How much do YOU think the church is growing? In other words increase of active members less those who leave or are inactive?

I think the church is certainly growing, but barely enough to keep up with the growth rate rate. In other words they are no longer taking a larger share of the pie. They are steadily growing in the Morridor (Utah and the Mountain states), Africa, the Philippines and maybe Mexico. They are dying in Europe, most of Asia, and really starting to taper off in Latin America (baptisms are high in Latin America but they don't stick around and the core of the membership are starting to wane too).

It's in the red. Oh, not in numbers, at least the deceptive way they count them, but in active, North American members--the real test.

They are bleeding high quality members and converting people on the fringes. The more the missionary count goes up with kids just desperate to baptize somebody--anybody to try to convince themselves that those two years weren't a waste, the more it gets diluted. Certainly isn't the church I was led to believe it would be when I was growing up in the 60s.

According to recent posts here; they are definitely 'tapiring' off...

Although overall numbers are growing, active membership is declining-- which is far more important to the church because it impacts their wallets.

Well, the members on record is obviously increasing still. I think it will take until next decade before those start decreasing.

In terms of active members, I think the church probably peaked some years ago, and is starting its decrease (or if it hasn't yet, it will soon).

Also, to add, I agree with NormaRae as well. The "high quality" members that the church wants, the people that would be chosen to be Mission Presidents or GAs, are getting more scarce in the church.

The ideal church member is a conservative, middle-aged, rich, educated white male with a long history in the church and a large family. Those types of people are becoming rarer and rarer in the church over time. Most people converting are poor, non-American, and sometimes they even be liberal, have a disability of some sort and might have poor social skills. Those aren't bad traits in the real world, but those are not the ideal kind of people that the church wants I'm sure.

...much like the Church's financial disclosures, there may not be a definitive number to reference. We are left to using "trends" and "patterns". Whatever the real number is, the "trend" seems to indicate a downward moving statistic.
...if true, the Church would never release it, or make it public.

Of course the 15 million number is a fairy story.

5 million seems an accurate estimate. That's what
Reuters gives:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/uk-mormonchurch-idUKTRE80T1CP20120130

Reuters however is an exception; most news reports
pass along 15 million as "according to the Church"
and never even suggest it's in any way inflated.

Which is probably why TSSC puts out the crazy number:
it gets printed and believed. Almost no one
calls them on it.

The growth rate of course is negative; some pretty graphs here:

http://blacksheepamidstthecougars.blogspot.com/2013/04/interesting-statistics.html

No growth on the 15 million number.

Until that number is revised thr Church is officially in decline. Wen it comes up with a closer number to self-identifying membership (TBMs, NOMs, and jacks), then we can talk growth.

There is no growth on the 15 million number.

There are more living former Mormons than living Mormons and there are over a million dead Mormons that are still counted as living Mormons in the 15 million number.

It is an absurd membership claim whenever thry promote themselves as 15 million and growing.

Are dead trees, trees? Yes, they were trees, but are breaking down into something different now. Are dead trees growing? No.

If 75% of converts are inactive within a year, I think deaths are already outpacing new active convert growth. If there's ANY growth in activity, it's only through 8 year old baptisms. If TSCC loses the younger generator, or if members keep having fewer kids, the church will start shrinking significantly YoY very soon.

"...younger generation..."

Anyone notice that every year they add another million? ...

ABC did a story that active membership is around only 5 million.
And they could only have 1 member it doesn't matter they make millions of dollars every day just off business. People keep saying tithing is their main source of income and it isn't. Why else would they own 10% of stock in Coca Cola, 400 million $ hotel in Hawaii, 4 billion $ mall, etc..

Honest? It is either declining, flat lined, or growing so slow it nearly is unnoticeable.

"Why else would they own ten percent of coca-cola."

They don't. No one entity does, the largest institutional shareholder is Berkshire Hathaway, who own about 8-9 percent.

I went through every investor with a more than one percent share, and no, no mormons or mormon controlled entities among them.

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ko/institutional-holdings

CocaCola Bottling Co. Consolodated, aka Bonneville Canning CocaCola

And they may have even sold that, just as they sold off Zions Bank shares.

I estimate that it's pretty stagnant, and mostly BIC contributions. I live in a Midwest state. About 5 years ago, there was a major influx of TBM families from West due to an employer bringing them all here. This made our little branch turn into a ward - the largest ward in this state. Now, 5 years later, most of those TBM families have been laid off, and/or found other jobs and moved away again. The ward is back to branch size - many have 2 callings.
During this whole 5 year time period, of the few baptisms there have been, they are all, without exception, the needy ones who get help from the church, who knows if they really believe, and are only about half active. A few have quit attending altogether.

I think that probably the best way we have of honestly measuring the real membership of the Morg is through surveys. The Brazilian census, for example, has a question about religion. The 2010 census found that 225,695 people identified as Latter-day Saints. Meanwhile the Morg claims to have 1,138,740 members in Brazil. That's a difference of nearly a MILLION people! The Morg is counting 913,045 people who no longer consider themselves to be Mormon (if they ever did!). The claim of "15 million members" is clearly just as much a fantasy as the Book of Mormon is! http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsfaithblog/54497395-180/church-census-lds-reported.html.csp

In the US, the news is not quite as good, but still promising. The "American Religious Identification Survey" studies changes in religious membership over the years. In their latest survey (2008) they showed the number of self-identified Mormons over the previous 18 years. In 1990 there were 2,487,000 (1.4% of the US population). In 2001 there were 2,697,000 (1.3% of the population). And in 2008 there were 3,158,000 (1.4% of the population). So it would appear that the Morg really is growing in the US, but only at about the same pace as the total population. This is actually pretty pitiful growth seeing as Mormons tend to have much higher birth rates than the average Americans and seeing the huge emphasis they place on proselytizing! http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2011/08/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf (see table 3, on page 5)

"So it would appear that the Morg really is growing in the US, but only at about the same pace as the total population. This is actually pretty pitiful growth seeing as Mormons tend to have much higher birth rates than the average Americans and seeing the huge emphasis they place on proselytizing!"

Convert retention has to be close to 0% if they're just holding around 1.4%, considering the above average birth rates. I guess convert baptisms in the US are pretty rare. I haven't seen one in the last 10+ years...last one I saw was while I was attending BYU. What percentage of reported convert baptisms are in the US? I would guess it's something like 10%.

I found a Pew analysis that kind of deals with some of this. They say that about 70% of people who were BIC still consider themselves Mormon today. And about 26% of Mormons in the US are converts. No mention of the retention rates among converts, though. http://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the-us-social-and-political-views/

All I could find on cumorah.com was: "U.S. missions report short-term convert retention rates of 50% or higher, although activity of converts after one year appears to be below this figure." http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=countries&cnt_res=1&wid=231&cmdfind=Search

From what I've seen in my TBM families ward here in Idaho, I'd estimate that the chapel in SM is most likely at 50%. I often look around and there's tons of empty pews. I think that they might have about 50 kids in Primary. Our elder's quorum has about 15 attend every week. I think that the high priest might be a little higher but not much. I never sure about Relief Society but it's got to be as bad the these priesthood numbers.

This is from Southern Idaho! I think what I'm seeing where I live is shrinkage not growth!! When we first moved here in 2003. The chapel was totally filled for SM! Look at it now 11 years later! Pathetic!!

I don't think the LDS lifestyle is adaptable to some (most?) of the cultures that they're promoting now: S. America, Africa, even most of Europe.


they don't want to live 'the American dream'.

I think they are cooking the books on so many levels it's impossible to tell but the best guess is that it's barely keeping up with the birth rate. Which, considering Mormons have more kids than usual, means that they aren't even keeping all their kids in much less baptizing enough to hide that fact.

My mom's side of the family who is very active have many kids (BIC) each has between 5-8 kids. But I do also have some inactive cousins who were married in the temple and found out about The Book of Abraham, polyandry...
When we were still active our ward (in Texas) didn't have many convert baptisms most baptisms where the 8 year olds. But they are trying to find land to build a new Stake Center so my guess is that the numbers must be going up for the need to build a new building? We had 4 wards meeting in 1 building and to me it seamed crowded. On a funny side note hardly anyone showed up to clean the building the times we went although there are plenty of people using the ward building.

I also think it's barely keeping up with the birth rate. No new convert growth in our ward for years, not a single family in the ward whose children are grown up have had all their children remain faithful. Many TBM families with only 1-2 out of 4-5 kids stay active.

Going by the growth rate of wards and branches over the last decade, approximately 1.5%

Congregations are the only reliable measure of the church's growth rate and active members. You can do the math yourself from the church's own published statistics. It's hard for them to lie about the number of church units.

There was a time (long ago) when that figure was upward of 5 percent, then the Internet hit!

Look it up.

(At least two graphs have been made in the past, and they both agree)