The latest stats can be found here:
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/2016-statistical-report-2017-april-conference

Summary
Wards and branches: 30,304
Total Membership: 15,882,417
Children: 109,246
Converts: 240,131
Balancing figure: -101,159
Missionaries: 70,946



Main Highlight
Convert numbers were the lowest since 1987, when there were only 6,440,000 claimed members and 34,750 missionaries!

Lowlight
Total units (wards and branches) continues to grow, which indicates that the number of active mormons is still rising. The rate of growth at 0.96% is less than world population growth of 1.13%, so as a proportion of the world population they are going backwards, but gosh darn it my goal is to see TSCC shrink in real terms in my lifetime!

The growing number of wards and branches doesn't necessarily mean that active membership is growing. Note that the number of missionaries is down by over 3,000 since last year, but they added 3 missions. They could have closed 20 missions.

It may be getting harder to recruit 18 year olds to go on missions.

Most 18 year olds I know wouldn't want to be bothered with that.

Plus, they'd have a ban on Internet usage. That would be a fate worse than death for some.

I dunno, it seems like every damned football player Boise State has recruited this offseason has a mission on their bio. Turns my stomach.

Oh my. BSU is where I rec'd my undergraduate degree.

If that's all they can recruit, it doesn't bode well for its team. They used to scour for talent nationally when I attended, to give scholarships to qualified students, many were from minorities.

When I lived there in 1980's, minorities were like 1% of the population, if that. Sounds like it hasn't changed much since then.

:/

Shinehahbeam Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The growing number of wards and branches doesn't
> necessarily mean that active membership is
> growing.

True, but of the publicly available statistics, the number of wards and branches can be manipulated the least. TSCC know that they have to keep ward sizes within a certain range in order to retain the most members. If they were to change the ward sizes just to manipulate the statistics, it would harm their retention rates, which would make it more difficult to keep the number of wards and branches growing. I would love to see them try it ;)

If you look at prior year growth rates and various measures on a per unit basis, it is possible to detect any significant or abrupt changes in ward sizes. At the moment unit growth is consistent with prior year growth, which means that they probably didn't deliberately change ward sizes, and if they did it is unlikely that they changed ward sizes by more than one or two people per ward.

> Note that the number of missionaries is
> down by over 3,000 since last year, but they added
> 3 missions. They could have closed 20 missions.

I don't take any notice of the number of missions, but I do look at number of missionaries per unit (ward/branch). For 2016 it was 2.34 missionaries per unit, which was similar to the levels seen prior to 2002. From 2003 to 2012 the average dropped to as low as 1.82, then the change to mission ages saw the missionaries per unit jump to 2.84. It will be interesting to see whether the number of missionaries per unit keeps dropping to below 2 over the next few years, or whether the change to mission age will have a lasting effect on the number of members serving missions, which presumably was the intention of the change.

Don't trust anything from the Church Co.

Can someone with access to online directory listings, if you assume those are up-to-date, automate a count?

I also hope that Mormonism will fizzle off. They wasted many years of my life--but I hope that those who still feel spiritual will not give up seeking for God. It feels bad to have been burned, and nobody wants to risk getting burned again. But there are many easygoing places of worship that can be moved on from without the residual effects that TSCC curses us with.

I will never, ever again go to a church that demands tithing. Tithing is an Old Testament law, like not eating pork, not wearing mixed fabrics, and giving adulterers the death penalty. It was a different cultural and economic time. Over the years, there were many charities that I would have liked to contribute to. But I could not afford it, because I was paying a full tithe to TSCC. I was gouged, and I will never let that gouging happen again.

If we could see the REAL numbers of devotion and activity, we would see that the picture for TSCC is even more dismal than these statistics provide. Poor Brethren, they are really losing out with tithes and free janitors!

They're a bunch of fucking thieves and liars.

Who is to say these statistics are actually anything of the sort?

>but gosh darn it my goal
> is to see TSCC shrink in real terms in my
> lifetime!

And you may live long enough to still do that. Do you have any idea how many people have resigned after learning about church history and its foundations? Approximately 30 percent of SLC is Mormon.

We'll leave it up to anyone leaking information to Mormon Leaks regarding actual numbers of resignations and membership.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2017 03:10PM by canary21.

The Invisible Green Potato Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The rate of growth at
> 0.96% is less than world population growth of
> 1.13%, so as a proportion of the world population
> they are going backwards, but gosh darn it my goal
> is to see TSCC shrink in real terms in my
> lifetime!

Perhaps you already have, for fifteen years or so.

There is simply no effing way that Jeff Holland can stand in front of the flock and say the churches biggest problem is "explosive growth" (his words not mine) and any sane logically thinking person would trust these numbers for a nano second!

It must be remembered that Jeff Holland is a flat out lying liar and that fact is backed up by solid evidence.

Self growth is all the church has and that is being eroded every time a member leaves which tacitly gives others permission to do the same as the stigma of leaving slowly but surely loses its sting.


Head over to the Jehovah Witness home page. Apparently Gods counterfeit religion is also kicking ass but doing it with actual growth. Not saying JW's are better just saying that the rose colored glasses of mormonism have reflective lenses on the inside.

The real problem facing the Q15 is explosive diarrhea and not wearing a good set of depends.

They in fact have changed policy regarding the creation of local units. In our area, our stake was decreased from ten wards to seven. TSCC created a new stake by taking several wards from adjoining stakes (6 wards total). I heard from higher sources that the plan was to create stakes with only 6 wards to make them more efficient. Perhaps the minimum requirements to become a ward have been decreased as well.