This is old, and has probably been discussed here before, but I thought this was interesting:

https://bycommonconsent.com/2015/04/04/20-years-of-statistical-reports-visualized-ldsconf/

Convert baptisms last year were the lowest they've been in years. However, I'm wondering if there's really been a sharp decline, or if it was just the first year that TSCC has been honest in decades.

The number of wards and branches has only increased by ~5,000 in the last 17-18 years. In that time, the church has claimed ~20k new converts and children of record for each of these units. Either they've been lying about their growth, or these "converts" are leaving far quicker than I thought...like 90% are gone within a year.

I was looking at the number of convert baptisms per missionary. Double the number on the chart to get convert baptisms per companionship. These numbers seem way too high. I've talked to a lot of RM's since I got back ~15 years ago that have been all over the world, and none of them baptized that many.

To any RM's that were out in the last 20 years: When and where did you go, and how many baptisms did you have? I went to Brazil ~17 years ago and had 6 baptisms, no families. That was about average for my mission. I believe all of them have left.

I think the "Mormons are kooks" meme has finally diffused throughout the world. Good job, Q15.

The percent of membership as converts should remain flat. There will always be some success in bottom feeding.

Edit: Looking at the graphs, I see that there was a dearth of missionaries between 2000 and 2012. This correlates with an increased conversions per missionary, which could just mean that those who went on missions were just more hardcore.

What happened in 2000 and 2012? The world didn't end and then the world didn't end again. Actually the big jump was before 12/21/12 so I would guess that a lot of kids wanted to be in the field for the second coming. The lowering of missionary age has increased the full time missionary count, but notice that it lowered the converts per missionary. It kind of leads me to believe that these kids can't do sh!t.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2016 01:39PM by bradley.

bradley Wrote:
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> Edit: Looking at the graphs, I see that there was
> a dearth of missionaries between 2000 and 2012.
> This correlates with an increased conversions per
> missionary, which could just mean that those who
> went on missions were just more hardcore.

It has to do with the fact that a lot of "convert baptisms"
have nothing to do with missionaries. The "dearth of
missionaries" between 2000 and 2012 has to do with young LDS
males going to college and finding out stuff about (A) the
world, and (B) Mormonism through the internet. They were
probably like me back in the 60s. I went to college intent on
going on a mission. A year or so later when I reached 19 I had
definitely changed my mind. The change in missionary age from
19 to 18 was designed to eliminate this year of independence
from a Mormon male's life.

A lot of convert baptisms are friends of Mormons who are
fellowshipped into the Church by Mormons. This includes the
so-called "Hormonal converts." Also children of lesser-active
Mormons, if they haven't been baptized by age 9 or so count as
convert baptisms rather than "children of record" being
baptized.

The days when missionaries converted people by the power of
their preaching have waned a lot.

Numbers are probably padded/made up. They already fudge the numbers of wards/stakes with creative rearrangement to keep the sheeple thinking there is growth when there isn't.

Another possibility is that they've redefined the word "convert": anyone above age eight who even momentarily agrees to join, whether or not they follow through, and whether or not they ever associate with TSCC after getting dunked. That person then stays on the rolls until age 110, even if they resign or die. Heck, maybe necro-dunked dead people now count as converts, too.

Bradley, it's likely not the age of the missionaries or their competence, it's just that very few people want the product they're selling. Investigators in most places can go online and find out everything the missionaries won't tell them. The doctrine doesn't make sense, the history is appalling, and members have to give a lot of time and money to the cult.

icedtea Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Bradley, it's likely not the age of the
> missionaries or their competence, it's just that
> very few people want the product they're selling.
> Investigators in most places can go online and
> find out everything the missionaries won't tell
> them. The doctrine doesn't make sense, the history
> is appalling, and members have to give a lot of
> time and money to the cult.


^^this^^

It is an indication of market saturation. Missionaries today are no more or less capable than missionaries have ever been in the past. The high numbers of baptisms in the past were the result of gullible, uninformed, and/or desperate people being available in larger numbers.

If those charts had covered the '80s, you would see the mysterious sudden huge jump in membership in 1989. That's because the church expanded its definition of "member." So we know the brethren get creative with the stats. And while the membership total keeps climbing, other indicators are rather flat in comparison, like the number of 8-year-olds baptized, and the number of missionaries. If the number of members is five times what it was in the '70s, then, if the church were healthy, those other numbers should be five times as high. But they're not. Over the years, the brethren have stopped reporting some stats. Often they're stats that show disheartening trends to anyone who cared to do the arithmetic. For example, you used to be able to compare the difference between infants blessed and children baptized eight years later, which was always lower, with the gap widening over the years. That gap showed how many parents had stopped caring about their kids having the church's essential ordinances, most likely because they had stopped believing and had gone inactive. Most missionary work these days is about finding those unbaptized former kids, those people with some thin connection to the church (or with high-pressure TBM relatives) and harassing them into the dunk tank.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2016 09:29AM by Stray Mutt.

If "members" were only those who hold active temple recommends and regularly attend meetings and serve when asked there would be precious few. After all, those who profess full belief in Mormonism should do all these things since TSCC emphatically states this is the way to eventually attain celestial glory.

Quantity means nothing if quality is not there. Consider Latin America where high numbers of convert baptisms were followed by massive numbers of inactive members. Recent reports from other foreign missions tell a similar story.

Templar raises a good point. I'm curious to know how many members actually hold a temple recommend. This figure would eliminate the dead and inactive members the morg uses to pad the numbers. Does anyone have this figure? Or is this one of those secrets the morg likes to keep.

Less than 1/4 of those on Church membership records in Chile
self-identify as Mormons on the national census. The same goes
for Brazil where the VAST majority of "Members" do not
self-identify as Mormons. So having a TR is one measure, but in
a lot of Latin-American countries even calling yourself a
"Mormon" is rare among those on the rolls.

Does anyone know if LDS Inc counts the "dead dunked" as newly converted?

Hehehe. That would skewer the numbers.

In their minds they must do that, even if not on paper.

But they might as well since the numbers are padded at best and a big fat lie at worst.

Most religions count as "members" only those who participate regularly in church activities and/or contribute money.

By this measure, the Mormon church would have several million less so-called members. To claim a total of over fifteen million members is a travesty, but, of course, this never seems to bother the unholy fifteen. They just continue with their lies and misrepresentations.

I once attended a Presbyterian congregation's annual meeting.
It surprised me in various ways:

1) Anyone could attend. If you walked in the door you could
attend the meeting.

2) Everyone attending got a handout which gave a summary of the
congregation's finances.

3) One of the items listed was the number of members dropped
from membership rolls for not attending during the previous
year. How many baptized Mormons (part of that '15 million'
number they keep throwing around) would be considered members
under the Presbyterian criteria? So comparing the number of
members the Morg has, compared to the Presbyterian Church is
not a fair comparison.

Haha...dead dunked counted as members...i guess technically they are...arent they?...seems i read heil hitler was done 7-9 times if memory serves...or was it some other joker of ill repute...no matter...gotta keep those stats up somehow even if it means fantascizing that youve traced your lineage right back to Adam...what utter horse pucky...they say joe and most of the fossils share mineage of the royal bloodline back to christ...gonna be a sad day if they ever find out he was a womanizing lying sack of soybeans too...nuts and trees

Elie Wiesel can start rolling over in his grave now.

LDS had him slated for post-humous baptism while he was still living. The only thing standing in their way was he wasn't a corpse yet.

Let the rolling begin!

It must have angered him to no end when he learned that he was scheduled to be baptized with his previously deceased parents.

The morg couldn't wait to get started! Horror fiction writers couldn't ask for better material than this.

:(

It could be that LDS Inc has two sets of numbers for members. Those who are living. And all those who have died and who were baptized in proxy.

You know, like it hides its accounting and finance records from its members and the public?

I could see it hiding the numbers of the necro-dunked people for as far back as its records have allowed it to be doing baptisms for the dead.

Heck, it has necro-dunked the fictional High Kings of Ireland, for gosh sake. And counts them among its heavenly members.

:/ Meh.

Amyjo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Heck, it has necro-dunked the fictional High Kings
> of Ireland, for gosh sake. And counts them among
> its heavenly members.

LOL!

It looks to me like the church is going to have to grow more slowly as a percentage, moving forward. If you compare the church to an multilevel marketing company, here is how it works. If you're Amway in the 1960's, growth is easy. You can easily double or triple in size in a short period of time, because not that many people are involved to begin with, and relatively nobody has even heard of it. The bigger you get, the more growth slows. Growing from 150 people to 300 people is easy. Going from 15 million to 30 million people is not so easy. Even the level of annual growth in the global semiconductor industry is limited by the size of the global market. The percentages have to go down after the market matures because the market can't simply double each year when billions are sold each year.

At the same time, name recognition itself can spoil the market once everyone has heard of something and decided in advance, not to get involved. The novelty wears off. People become educated about the negatives of the products, whether it's selling soap to your friends, or selling mormonism. If you have a crappy product that is sold based on lies and perceived novelty, then it stops selling when the truth comes out and there is no novelty anymore. Put simply, the church will continue to grow numerically. But if it were a stock on the stock market, it would be a terrible investment, because the growth rate potential is far too low. Unless you're the president of the corporation of the president, it's not worth getting involved in.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2016 10:52PM by azsteve.

In business school, they teach about a product's s-curve. Like an "s", a new product's introduction takes time at the bottom of the curve. After some time, the product becomes known and enters the strong growth phase from the bottom to the top of the "s". As it approaches the top, the growth phase has ended and product sales become flat and then enters the period of slow decline which eventually leads to end of the product's life.

Mormonism, as far as the United States goes, and very possibly Europe as well, is clearly at the top of its "s" curve and will soon (if it hasn't already) go into decline. The "world's fastest growing church" is no more. RIP!

Templar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In business school, they teach about a product's
> s-curve. Like an "s", a new product's introduction
> takes time at the bottom of the curve. After some
> time, the product becomes known and enters the
> strong growth phase from the bottom to the top of
> the "s". As it approaches the top, the growth
> phase has ended and product sales become flat and
> then enters the period of slow decline which
> eventually leads to end of the product's life.
>
> Mormonism, as far as the United States goes, and
> very possibly Europe as well, is clearly at the
> top of its "s" curve and will soon (if it hasn't
> already) go into decline. The "world's fastest
> growing church" is no more. RIP!

The numbers are already in decline in Europe even using TSCC's inflated/fictional claims.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1197757,1197757

Templar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mormonism, as far as the United States goes, and
> very possibly Europe as well, is clearly at the
> top of its "s" curve and will soon (if it hasn't
> already) go into decline.

Dead on. I actually wrote an article about that:

http://www.mormonism101.com/2015/04/number-of-mormons-to-peak-at-20-million.html

Excellent reference. Thanks for the head's up. Your figure 2 S-curve says it all.

BTW, like your analysis, I have long felt that Mormonism actually peaked in the mid-60s since the logistic rate of growth (the true measure of growth) clearly began a long decline which accelerated in the late 1980s and continues to this day. A good deal of money has been lost in the stock market by investors who do not understand this concept.

I like to compare TSCC to a charging rino who has been shot. He's slowly dying, but is too stupid to know it!

Chump Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The number of wards and branches has only
> increased by ~5,000 in the last 17-18 years. In
> that time, the church has claimed ~20k new
> converts and children of record for each of these
> units. Either they've been lying about their
> growth, or these "converts" are leaving far
> quicker than I thought...like 90% are gone within
> a year.

That's exactly it. In the US, 50% are gone within a year, outside the US it's 75%.

I have some interactive growth charts here:

http://www.mormonism101.com/2015/10/growth.html

Since 2000, the numbers seem to be fairly consistent to me. There is, however, only one number that would be truly interesting: the average number of people attending Church on Sundays.

Unfortunately, they don't publish that.

One can make a pretty good guess though. Drove past the local branch chapel last Sunday and there were only ten cars in the car park, none of them large family vans. When I last attended in 1987 there were always about 25 cars (including a couple of large family vans) in the car park. Very obvious that attendance has dropped off considerably in just under 30 years.

Interestingly enough, we also passed the Evangelical Church and their car park, (at least twice as large as the LDS one) was packed. We pulled over to the side of the road and did a quick count. Stopped counting when we reached 100 but there were still at least 15 more obscured by trees on the far side.

They make up anything they want. They put a spin on anything and everything to make themselves look good.

I don't think TSCC is making up the number of actual baptisms, but calling them "inactive members" until their 110th anniversary if they walk away within three months is quite a stretch. Those people do not count themselves as members at all. I'm sure TSCC knows this as well as we do.

In most countries, the percentage of members who can be considered active (even without a temple recommend) is below 10%. That's all over Europe, Africa and Latin America.

<<<Who’s baptizing these new members? Why, the missionaries, of course!>>>


Yeah, right! Who believes that????? As an RM, I don't.

My question is: Who are they trusting to manipulate the stats? They either have a super secret group of statisticians working their statistical magic or they will soon have to stop reporting membership and ward/stake growth numbers. You can only do just so much to keep the sheeple ignorant and duped.

The mindset is equal to my Abbot and Costello post earlier today.