crom,

Thanks for referring me to the ensign article.

"170-190 is often used for more typical value for "active members" per ward."

Do you have a source for the 170-190 "active members per ward"?

Also, do you know of a source for how many members are involved in a fully staffed ward. It sounds like it must be 170-190, but I'd to find out if this is true.

Thanks.

My personal experience is more like 125 to 150 per ward. Most wards are fully staffed, they just give the members 2-3 callings.

Met a TBM friend for lunch. This guy has been a bishop, HCman, and in Stake Presidency.

He told me with misty eyes the church is "in a pickle".

More people are leaving after finding information out on the internet. Just this year 6 bishops have told their stake leadership that entire families are resigning within their respective wards.

His shelf is wobbly too. We are getting together with our wives in Sept to talk more.

Wow, he is 53 and has 3 kids. I think the tithing donations have made an impact on him. He let that slip during our lunch conversations.

"I think the tithing donations have made an impact on him." Does he wants to stop paying tithing?

Based on several years of reading Exmo boards, I'd say that one of the most bitter regrets experienced and voiced is the loss of money to the tune of 10% of one's income (or more!) a year. It's a hard thing, especially so because the money was given in the spirit of charity (often) and in faith and trust, and once that's abused, and with it the reflection on material sacrifices that the money often represents, then shame, shame on the cheater, the deceiver.

Whose church is it?

If typical attendance is 125-150 and everybody has a calling and many have 2 or 3, that's a lot of callings. Are there really hundreds of different ones?
I'm a nevermo, just askin'.

nearly every active adult (adult males have companion 'home teachers' who are often pre-teens) have 'home teacher' assignments; females are assigned 'visiting teacher' assignments; they're supposed to visit EACH OTHER, ha ha (women 'visit' women, guys visit each household monthly) .

youth programs (separate boys, girls) have their own leadership roles.

LDS 'leadership' is pretty much a Rube Goldberg, Much Input, little Output kinda deal...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2013 12:31PM by guynoirprivateeye.

There's a lot of callings in an average ward. From what I can remember, there's:
Bishop, 2 councilors, secretary
Ward greeter
Pianist
Choir leader
Scoutmaster
Ward missionary calling
Genealogy calling
Elder's quorum president, and two councilors, Relief Society President and two councilors, three teachers for young men, three teachers for young women, at least two teachers for the main time block of Primary, probably at least 5 Sunday school teachers. There's probably many more I'm forgetting right now. The children and teenagers won't hold callings nearly as much as the adults. Half or more of the adults probably hold callings at any given time, and they rotate the callings around a lot.

Callings are one of the ways the church reinforces its 1) obedience to the church training and 2) loyalty to the church over family needs especially in the case of the time intensive bishop calling. They get free labor at the same time. They also make it harder for people to slip away quietly and stop attending the LDS church, because people feel like other people in the ward are relying on them to show up to do callings.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2013 05:12PM by raiku.

You forgot the various secretaries. Every person who has two councilors also has a secretary. Then you have the two clerks, the generic ward clerk, and the financial clerk, who as far as the church is concerned, is the only guy in the entire ward that they care about fulfilling his calling.

Yes, cold water, anxiety, aging- Might want to check with the first presidency on that last one...

Aging, too!?!?! Dammit, life sucks!

lol sounds like a problem the bishop may want to address during a worthiness interview

Check out this survey: http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2011/08/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf (page 7 of the pdf, which is page #5 of the report)

It gives a number for Mormons as a percentage of Americans:
Mormons in 1990: 1.4%
Mormons in 2001: 1.3%
Mormons in 2008: 1.4%

Yup. That's a fast-growing religion, right there... growing at almost exactly the same rate as the total population. Which is odd, given their high birth-rate and aggressive proselyting.

Of course, they used a survey to determine people's actual religion, rather than just counting every single person who'd ever been baptized and hadn't yet turned 110.

The 2013 ARIS Report will be very interesting. I am guessing you will see a drop from 2008's 1.4%. I have seen in North Davis County (between SLC and Odgen, just south of Odgen) two very different types of wards that allows an individual to draw two completely different conclusions about church growth/decline.

On the west side there are large new home sub-divisions being built. The families are younger (less than 45-years of age with kids). Wards grow in size until the ward needs to split. There are two primaries, three nurserys. Living here you would think the work is indeed hastening.

My former ward wasn't without its problems though. The fake Barbie look complete with plastic surgery and ultra-tight but still "modest" clothes was popular. People did go inactive. There were divorces too, like when one wife decided she had enough with a controlling husband and four kids. Partying and drinking came before the divorce. There was also rumors of "open-marriages". I wasn't part of the in crowd, and quite frankly don't care to hear what my ward members/neighbors do in what little spare time they have.

We moved to the east side of Davis County. The ward is completely different in every way. The kids are in High School or college. The Primary is quite small, so small Jr and Sr primary meet together. There is a funeral every three months. The ward is shrinking as members move/die away and non-members move into the vacated home. I also hear parents lament that their grown children are becoming inactive, leaving the church, or marrying a non-member.

Even in the morridor, the signs are there if you look. If you just consider my previous ward, despite the problems, you would think the church is growing. But these aren't new members, they have moved out of their parent's ward, or come from a student ward. Also what you don't see is that their peers, siblings, former classmates, etc, of the same age that have gone inactive or quietly resigned. These people just vanish from the church.

Depends on where you are in the world. People on this board tend to cherry pick the evidence using anecdotal evidence, such as, "the ward I grew up in shrunk to half as many members, therefore the church is shrinking!"

My opinion is that the church is growing in some areas and shrinking in others BUT AS A WHOLE it is still growing but only at a MUCH slower rate than previous decades.

The reason I say this is that the church is still growing in the number of stakes in the world. Obviously they are not growing by "leaps and bounds" as the Morgbots want to believe, but they are still growing nonetheless. The growth is nothing to be impressed by as they are barely keeping up with the general population growth. In other words, they are simply keeping pace with everyone else.

They are growing in Utah, and the adjacent states, Mexico, Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines, but dying in Europe, much of Asia, and much of the USA outside of the Morridor.

I'm sorry I don't. The Ensign article did say that "less than 200" was typical. As I've tried to research it the estimates I've seen have been in that range when people are trying to be "fair" or "optimistic".

This is how I think that number came about.

In the Encyclopedia of Mormonsism, Tim Heaton wrote an article in 1992 on "Vital Statistics". There are some clues. He said that attendance was 40 - 50% in a typical ward in the US. (The number goes down outside the U.S. to as low as 25%) The lost record file was 10% in the U.S. and as high as 30% depending on the country.

In 1992 if you took the gross membership number and divided it by the total number of wards/branches you got an average of 419 members per congregation. For best case purposes take the lowest lost record files of 10%, and the highest attendance of 40 to 50%. AT BEST you get 151 to 189.

If you're trying to paint it as rosy as possible in 1992 that's a picture of an "average" congregation.

This article has never been updated. (I assume the news has not improved.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2013 02:04PM by crom.

It looks to me like the church is lieing about the total population of members while splitting stakes and wards by making them smaller, just to create the appearance of growth. They figure "if we build it, they will come".

I think the goal is more, "If we split it, it will appear like there are more". There will be more stakes but not more people.

Not just rumours or speculation, but is there anywhere recently where the number of congregations has gone down? I assume it's mostly just flatlining, not actual shrinkage.

Please define concrete evidence. The Mormon church has expertise in denial and deception (is that a fact, or do we need evidence that Joseph Smith didnt see God and Jesus?)

I understand the question mostly, but have you,ever dealt with a professional liar personally? They are expert at never conceding a truth. They just lie, shift, lie and shift.

When all else fails, play stupid and appeal to kindness and good nature.

The Church has a history of lying.
The Church claims 14.7 million members in 2013.

Um, I certainly was not asking for concrete evidence from the church itself. Heavens no. I don't expect anything like that from them. ;-)

I know the church doesn't have as many people attending as they claim. I get that. Just wondering about shrinkage itself. Something like Ecuador used to have 30 stakes and now they have 15? Just as an example.

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top_stories/story/Number-of-faithful-Mormons-rapidly-declining/rvih3gOKxEm5om9IYJYnRA.cspx#.TynOV7hjE3A.facebook

In the 90's the average baptism rate was about 9.4 converts, now it's only about 4.5.

The 200 number can be verified by just counting seats. Here is an image of the typical ward chapel:

http://i.imgur.com/t1ZfuA6.jpg

It only shows one side, but it is a mirror image of the other side. If each of the side pews can hold five adults (very tightly), and the center pews can hold as much as three of the side pews (15 adults), then this chapel can only seat 200 people max.

Of course there are examples of larger chapels, but there are also smaller ones as well. There is no possibility that 4-500 people are attending on average in most buildings unless the entire cultural hall is open and seated every week.

I don't think that anyone ever claimed that active membership was 4-500 per ward. I've been in several wards where activity rates were below 25%. There was a ward in my mission that had an activity rate below 2%. My current ward is large and growing, due to new construction, and the activity rate is closer to 75%.

I would guess that average sacrament meeting attendance per ward in the U.S. is about 125-150 as "exbishopfromportland" mentioned. Worldwide, I would guess that the average would be well under 100. The average on my mission was probably ~30.

29,000 units worldwide--many of those branches, but let's use the highest number

150/ward attending

That's 4.35 million-that means the Church is claiming over 10 million members that don't attend on a regular basis, using generous attendance numbers.

Self-claimed Mormons is 3 to 5 million worldwide. As to growth, until they start shrinking the claimed number from 14.7 million to 5 million, there most certainly is no growth on 14.7 million.

The LDS lies knowingly about its' membership numbers. Not a good quality for an organization that requires integrity about masturbation and integrity.

I was responding to the referenced Ensign article quote claiming "170-190 is often used for more typical value for "active members" per ward."

Some one was looking for a source for that, and I am suggesting that the "source" is the building construction itself. It's very often designed for about 200 people per congregation.

Why r there so many phallic symbols on the board today? Or is that just me? I find tbat for as many leaving the church, the more intractable and entrenched others become. A holy war I have heard it described. The cburch deserves to be excoriated as it has done its own for perpetuating such a vile hoax and interested in nothing more than pecuniary gain while indigent, hungry children suffer. The Jesus Mall is as good a metaphor for their own great and spacious building they preach so much about. I will never set foot in there.

"But it is a wake up call to be their brother's keeper.

"It does come down to us as members of the church to do our part," said Jerez.

And LDS leaders are hoping they bring their friends back. "

I hate articles like this. It's the battle cry of nosy and intrusive family and friends who send unsuspecting home teachers or missionaries to our house.

Tscc is most definitely struggling. Remember when you had to have a worthiness interview for a calling? You had to promise to uphold and magnify your calling and all of that?
Bishops around here aren't even asking any questions, they're just trying to keep people from leaving any way they can. A friend of ours, who's known to smoke and drink and associate with us antagonistic apostates just got called to primary president! No interview, not even the ole "the lord has impressed upon me that you are called to fill this vocation" blah blah. Nope, the previous primary president left the church and they were desperate to get anyone in there as fast as they possibly could.
Last week, she's the scum of the earth with her "immodest" clothing and genuine personality, but today she's 'called of god'?

Apparently, getting snackered every weekend with your buddies no longer disqualifies you from callings.

the church is still growing, we just divided our stake again and added 3 new wards. The rumors of dwindling membership apply only to Europe as they are prone to exaggerate their importance in the world anyways, the church is still booming in the states and S. America. All you have to do is look at the rise of missionaries and MTC locations now across the world, they have too much money to ever drop too far down, it just is not ever going to go away.

Additional sales people does not mean additional sales.

Are you in the morridor? I could see stake growth there, but most first-world nations are declining based on self-identified members in census reports.

nope, we are in "the mission field" as they like to say.

Ok, more to the point, was the stake busting at the seams, with hundreds in each ward? Did they add a proportionate number of buildings? Have there been nonstop announcements of convert baptisms to the point that three wards worth of people came into the fold? Otherwise I'd say they are playing a shell game.

ward sizes are growing smaller. Some are almost more like branches.

Perhaps they should make each individual person a stake.

That should make things appear rosy.