Growing Inactivity

LDS Stagnation Reports from the USA

Korea Stagnation

The Mormon Implosion will come from Apathy

Talking about the Censusforth

Where Mormons are -- the stone that isn't rolling forth

Number of church members in the United Kingdom - Obi-Wan Kenobi triumphs over Grievous B Hinckley!

Don't believe what they say about Brazil

The LDS Spin Doctors at work...

A snapshot of Mormon growth

Stats from Chile back "Snapshot of Mormon Growth

Mormon church membership numbers

Dragged to Saturday night General Conference

When the Mormon Church implodes, what will be the reaction of each member of the Board of Directors?

Guess what I heard a STAKE official admit in sac. mtng today?!!

Philippines: 49,000 converts in two years, . . BUT

Before you panic lets think about this

Jamaica fails to form first stake

How many "missing" Mormons?

Splitting ours, and dissolving a dead one

Houston temple running at 42% capacity!

Croydon 2nd Ward, south of London

Philippines - Phastest Growing Church

Jeffrey Holland in Chile - so what?

"Cumorah Report" states church growth declining despite increasing opportunities

LDS vs Internet

My LDS Ward hasn't converted a family in over a decade

Mormon implosion happening in Latin America for some time now...

Mormon implosion happening in Latin America for some time now...

Stake President Flooded with Resignation Requests

LDS high schooler in decline

Lowest growth percentage in over two decades!

Oaks says Church losing more members than it gains

"Children of Record" Baptisms Plummet

"The Lost Sheep Program" - Manchester England from 1992-1994

I remember the lost sheep program

Two Faced Church in Peru

LDS Church Ranks 23rd among the 149 Denominations

Leaving Mormonism behind--and taking our children with us

Reporting Statistics--Seventh Day Adventists vs LDS

Delighted in Bleak Statistics

Downsizing of stakes in California

Un-hot Chile Peppers - served from 96-98

Sluffing Block Meetings - Stats

Not only do the numbers not add up

Lost Sheep Project Fails

BYU Study - Activity & Inactivity

Waffling in Waco

Obvious to me that the church is in big trouble

LDS Projections in 1980

This proves that inactive rates have risen

Lagging Stake Creations

Cuxhaven as an example

Baptizing Young Maidens - Retention Rates

The Bottom Line

New Stake Creations Plummet

Non-Mormons Now Offered Temple Recommends

The Temple As A Magic Wand

Update as of July 2000 on the L.A. Temple Training of Dec 1997