Just released... however, if this has already been posted just ignore it. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/

Those numbers have been around for a while.

My favorite is this paragraph from the Newsroom on the LDS church growth. While claiming 2nd fastest growing Church and recognizing discordant metrics.

" According to the National Council of Churches, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the second-fastest-growing church in the United States. However, despite its increasing numbers, the Church cautions against overemphasis on growth statistics. The Church makes no statistical comparisons with other churches and makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination despite frequent news media comments to that effect. Such comparisons rarely take account of a multiplicity of complex factors, including activity rates and death rates, the methodology used in registering or counting members and what factors constitute membership. Growth rates also vary significantly across the world. Additionally, many other factors contribute to the strength of the Church, most especially the devotion and commitment of its members."

gentlestrength Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> " According to the National Council of Churches,
> The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is
> the second-fastest-growing church in the United
> States. However, despite its increasing numbers,
> the Church cautions against overemphasis on growth
> statistics. The Church makes no statistical
> comparisons with other churches and makes no claim
> to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination...

Notice the subtle PR move in the church's statement...

The "National Council of Churches" refers to them as "the second-fastest-growing church."
Then LDS PR refers to themselves as, "...the fastest growing Christian denomination..."

Interesting, yes? :)

"makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination despite frequent news media comments to that effect"

Haven't numerous GAs made this claim over the pulpit during General Conference? I'd be curious to find quotes from conference talks.

To me, the PR quote above is a blatent untruth...

The LDS church is not now and never has been the "fastest growing church," "the fastest growing Christian church," or "the fastest growing religion" in either the world or the United States or North America. That is just total fabrication and delusion.

The Deseret News published some comments from a presentation made by the head of Church information. In his presentation he articulated that out of every 100 members on the membership list, only 36 show up on Sundays.

The Deseret News pulled the comment as quickly as they could but it was too late. It was 'out there'.

So, we now know the Church has only 36% of the 15,000,000 members active. We also know, from a leaked European Area Presidency report that only 50% of active membership pays tithing.

So we now know, from official Church sources, that the Church has:
5.4 million active members worldwide, of whom 2.7 million pay tithing.

And how many are children?

If there are ~5.4 million active or semi-active members, there are probably, at most, ~2.7 million active or semi-active adults...probably far less. Half of the adults might be declared full tithe payers, but a good chunk of them are probably SAHM's or retirees with no income. Another big chunk are from less developed countries and pay little to nothing. I'd probably put the high end of full tithe paying households from developed countries around 650k.

Correction: Only 36 show up on SOME Sundays.

Stumbling, is there a link to the comments that the D News pulled?

and how many children are in the 2.7 million?

"So, we now know the Church has only 36% of the 15,000,000 members active. We also know, from a leaked European Area Presidency report that only 50% of active membership pays tithing."

I think it's closer to 30% active and 25-30% tithers. A lot of those third-world areas where activity rates are 10% or lower, and tithing is close to that, offsets the first-world areas where the stats are higher.

In my experience in three wards in Alabama and Tennessee, the activity rate ran 30-35%, and full-tithe payers were about 25%. It's got to be much lower than that in third-world areas.

I made this today:

http://www.mormonism101.com/2015/01/how-big-is-mormon-church.html

4.5 million active members tops, 0.06% of the world population. Daniel's stone is not even a pebble. It's a grain of sand. And it's blowing in the wind, not rolling forth.

+1

I saw this already. I was impressed. If the Mormon church membership claims are correct there are more living former Mormons than living Mormons (I believe their claims include former Mormons and dead former mormons).

Stuck in Mormon concrete. They won't let you go. It's too True!

In my family alone,5 of my nine children have left the Mormon church. Add myself,that's 6 people. None of us have formally resigned. So,like many of you I'm sure,we are still counted in that 15 million. Very dishonest stats.

Has there ever been a number published for resignations in a calendar year?

It's amazing that they can look people in the eye when they quote their total membership number every April. There are... there just have to be at least 40% of that supposed total number who will NEVER see the inside of a mormon chapel except for a funeral or some other exceptional life's milestone.

And the percentage of that total number who don't pay tithing? That's got to be well over 50%. If the object is to get souls to the CK, and if paying tithing is a requirement (as in 'works', not just 'faith'), then the mormon church is a big fat failure when it comes to saving souls.

And why can't they see how deadly boring the CK is going to be, given the nature of the people who are held up as exemplars for achieving exaltation.

What are they thinking when they hide the resignation figures? I'd respect them at least a little if the letter they sent to confirm you're off the rolls said something biting, acerbic or dooms day-like...

They're still claiming the 15 million #. That might be their official #'s, but not nearly that many are active

LDS church's definition of "active": Attends sacrament meeting at least once per month.

Approx. 4.5 million to 5 million Mormons are "active," attending sacrament meeting once per month. The trickiness, of course, is in trying to figure out the gap between "active" and being TBM--paying tithing and holding a temple recommend. Some have put that rate only as high as 2.5 million Mormons world-wide.

As we well know from this site, among those paying tithing and holding recommends include many of you who post here on RfM, those among the ranks of New Order Mormons, who attend and hold recommends but who do not believe.

So how many people out there are really Mormons?

When I was active and serving as a Clerk, our bishop had a list where anyone who didn't attend PH meeting for a month was red-flagged. I wonder if the numbers from that list were somehow reported to SLC. We were actually filling out an attendance form. Just like going to school.

I no longer believed but wanted to stay under the radar so I would make sure I attended PH once a month even though I detested every second of it.

It makes me wonder how many people are just doing the bare minimum and still they are considered TBM active believers.

"Listing" people sounds really intrusive.

The fun thing is to tell a mormon that their 83,000 (as of April 2014 GC) missionaries aren't doing so great. They only baptized 283k people "using the spirit to convert". At $400 a month per missionary it's almost $400 million/year for those 283k people. That's 3.4 baptisms/missionary at a cost of approx $1400/convert.
And you all know how many stay active after baptism.

Well, let's contrast that with the 7th day adventists. They had over 1m new converts last year, with approximately 4400 missionaries. This was their 10th year of more than 1m converts. Unlike TSCC they actually put out a statistics report that seems pretty open. I did not do heavy analytics on it to see if it's crap, but it's a damn site better than TSCC. (adventiststatistics.org)

So, I'm not pushing the 7DAs but it is good to let mormons know that a church that supposedly doesn't give people a spiritual witness is baptizing 3x more converts/year, and doing it for the last 10 years. You all can imagine the answers that are returned.

I think the number that pay what might thought of by bishops and stake presidents as an 'legitimate tithe' is far far less than 50% of active members -- whether or not you think in terms of 'gross or net' of income. My experience from seeing numbers first hand is that there is a wide variance of how members, those that are actually showing up at church, approach tithes and offerings. I'd say maybe 15-20 % of active member households are donating anywhere near TSCC's hopes and dreams.

Now, as far as having 36% of members of record being active I believe that is also a very optimistic estimate. My experience, outside of Utah, is that wards have roughly 400-500 members on the roles and perhaps 110-135 or so on average are in the sacrament meeting count (unless of course there is a primary program, then you get a 10-15 person 'bump'). So for 'grins' and to make the math easy let's say the number of members of record showing up for sacrament is really closer to around 25%. Divide that by 3 people per household on average, round up a bit, and you have like 10 households carrying the ward

2013 Median income US $51,939.
Median income Utah $62,967
Mormons US 6,398,889 with Utah having 1,975,939
Now, since it does not make sense to apply more precision to calculating numbers than is in the data to start with, I will use the 'wild ass guess' principle to pull some numbers out of my butt that I think might be close enough for hand grenades. Just roll with me on what follows.

$55,000 household income used for average TBM
600,000 'US equivalent income households' showing up at church
(25% of 7,000,000 / 3 people per household rounded up and bent)
20% pay tithing
7% is the average of household income paid for tithes and offerings
= about
$ 500 million tithe and offerings annually

Now Just for more grins, let's double my wild ass guess number
$ 1 billion tithe and offerings annually

Holy shit sticks batman!! No wonder they're making members clean toilets. The above is a far cry from the $5 to $6 billion tithe and offering estimates I've seen bandied about.

Please do plug and play with other approaches. It is late and I well could be off by quite a bit. But, if you do use the 15 million member of record WW number and then break it out country by country with each countries own estimated activity, HH income, and tithes etc etc. My guess is that you'd end up somewhere between the two numbers above. But then again, my numbers are a 'wild ass' guesstament. :)

Note: edited to fix my wild ass guess math and probably made it worse. It is late.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2015 12:37AM by mannaz.

Interesting. I'm playing around with the numbers and I'll report back.

Been there, done that too:

http://www.mormonism101.com/2015/01/a-quantitative-model-of-mormon-tithing.html

When I use 50% as the upper limit, as indicated earlier in this thread, the total comes to $ 4.8 billion.

...as published in various media reports is about $4 billion per year. We have to factor in the multmillionaires who contribute many times more than members of average incomes do.

Cragun even goes up to 7 or 8 billion, but I think he extrapolates too easily.

What sources do you have?

rt, I love your model! Especially excellent as now that it is built it is easy incorporate better data as it becomes available.

Much better approach than my 'wild ass guessetiment', which I performed with the aid of my moleskin booklet, a pen, and my old trusty hp calculator.

Each tidbit of information has the potential to shed a lot of light on items. When I was tinkering this morning I was thinking of things like: 450 members / ward. 125 at sacrament on average. Household size? If same as US then 2.54 means 50 households at church. If legit to up it for mormons to 3.5 than about 36 household. How many 'households' pay a full 'household' tithing (no kids allowed) per cultural expectation of Stake President / Bishop. What if many households pay a NOM type tithe of far less. I've seen 'households' with under $250 tithe and offerings paid declare themselves as full tithe payers. Likewise, as a fellow poster suggested, maybe a few super rich give an immense amount. But do they really? Most rich people are rich in 'equity'. Do they tithe this on average or do most tithe only when equity is turned into cash? As always, the devil is in the details. Quality of data for assumptions is not all that great. But alas, we do not live in a world of 'perfect information' and must use what we have.

Makes me want to dust off my quant textbooks from my PhD program and figure out a way to model it from both directions. My wild ass method was from the household level of analysis up. I think yours was from the population level of analysis down. It would be interesting to extend a model like yours to create an estimate that incorporates assumptions from both directions.

Again, I love your model. I should have figured that someone in the rfm type world had put the tithe question to a test like yours and looked for it. Very nice.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2015 06:40PM by mannaz.

Wow, thanks mannaz.

I think that by using GDP per capita data, a lot of the details you mention are taken care of. If GDP per capita is $40k, that doesn't mean that every citizen old or young actually makes $40k but it averages out. Some make millions, others barely hang on, still others are kids.

The underlying assumption, of course, is that this applies to Mormons as much as to the general population. The model would have to be adjusted if Mormons as a group would significantly deviate from the general population but I have no indications that this is the case. All the research I've seen (from Pew, for instance) indicates that Mormons are very average (except in their own minds, of course).

The variation in what people think constitutes a full tithe is indirectly taken care of by varying the amount of tithe payers. Half the people paying a full tithe is the same as all the people paying half a tithe. This is what my model simulates.

Creating a bottom-up model shouldn't be too complicated. You can run a Montecarlo on as many variables and uncertainty ranges as you like. My advice would be to pick a handful of countries for which good data are available.

Does anyone have an estimate of how much it costs the Church to run BYU and its step-sisters? That's got to to be the biggest expense right?

In the last conference I'm sure I heard TSM use the term "Fifteen Million strong."

"In the last conference I'm sure I heard TSM use the term "Fifteen Million strong."

To repeat a sarcastic line from a few months ago, it's closer to five million strong, five million weak, and five million gone. :-)

Looks and sounds identical to Nazi propaganda to me.

I think this is a very misleading claim. If true, it's a statistic that only has meaning relative to the number of other conversions in other churches--all of which are significantly more pronounced and stable over time in regards to their degree of membership and membership trends.

I think that generally, people raised methodist/baptist etc probably are more likely to stay their whole lives in those churches--or for a while longer--relative to the Mormon trend which counts on continuous active recruitment to sustain their numbers with the amount of fallout we keep seeing.

It may be the fastest 'growing' religion, but only in relation to the number of other conversions in other churches, churches which don't have the tumultuous membership trend fluctuations (this claim made probably omits the inactive members). To me, what stands out is that the Mormon denomination is is still the smallest Christian denomination in the United States. In that regard, any growth at all might stand out relative to others, but this does not necessarily mean what it implies: that the Church is gaining more prominence within the American public, over and above other churches.

...Stats are a funny thing. I don't trust em!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2015 01:58PM by notinkansas.