Okay, gotta get a pulse on the situation out there.

1) Has your ward/stake been growing or declining?
2) Where is this? (State or Country)
3) If there's growth or decline, why? (members moving, read the internet, big families)

1. Mine is definitely declining.

2. Salt Lake valley, UT

3. Most of the decline is due to peoples' kids growing up and moving away. The ward is more of a middle-aged ward now whereas it used to be a family ward.

Quite a few members have moved out and been replaced with nonmormons.

We've had one convert within the ward in my memory, but have seen several families go inactive. I'm not sure if they believe or not, but none have made a scene on the way out.

The youth are leaving faster than the adults. It seems like the number of 16-19 year-olds leaving is about the same as those staying, with more YW than YM leaving.

Growing quickly and the ward has already split once. This is not surprising, though, because it is the south-end of the SL Valley where there is quite a bit of new construction. Once the area matures it'll be interesting to see what happens. Fortunately, I will be watching as an outsider ;)

Same here...tons of new construction with young families moving in. The stake will probably split within the next year.

I have family that live on the east bench and their wards are definitely in decline. Mostly old couples left, members moving out are almost always replaced by nonmembers, and the few with youth are moving to areas with more youth. They have to combine scouts and YM/YW from several wards.

A ward in our stake just split, but it is because people are moving into the area. In my old ward, there have been a couple of baptisms in the last 10 years. Those two were husbands that already had TBM wives.

1. Growing
2. St. George, UT
3. Large families and old snowbirds (who are set in their ways)

I'd like to also mention that my non-denominational Christian church has grown by 65% within the last year. We have just over 800 members and are going to be moving into a new building shortly. We are a good mix of elderly, middle-aged, and youth. We're about 80% former LDS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2013 11:59PM by StoneInHat.

I haven't paid attention lately, but last I heard, many families had to move out of southern California because of the recession and foreclosure crisis. From what I heard about that, the wards that met in the building I attended had to be combined. That chapel isn't someplace that I would drive past as it's out of the way of most convenient places for me, so I have no way of determining how full the parking lot is on Sundays.

The population of California is not dropping. If a bunch of Mormon families are moving out, somebody has to be moving in. Are only non-Mormons able to move to CA?

I'm not buying the "families are moving out because of..." stories. Families are dumping Mormonism, and the remaining TBMs are making up excuses.

Yeah that's how people tried to explain my scenario related below: "Well, the economy is down and people moved out of the city"

Yeah right, to where? And why is the city growing then? Who is moving in?

My stake recently realigned boundaries within the stake (not the boundaries of the stake itself) and in the process two wards dissolved, and one was created.

Effectively that means we lost a ward worth of people, in a city (and section of the city) that is growing steadily.

I lived in a Morridor ward for a long time. It evolved thus; First, it was full of huge families, so had a huge primary and youth program. Later it had tons of missionaries out, up to 20 at one point. Then tons of weddings. All the kids grew up and moved away. A lot of the older couples sold their big houses and moved to smaller ones somewhere else. Sometimes a young family would move into the vacant older homes, but some were non-member Hispanic families or they became rentals. Many of the homes are still occupied by the older couples. The young families have fewer kids, like two or three max compared to 5-10 like the old days.

So, they combined two adjacent similar wards. The resulting ward was still smaller and had an older demographic. Then the stake leaders reached several blocks away and included a condo complex in an attempt to get more young families. So the result is a smaller ward with older people in it and some poor families or married students.

I honestly don't know and it makes me really happy. But a non-LDS friend of mine told me she has two LDS families in her neighborhood and apparently they both figured out the church and decamped together. They heard about a Protestant church whose pastor was exLDS and went there and discovered a lot of other Mormon refugees. Although this isn't in my stake, it's not that far away.

Brother of Jerry reminded me of what my mom is saying about her small Northern CA town - that they have lost a ward and have so few YM/YW in the remaining 3 wards that they have to meet together. But it's all because everyone is moving away from the area. Funny but that same area was growing quickly in the 70s and 80s Mormon-wise. And her small town still seems to have the same number of people overall - maybe more.

Mine has been declining in terms of conversions ever since I left.

Its very assuring to know that others out there are taking it all with a grain of salt as well.

But lots of children being born and on their way. I think its ridiculous how many children Mormons can see as reasonable.

I suppose its because they want to get the most out of their spirit family. After all, its who thry believe they will be spending the rest of eternity with.

I just want to see it all fall apart. Perhaps remodel the old building into a laser tag arena or something.

Don't you know about all the spirit children up in heaven waiting to get bodies? I can't seem to avoid hearing about it - complete with promptings, visions, and a preempted visit to the doctor's office for the scheduled post #6 baby vasectomy.

My eyeballs are sore from too much rolling around in my head.

Growing. But it's right next to a large military base and many members are military. So it is not a real-life situation.

Hi Cludgie, can you elaborate? Just seems weird to me. I did a 20-plus-year career in the military. We had Mormons, but if anything, as a smaller percentage than in U.S. population. DW's ward has lots of veteran's but in the (higher) percentage you would expect for older guys and in the (lower) percentage you would expect for younger guys. So, it's probably me being dense, but I'm trying to figure why a military base would attract Mormons. Do the mishies proselytize the base?

I'm next to one of the humongo Army posts in Georgia. Always a bunch of Mormons in the military. I am retired AF, and was often in large military wards. In GA I hoped for and expected few Mormons. Sadly, there is a giant McChapel near my house, and many of my neighbors are Mormons. Even my neighbors over the backyard fence are active Mormons. (Lately I have been making sure that they see me drinking my after-work beer in the yard.)

I was once in a military ward in Wiesbaden, Germany, that had to split, and there were two primaries per ward. The tiny, local German ward--the "tenant ward"--was always pissed at us for the damage we did and the costs that we ran up. Back then there were, I think, five LDS servicemen's stakes in Germany. Now there are none. So few Mormon military in Germany that most everything is integrated into German wards and stakes. I bet the Germans hate that.

cludgie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am retired AF, and was often in large
> military wards.

Cludgie,

I'm retired AF as well. If you don't mind, care to share assignments in case we happened across each other?

- Keesler 74-75
- Offutt 75-77
- Eilson 77-80
- Hickam 80-82
- Kunsan 82-83
- Goodfellow 83-85
- Maxwell 85-86
- Pentagon 86-89
- Maxwell 89-90
- Whiteman 90-92
- Pentagon 92-96
- Hickam 96-98
- Pentagon 98-00
- An agency 00-02
- Pentagon 02-03

You?

Definitely declining.

Happy Valley Ward, Adelaide, Australia.

Remember that in Australia wards are several suburbs (not blocks) wide. In this ward there are at least a dozen suburbs.

Sacrament down to about 100/wk. We used to open the annex area.

Over 80 move outs, in-actives in the last 12-18 months

Growing number of less actives and people requesting name removal

Not so happy after all

In my area I never saw a baptism that wasn't dubious in character or of children. Certainly no golden families baptized that consisted of intelligent well informed folk.

I don't see shrinkage but no growth either.

Does anyone have any thoughts on Mormon distribution patterns throughout USA? I live in the Southeast and there is no growth except from young families from Utah who come for school or jobs (of the husband, naturally). The growth is illusory though because these families usually find they don't like living in the wicked world and return to the safety of the Morridor as soon as they can.

So this is totally anecdotal, but I feel like in the 90s there was a growth of Mos throughout USA and today they are gathering and hunkering down in Zion.

Texas Houston area is growing. They are looking to find space to build a new ward house.

My TBM neighbor mentioned to me in passing a month or so ago that her ward was talking about combining with another one. She didn't say anything about membership declining, but I can't imagine why else wards would be combined. This is in a large suburb in the East SF Bay Area.

To be fair, I should add that while the ovulation of CA continues to grow, many non-Hispanic whites have been moving out of CA for years. The people coming in are mainly Hispanics, Asians (mostly in the tech industry), and, in my particular area, Muslims from Afghanistan. The Asians are all Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or strict Christians (a lot of Chinese Baptist churches, for example). The Hispanics are either Catholic or joining non-denominational Protestant churches. Obviously the Muslims aren't about to convert to anything else.... I guess I'm saying that I could see a reasonable argument being made that in CA TBM numbers are declining at least *in part* due to many "white and delightsome" folks moving out.

NeverMo in CA Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------
>
> To be fair, I should add that while the ovulation
> of CA continues to grow...

Oops! No pun intended. I meant to write "population"!

Hordes of LDS all over Las Vegas...growing.

Maybe so, but you can look at the exit polls from the last election and figure out they are voting in really low numbers - or they aren't really there. :)

In my smallish (pop. 35,000) SoCal town, LDS population used to be growing. The city owned a parcel of land next to a very upscale country club (the first president of the Newport Beach temple lived there) which the country club developer had gifted to the city as part of the development deal.

City held a sealed bid auction for the parcel. LDS Church was one of the bidders, but bid too low and the winning bid was some commercial developer. THat company never built anything due to the economy. Just recently, a large medical group in town lost its lease for its current quarters and a developer stepped in to buy the land and build a new facility for the medical group.

LDS Inc was out-bid for this parcel in the early 2000s. They have no in-town facility, there are two wards each in a different stake. Each of the two wards is assigned to an out-of-town meeting house (each in a different town, in a different stake), so that members drive 5-10 miles to go to church. Not a big deal on Sundays, but it has to affect mid-week activities unless the parents serve as virtual taxi services.

No growth over the past two decades, still two wards, and since TSCC has no in-town facilities, it's not very attractive for prospective LDS move-ins. THey tend to cluster in the next town over, which has a stake center, so they can live a mile or two from church.

Good for us as it keeps the TBM factor here relatively low. In the adjacent town, the Mormon Factor raised its ugly head last November when a former LDS bishop (he was bishop before moving here, but obviously is well known in local stake circles) ran for school board against the incumbent---who as it turns out is EXMORMON (for how long, I don't know, but obviously the LDS axes were sharpened).

I first sensed something was wrong when a string of LDS clients advised me to vote for their candidate (the former bishop---for here I'll use his initals "SL"). They were unaware that school board elections in our district are by zone: only voters in Zone 1 can vote for the Zone 1 candidates---it's not at-large. SL is a wealthy roofing company owner, I don't know if he is BIC or convert. Did not do mission or BYU. From his website, I could tell he was LDS from the list of community activities and from one photo taken in Paris with his wife in which a scoop-neck garment line was clearly visible. So it didn't take much to figure out the guy was LDS and that the stake was doing all it could to elect him.

The next thing that was odd were reports from two non-LDS clients that they'd seen some odd politicking at city events: the football Homecoming game and a middle school Open House (back to school night). At both events, about 100 people were gathered in the parking lot, holding signs supporting SL. Even more strange, five year-olds were handing out flyers in support of SL, and onlookers noticed women in their mid to late 20s pushing baby strollers with 1-3 young kids following....not the usual school board activists one encounters here (usually in their 30s-50s, and they don't use young kids to pass out literature). Again, TSCC doesn't know how do to things with subtlety, they only know how to use a sledgehammer. I also heard stories of people receiving front door canvassing efforts by known neighbhorhood Mormons (one such person who got unwanted front door bell rings is an inactive Mormon---because he knew that the unwanted canvassers were active LDS, he figured the candidate was also active LDS).

SL lost 48-40% but it was close. With bloc voting, you only need 5-10% of the people solidly behind you, and the opponent then has to win by >10% outside the bloc (i.e. among non-LDS voters) in order to hit 51%. There was a third party candidate who probably hurt SL because he offered an alternate choice for anti-incumbent voters. If one assumes that most of the third candidate's supporters would have backed SL rather than the incumbent, it's possible that SL could have won in a two-candidate race.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2013 12:08PM by PtLoma.

I don't know if Lethbridge LDS wards are getting many converts, but I know they sure like to breed...

Ron Burr

Midwest, large city here. The ward I left from was in rapid decline, so much so that it was about to be re-combined with a ward from which it had split.

The decline was from people moving, lack of baptisms and people resigning or going perma-inactive.

1. Growing slightly
2. Southwest, USA
3. Some move-ins, some baptisms.

I would say decline. There are 243 homes within the ward boundaries. Unless it's a new move-in TBM family, the rest of the neighbors don't want anything to do with church.

Taylorsville, UT.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2013 11:02PM by Bite Me.

As far north west as you can go.

Every time I drive by the church on Sunday, there seem to be fewer and fewer cars there.

It wouldn't surprise me if they soon have one ward instead of two at that building.

When we left they were in dire straights for priesthood holders. There were few if any that were worthy enough for leadership callings. If we had stayed, my DH probably would have been the next bish. That would have been his worst nightmare.

Roy Utah here ------ looks like the 2 wards in my stake I have been in, are in a steady decline. The older people were gung ho but now I think they see the writing on the wall that there is no retirement/easy way for them in LDS inc. I get the impression a few dropouts like me and health dropouts are definitely causing more work for them and they don't like it at all! This last week 2 TBMS had strokes/heart problems ----- all these drop outs are noticed and will continue to impact those old people left by scaring the hello out of them that they may be asked to do more! Most strong TBM families moving out sell their homes to non members, a few younger families are moving in but seems very few are stepping up to major callings ---- not sure if they are full tithers seem like they have busy lives.