Poster anon333 reported on Holland's stake conference speech last Sunday. Holland said, among other things, that the number of missionaries was expected to level out at about 100,000 in 4 years.

He should never predict things that can actually be checked. I personally think 85,000 that they have now will be the high water mark. One year's worth of extra young men and two year's worth of extra young women were thrown into the eligibility pool when the age change was announced. Of course there was a surge in people going on missions. That was a one-time surge.

Going forward, there will be more young women going on missions compared to before the age change, and probably a few more young men too, because they won't have a year after graduating HS to decide Mormonism is a crock.

The number of missionaries was about 60,000 before the age change on calls. No way it is going to climb to 100,000 in the next 4 years. Holland is lying or delusional.

Proof that apostles believe in medicinal dope. Holland was smoking something.

Assuming that there are about 3 million active members in the U.S., and the size of Mormon age group by year matches the national demographic (people under 20 are 27.3% of the population or about 1.4 percent by year), then the total number of missionaries the church could produce if every eligible 19 year-old signed up is 42,000. Double that for a two-year cycle.

That's if every 19 year-old goes from a 3 million base. I think 85,000 is a one-off produced by dipping one year into an additional age bracket. 60,000 is probably the highest sustainable number.

Don't forget the seniors - would they, being baby boomers, change your estimate?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 12:09PM by PapaKen.

There seems to be more senior missionaries than in previous decades. My guess though, is that they are still few relative to the younger missionaries.

I was talking this weekend to a senior missionary and it sounds as if MPs often have little for them to do and leave them to their own agendas. The missionary also said, "What are they going to do if they don't like what I do? Send me home? It's not as if they're paying for anything."

Senior missionaries are probably less likely to go inactive, but are probably less likely to engage in hero worship of MPs and GAs.

Another number which I did not include are the missionaries who don't stay for their entire tour of duty. As noted below by Outsider, that could be in the 5K to 6K range.

They are counting non-US missionaries too. My daughter is currently serving in a zone with nine other sisters who are from all over South America. She is the only United States based missionary.

but if they just say that they have 100,000 missionaries out there the whole membership will believe it. it is not necessary to actually have that many, only that people believe it.

Other people have been better at predicting these things.

After it was determined that that was a strong pent-up demand from sister missionaries going, the initial thought was that it would go from 58,000 to over 100,000 sometime this year and up to 110,000 next year.

Recently, it's been downgraded, and the best guess estimates are in the uppers 80,000s to 90,000. The peak number should be now, so the October general conference should provide us with the number at the high water mark. The closer it is to 85,000, the worse TSSC is going. The closer to 90k the better things are going for them.

The largest growth was from the number of sister missionaries going, and that will start to stabilize not that there has been almost two years since the announced change. There will no doubt be more sisters going now.

Ever wonder why the peak didn't get to 100k and won't hit 110k? Multiple sources indicate that somewhere between 5500 to 6000+ missionaries are returning early each year. I believe we'll see an increase in that number, as it becomes more frequent, more and more kids will see this as an option.

The number of sisters will start dropping now, as they were the first to respond in numbers and it's already been 18 months.

The largest part of the surge was last summer, when the 18 year olds got out of high school along with and part of the normal crop of 19 year olds leaving after one year of school. Some of them have already gone, so it wasn't double.

If you read the blog of the whacko MP wife in Colorado, things settled down in Sept / Oct last year.

This mean that the largest drop will be next summer. One rather detailed but overly optimistic analysis on one of the blogs had it going up to 108k this year (with a year end of 88k) before settling down to year end of 78,000 next year.

April this year, TSCC had posted the number of people at various states of their application, and the numbers were considerably less than a year prior.

Just throwing out some wild guess, year end could be 80k or less and next April will be upper 70s. Next October and it could be in the 60s.

If the rate of people returning lower continues or increases then next Oct could see it back down to close to where it started.

One thing for certain, it will not get up to 100,000.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 10:02AM by outsider.

The most interesting number would be how many come home early.

I cannot see a lifelong TBM member sustaining his or her LDS faith after coming home early and enduring the shame LDS Inc attempts to coerce family and friends into applying.

The lowering of the mission age was such a disastrous idea that one could assume it was only made out of desperation.

There will be far more behind the scenes problems with a less mature bunch of kids. This will lead to far more of them coming home. Additionally, use of clandestine social media, which is undoubtedly happening now in missions everywhere will exponentially raise the number of early home comers.

The decision makers of LDS Inc are far too removed from reality to be making good decisions to have a motivated, sustainable, and successful evangelizing sales force.

This is the first generation that was raised in the age of the internet and social media. We will see the implosion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 10:12AM by deco.

Maybe they have a master plan we don't know about.

Like lowering the age again every year to produce regular bumps. Or making missions mandatory, or counting all 18 year olds even if they still live at home and have school or work. That works for Relief Society, where they count all women regardless of involvement.

If the missionary numbers are not actually strong they will just make up something to present in these types of "faith promoting" talks, just like the membership numbers, otherwise it is not "faith promoting".

The MTC expects the number to drop soon and level off around 65-72,000.

Check these predictions out from this guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_G._Hillam

https://www.ldsbc.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=413:hastening-the-work&catid=50&Itemid=129

"That is significant. With the church growing like it is--now you know that we just passed 10 million members. That's quite a few people. The Church now is over a hundred and fifty years old, and we have 10 million people. Do any of you have any idea how many members of the Church there will be in 50 years? I'll tell you. It won't be 10 million. It'll be 225 million."

That's pretty funny. Not sure how he came up with that number. Didn't the church report close to 300K baptisms with the largest number of missionaries they've ever had. The church would be lucky to double in size in 50 years with numbers like that.

Church "growth" is already stagnant. There's a good chance that deaths and resignations are already outpacing births and convert retention. Even if the church gets 15M baptisms in the next 50 years, 3-4 million MIGHT stay active. Millions that are active now will die, and will be replaced by a smaller generation of TBM youth. Many that are active now will also leave the church in the next 50 years. I think the BEST CASE scenario for TSCC would be to have the same number of active members 50 years from now. I hereby prophesy that TSCC will NEVER have 225 million members...their active membership will never even be 5% of that number.

You are probably more of a prophet than on of The Lord's Anointed. The one who also recommended Tom Phillips for The Second Anointing.

I was also surprised by Holland's prediction. However, his message was clear within the context of his later remarks: the church is an unstoppable force. With such rapid growth, thousands of missionaries, dozens of temples, etc., the church must be true, and no unhallowed hand is going to stop its progress.

Perhaps he researched the size of the potential missionary cohort and applied past % of the candidates who actually went.


just sayin'

Maybe they'll start paying all or part of mishies' expenses. That'd make more young people decide to go.

They can certainly afford it.

Holland sounds like he actually believes his prediction. I know they have real live demographers working for the Church, plus they have the full data on what is happening, not just the scraps doled out to the public at April GC. They know the actual birthrate, and how many are not blessed, or blessed but not baptized, or drop out of seminary, etc. They know all that in exquisite detail.

No way can they see a new surge after the one caused by lowering the age of eligibility. And age 18 is pretty much the floor. They can't send out minors. They know precisely how many kids are in the pipeline, and that number hasn't changed in the last three years, except perhaps to have gone down a bit through attrition.

Jeff Holland is starting to sound like Baghdad Bob ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf if you don't know about Baghdad Bob )



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 12:34PM by Brother Of Jerry.

It isn't necessarily that he believes in his prediction; it's that he believes he will never be called out on it. If Holland thinks he'll never be challenged on his predictions, it's easy for him to spout any random brain fart as Absolute Truth.

He definitely wasn't counting on someone in attendance hanging on his every word (particularly from a cynical point of view) and bothering to take exacting notes and then posting it to the internet.

With all the electronic gadgets in existence, it's only a matter of time before one of the big guns gets busted saying something verifiably false, similar to what happened to Romney with his misleading and denigrating comments about "the 47%" during the last election.

I think they are going to have to become more and more insular in order to protect themselves from the evil internet. They also need to work out a set party-line and then stick to it across the board. If this happens, all the meetings and conferences will become even more oppressive and excruciatingly dull.

The 12 have a tendency to take a best case scenario and make forecasts and predictions based on the best case continuing indefinitely. ie. he thinks the increase in missionaries caused by the age change will continue forever.

His predictions will share the fate of the dodo...

I prophesy this will be disavowed or restated because the listeners misunderstood 100,000 in 4 years to mean 100,000 in 2018.

When I came home from my mission in Norway we were told that the Church would have stakes in every major city in the country, that large populations of of Russia and China would turn to the lord and that missionary work would be finished by the year 2000 to be ready for the imminent second coming.

There are now about 4000 members on the books in Norway, about the same as when I served there, and about 20% attend church.

One more reason to love beautiful, amazing, fun Norway...

If Holland keeps throwing out numbers like this everywhere he goes, and keeps changing or adding to them (with more predictions to his previous statements) THEN MAYBE just maybe when and/or if he becomes LD$ Inc.'s president he can stand at the walnut conference pulpit, cry and slam his fists (because he got one lucky guess right), and yell into the mic: "See I Am A Prophet."

Number are Too Specific for TSCC (ChurchCo) to deal with, the only numbers they deal with are associated with Bank Accounts.