I need my periodic reports of LDS growth or decline throughout the world. How about the wards and stakes where you go or used to go to? How have they been growing?

The ward I grew up in Wisconsin seems to have stopped growing about 10 years ago. In the early 80's it was built to be a stake building because they thought it would grow so much it would become a new stake center.

Well, the ward grew a little. By the mid-90's an overzealous bishop split the ward in two, but a couple years later they had to re-combine them. since about 2000 the area doesn't seem to have grown at all. Its still the same ward in the same stake using the same building that was supposed to become a new stake center.

How about your areas?

not certain about growth or shrinkage, but, I do know here in the deep south, the lds faith is not as prominant as in other areas.

Here in the Sacramento region of North California we've had a little LDS growth, but it comes at the expense of the San Francisco bay area, which is shedding Mormons. They move here for lower cost housing and lower crime rates.

My wifes old ward (Rio Linda)was combined with another ward (Elverta) to make a new ward (Dry Creek) a few years ago. So I'm sure its gotten smaller, but we havent been in over 4 years.

that the word my wife attends is in total decline. She is complaining that she's now the youngest member attending. We have young kids and the kids attending w/ours are either grandparents taking care of their grandchildren, or people from outside the ward boundaries, but the bish don't care. She's in a nearly dead ward full of rich old white people, most of whom live in gated communities and don't care if you never visit them. In the four years we've been here she says one person joined, and one new family moved into the area, but that they replaced about 5 people who died in the last year alone. Not bad enough the ward boundaries take in all or parts of three cities making up about 70,000 people or more. Growing up two hours away from where I live now, they had two wards for 20,000 people. My wife's ward is one ward for 70,000 people. If there is growth, it isn't going on here!

LOL, word

And the chapel was empty, just a few families. I was so happy. I looked around after the sacrament and it was full past the overflow. So upsetting.

Here in southern Arizona, they change up the ward boundaries and stake assignments every couple of years (my home address has been assigned to six wards in the last 20 years). Lately, they're changing not only ward membership, but meeting house assignment. I think they figure that if people stay in one ward, they'll see it shrinking over time. But if you go to a different ward in a different facility, you have no frame of reference.

It does seem to me, though, that church parking lots are not nearly as full on Sundays as I remember them from ten years ago when I was attending.

They changed meetinghouse assignments in my wifes old ward after they merged two wards together in the Sacramento area.

Here in Calgary among the YSA there's several baptisms across the city every month, but attendance always seems to stay about the same. I know working as WML it seems only 1 in 4 converts stick around after a year. But being a big city there's plenty of people moving in to keep the numbers up.

One thing on my mission in Europe that really disheartened me, which is why they probably don't make it widely available was seeing the stats on church membership as they tracked sacrament meeting attendance and convert baptism. Over the year despite our valiant effort as missionaries baptising over 100 people and reactivating less actives the number of people attending sacrament meetings were almost identical.

While I was there a decade ago they started combining branches and closing down chapels. One of them that the members thought was a pity that the church got rid of was the first LDS chapel in continental Europe.

it's definitely on the decline around here,where you don't hardly see lds missionaries anymore which is a good thing.

at least you know they are not out deceiving people with those lies of mormonism,more people are able to access info about mormonism real dirty and vile history

more people are seeing through the lies their so called lds bishop or stake president stand up there and tell sunday after sunday mormonism exposed.

The 'lost sheep' list is definitely much, much longer than the 'tithe paying' list in the UK...

Jon`s right. Lost sheep number 80 to 90,000 in the UK.

We know of 19 resigning locally in past 5 years and our old ward has lost 60 members in the same period, for one reason or another.

Birmingham stake had to pinch Solihull ward from Coventry stake to bolster it`s flagging numbers.

The church offices in Warwick Road are almost empty and the distribution office in Sheldon is closing down too.
I was told that Riverside ward is substantially made up of immigrants many of who want British passports.

Other than that, the church is expanding at a phenominal rate NOT.


I

More people attended Villa v Wolves than attended Sacrament in the whole of the UK...

Blues, West Brom, Wolves, Villa and Mormonism are all fighting to avoid the drop.

Where you from Jon?

I was in the Coventry Mission early 80s and it was shrinking then ...more people leaving than being baptized ..and those that I did baptize had already made their exit by the time I left the mission field.

Southern IL has 2 wards - Carbondale and West Frankfort. Both are stagnant. Carbondale has the bonus of being a college town so new people always arrive for school and replace those that have just left after graduation.

Carbondale has approx 600 members of record w/ 200 attending SM (the largest ward in the Cape Girardeau Stk which has 5 wards and 5 branches). The Carbondale ward has only one convert still attending church from the 5-6 that were baptized since 2004. She is African American and I know she has never been introduced to the racist background of her new church "home". When she realizes what has been taught she will leave like every other new convert.

It seems to be all move ins from Utah, though. I hear of converts but have not seen them in my particular Utah-heavy ward.

Not sure about membership here in Southern Utah County. However the parking lots seem full on Sundays. Some of my TBM neighbors have made remarks about few new members and having problems with people in ward assingments.

curious why they would have missionaries sent to these geograhical areas i.e. MS, AL, TN whenever mormonism isn't prominent in these areas. Not such as Methodist, baptist, etc. there are some churches, but not many. just wondering.

deb 49 Wrote:
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> curious why they would have missionaries sent to
> these geograhical areas i.e. MS, AL, TN whenever
> mormonism isn't prominent in these areas. Not such
> as Methodist, baptist, etc. there are some
> churches, but not many. just wondering.

Where do YOU think the LDS church should send them then?

d/k, here. but if not but only a few churches(have to drive slight distance here) and then people not knowing too much about mormonism, it'd look as if they'd want the guys/gals to be elsewhere. Just wondering.

The little town near where I live has 3 wards now. The parking lot is full all day. I can only think of two converts in the last several years and one of them recently died.

I have been hearing that there's a major shortage of deacons to pass the sacrament. Maybe they should have left it at two wards.

They split our ward 3-4 years ago. They are now having a tough time filling assignments. We definitely are not growing.

There seems to be a decline but it is as slow as a glacier. 90% of people just keep doing what they always did before. I think the church is going through a very slow death. It will take a long time for the average TBM to notice.

...has been basically stagnant and arguably in decline for the past 20 years. Some of the boundaries have been moved around which complicates things a bit. There is a building in Monett, MO that housed two very large wards in the 1980s. One of the wards had so many youth that their were two deacons quorums. The building was constructed with the plan of making it a stake center in the late 1980s or early 1990s. What actually happened is that the two large wards shrank to one ward that is still very much a part of the Joplin Stake.

The membership in Carthage (MO), Neosho, Granby, Joplin, and Pittsburg (KS) has not changed appreciably. There are blips up and down but nothing that can be called growth.

Lots of transplants from Utah and Arizona with a significant number of aging members. Converts are few and far between and retention almost non-existent. Many of the youth grow up to become "hard-core inactives" or have their names removed from the records.

Growth in Idaho Falls. They are always building new church buildings here..

Just from observation my little town seems to be keeping the same basic numbers,they don't seem to be close to keeping pace with the comunities growth. All but three of the neighboring units in the stake are on the rez where the growth tends to come from reactivation and baptism of kids over 9. The stake next door seems to stay fairly static as well with occasional move ins or as with the case of my SIL baptisms of children of members over 9 yo. There have been no new units in either stake since I've lived here (3 years) but the areas population has increased over 10% this past decade. This is in NW New Mexico where there are supposedly pretty strong mormon colonial roots.

I haven't met any missionaries walking & biking around. I'm sure they're somewhere but not multiplying & replenishing the Planet.

Its gotta be frustrating for those in charge to build 350 chapels every year for Mos that move, while existing chapels get used less and less. That's really got to cut into the corporation's bottom line.

I've been tempted to drive by during Sacrament meeting to see how the parking lot looks, but too lazy to get up that early for such a thing.

Recently I saw an old friend from there who says that they are having trouble staffing a lot of callings, errr, I mean positions.

There has also been an increased effort to reach out to less active families, so they must need more necks to fit the yoke upon.

My observation is that in Indiana there is slight growth from both converts and new move-ins.