From: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1102142,1102530#msg-1102530

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rkrzewzliwbsrvl/2014%20Europe%20Area%20Plan%20Executive%20Version%20-%20English.pdf



Corporate spin: "Renewed focus on real growth in the United Kingdom will continue to take place in 2014." Look at the chart and see how much apostasy is happening in southwest UK.

Corporate spin: "We continue to see an improvement of growth in 2013 compared with the period of 2008– 2012. Attendance in sacrament meeting surpassed 100,000 for the first time." In four years they're only seeing a 6% increase in sacrament attendance. They are very far behind in reaching their goal to double attendance.

Corporate spin: "...we are able to see signs of real growth and the fruits of our labors." They've had 36,551 convert baptisms in five years, yet sacrament attendance is only up 5,262. Why is the Mormon god so impotent?

Help me understand this one: "Convert baptisms however are not increasing proportionally to the increase of full‐time missionaries." By my calculations, in 2009 there were 3,989 missionaries in Europe (6782/1.7). In 2013 there were LESS missionaries @ 3,762!! Even with the huge surge in missionaries, there's still fewer in Europe then even a few years ago!! Is that correct?




And, what does this mean: "In the next 5 years we expect an important development of the Church in Eastern Europe, where we are working to establish several stakes." What "important development"?

newnamenephi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


> And, what does this mean: "In the next 5 years we
> expect an important development of the Church in
> Eastern Europe, where we are working to establish
> several stakes." What "important development"?

Referring to "development" of The Church.

Hardly important.

I'm curious how the OP obtained this report? It sure would be nice to get more data like this to see what the numbers really are in the church. If we had a mormon wiki leaks I'm sure it wouldn't take long to expose the outrageous membership and growth claims the church makes to its members. Would do a lot of damage.

One of the big things that helped me leave the church was the acknowledgement that 'members were leaving in droves' and also seeing all the people on exmormon forums like this. Made me see that I wasn't the only one and wasn't crazy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2013 12:44PM by toast.

Why would it do a lot of damage? Nobody else in the world cares about the membership figures of the mormon church tbh, and I think most mormons know activity rates are low anyway. When I was a TBM it was common knowledge in my ward that most people didn't attend.

Anybody who has a calling on the Relief Society, Youth, High Priest, Elders, Bishopric, Primary, etc. gets a list of people they're responsible over. In all our Sunday School classes we did a register of attendance. For home teaching, the active-to-inctive ratio was so low that each companionship usually had to visit 6-10 families a month.

It was common knowledge across my whole ward at least that the activity rate were low, so I don't think mormons would be surprised at all by the figures, or even care.

May I ask what region you live in because I grew up in Utah and other Mnt states and almost everyone was active in the wards I was in. Yes some people would whisper that probably only 50% of church members were active worldwide but no one wanted to believe it, but to see all of Europe is only 20% active I know would be a shock to a lot of people in the Mnt States.

Looking at the numbers from 2009 - 2012, 28651 people were baptized but church attendance in the same period only went up 1129 people. Then to hear the Prophet get up and say 'We're growing so much blah blah we're building so many temples blah blah' I just think real undeniable numbers would be a shock to the Mnt State Mormons and they would have to decide do they cling onto every word the TSCC is saying about growth or do they believe the data in front of them. You however are free to disagree on their reaction.

I'm also calling B.S. on page 10, 'Europe at a glance.'

"Real growth for the past several years resulted in the creation of four new stakes in Spain, two in Italy and one in France over the last 18 months."

Hmmmm, how often do we read on RfM about stakes being merged, reorganised, rebordered etc. A new stake is usually not an additional stake, certainly not in Europe & definitely not in these three ultra Catholic countries.

Seven new stakes, to house what......3500 new attending converts (number of members in a stake, here in Europe would be approx 500) in those three countries, over the last 5 years.......no chance!

When I was on a mission in Japan they moved a ward from one of the stakes to a district so that the district could become a stake. The numbers make it clear that's what's happening here.

Well, it looks like Rodney Stark's gushing prediction about Mormonism becoming the next major world religion is wrong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2013 02:00PM by archytas.

I would give my eye teeth to read the report from Asia.

Actually I'd like to read them all, but specifically Asia.

And when you show this to your tbm family, you can point out the obvious:

The church is run exactly like any other corporation. There are reports, surveys, summaries, focus groups, a pr department and all the sophisticated trappings of a modern business.


Nowhere--NOWHERE-- do you see any decisions/forecasts/questions resolved via inspiration, consulting with Jesus, the Holy Spirit speaking/influencing, etc.

There is no difference between their management style and that of Amway except Mormonism has less transparency about its finances, hiding behind it's shell identity as a "church."



Anagrammy

I'd like to know more about the ratio of temple recommend holders versus sacrament attendance. Don't those temple recommend numbers seem inflated?

newnamenephi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'd like to know more about the ratio of temple
> recommend holders versus sacrament attendance.
> Don't those temple recommend numbers seem
> inflated?

-----------------------

When I was last privy to the MLS system at church I used to print off quarterly reports, to hound people to get their lapsed TRs updated.

The unit probably had 100-110 regular attendees & from memory, the Ward had around 40 TR holders at any given time.

This was a ward with a primary of around 20 & a YM/YW programme of about another 20. So probably 70'ish over 18yr old members, with 40 TR holders. Not quite 50% of the entire attending members but probably 50% of the adults, maybe even a little higher than 50%?

I suppose you could argue that as the new converts inevitably go less active in huge numbers the Morg is left with the hardcore members and their BIC kids. So the ratio of attending members to TR holders could be surprisingly high?

- the poor numbers over the past 5 years help explain why I've seen such an increased level of focus on the ground already for member-missionary work, seminary & institute, YSA attendance, temple recommends, MPH ordinations etc. They must be running scared.

- their 'double sacrament attendance' in 10 years is slipping further and further. But the current Area Presidency probably don't care too much, since it's only the schmucks who will be in post in 2019 that will take the flack, and chances are that this goal will be purposely forgotten about before then.

- if Great Britain is to have increased focus for member missionary work in 2014, I think many existing members will be completely turned off. It's bad enough already, but if Stake Presidents are told to devote every single meeting and conference to this topic (as it seems to be starting), then it's really going to backfire.

- the emphasis of the report on 'real growth' is somewhat embarrassing when you dive into the detail of the numbers and soon realise what pitiful returns are actually being seen. Would Jesus be happy with these results?

- I was always taught that there were well over 150,000 members attending in the UK. To learn that there's far less than this across the WHOLE of Europe is a big eye-opener. This figure would really shock many members in the UK too, who have been led to believe that the church was much larger.

- Upon realising these sorts of pitiful numbers (and missing most of their goals - contrary to what they state), most corporations would give some serious grief to their salesforce and all employees would be feeling the pressure. No doubt the missionaries and members will continue to be guilted and pressured then.

- how dull must the annual Area presidency/Stake President meetings be? If you ever wondered if TSCC was a corporation, endless PowerPoint slides of charts, tables, goals and numbers must be massively depressing. No wonder most SPs that are called are business-men. These are the TBMs that are most likely to grasp and regurgitate the 'corporate numbers focus' with the individual units and Bishops.

- ward mission leader is now most certainly the second worst calling.

- I'm so glad that I'm going to be missing all the continued 'hastening the work' focus in 2014. How long before TBMs question what's happened to any glimmer of true spiritual focus on individuals, as opposed to the constant push for new recruits?

sherlock Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> - I was always taught that there were well over
> 150,000 members attending in the UK. To learn that
> there's far less than this across the WHOLE of
> Europe is a big eye-opener. This figure would
> really shock many members in the UK too, who have
> been led to believe that the church was much
> larger.
>----------------------

The figure for UK membership that seems to have been peddled for the last decade or so is 180,000 but as others have said in the thread, If you've ever had access to the ward list v the actual regular ward attendees, you'd see that it's 25-30% right across the county & often lower than that in the large cities.

So regular attending members in the UK probably coming somewhere around 45-60,000 & I believe that the UK has always been the jewel in the Morg crown as far as Europe goes. So probably no more than 40, 000 members throughout the rest of the European continent in the best part of 200 years..........that stone ain't rolling too fast!

first of all good to see so many posters from the UK! there must be a fair few of us now on here, we should do drinkies sometime! i work in the city (london) so could do something there.

what i am curious about, is what is happening in the plymouth stake? it' can't be all down to that bishop (steve bloor) who resigned??!?!? i expect the stake PEC in plymouth will be uncomfortable this month!!

also what's happening in chorley and gloucester stakes, they seem to be the only bright spots in the uk. well i know whats happening in chorley, it's the temple effect. but what about gloucester? surely its not benbows farm? or is it americans coming in to work at gchq??? i served in cheltenham, and there was only 1 (less active) member who worked there.

They had some general Authority doing a conference session for leaders and I had to attend. They had graphs and power points showing the GDP (Gross Domestic Products) of all the countries in the world. Of course the USA lead the list. The authority went on to say that makes the work more difficult in countries that has a low GDP. I just about flipped and almost got up to tell him to shut up.

His next comment was even more reviewing. He said that the Church in the USA had to cut back on the money they send the USA and Canadian stakes so that the field world wide was even. He said the Church can't have programs that other countries can't afford. We can't have buildings here that we can't build there.

Then he brings out charts to show pay scales in different countries and said that the USA needs to help these poorer countries that the Church is in. Our youth programs must reflect the same conditions as young in those countries have. EX: Little money for doing things. So that those poorer countries don't look to the USA and see a different Church> He said the Church is cutting back big time in the USA..

By now I was a basket case. After that I ask to be released from my calling on the Bishopric. How could I look members in the eye knowing the Church was going forth on income redistribution and not spiritual principles.

You now see the results. How many enjoy cleaning toilets?

"the Church was going forth on income redistribution and not spiritual principles."

Going forth? It's redistribution the day you write the tithing check.

He may call it "redistribution" (hey, don't tell E.T. Benson about this, he hates such things!), but it's really only making a lame excuse for cutting budgets in North America.

That is amazing. So there is a reason local wards here have their budgets cut tu the bone.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2013 06:32PM by jiminycricket.

Estimates of statistics occur here all the time. We have a wide sampling of anecdotes and leaks and inferences to go by. To me it just says that much of our estimating is about right. The church does not have some hidden reservior we don't know about...except for their commercial holdings...that's the big variable that only a very few corprate heads know about and is even hard for church employees to infer. But the membership is a pretty open book. This report confirms that the truth is about in the middle, not worst case, not best case, just most likely case.

This is what their report should be saying:


One: Last year (by reducing unnecessary church programs and positions) we returned FOUR hours per week to the members so that they can now use the time with their families just as they please. Our goal is to give families another THREE hours per week by the end of this year.

Two: Last year we lowered member depression rates by 3 percent, and gay male suicides by 2 percent. Our goal is Zero Suicides!

Three: Last year we re-introduced custodians to all church facilities and raise reported member morale rates by 25%! We are determined to never again burden the members this way in the future.

Four: Last years we sold three million dollars of our stock and bond holdings and transferred the funds to humanitarian causes.

Five: We have instructed all units to eliminate the past practice of requiring members to bare their testimonies in church meetings regardless of how they may actually feel. This is also responsible for the improvement in morale that we are now seeing.

Six: These improvements have resulted in more investigators showing interested in the church, and fewer members leaving.

It's growing so fast that they had to close 2 of 4 missions in Italy, 3 of 5 in Germany, and consolidate 3 missions into one in the Alpine area. They've consolidated all missions in Spain into three. (Church News: "[The closings are] a reflection of the great success which we are experiencing in the growth of the Church in Spain.")

The work's on fire in Europe, I tell you. On fire. Black is now officially white.

The only reason for the so called growth in Chorley is the influx of members who move from other areas of the UK. Tough sh-t for the other units eh? Convert baptisms are few and far between in Chorley and have been for many years. They could have a dozen pageants a year, the reality is the local population still wouldn't give a rats sh-t about the cult on the hill!

You wouldn't want to be a shareholder in a company with those performance stats.

Would just like to thank everyone on this thread and the previous one for helping out with their interpretations. I was quite gloomy when I read it but don't feel so any more!

Interestingly, in the report the Europe Area Presidency makes a stated claim that they have achieved most of their targets in the key performance categories. This despite the figures showing that they have failed to meet all but two of the targets in the key performance categories.

Bozo's.

It's worth pointing out that active Mormons represent 0.013% of the population of Europe.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2013 10:29AM by Stumbling.