We've all heard Mormons brag about the LDS church growth. What surprises me is that so many Mormons are returned missionaries and should know by first hand that most of those conversions are bogus. Even if the Mormon church is the fastest growing, purely by number of baptisms, they still should know they have nothing to brag about because most of them go inactive anyway. Most converts are either flakes, mentally instable, immigrants, lonely, want financial support, or are children and so forth. Very few of them are true blue converts to the religion.

So if an RM points out the growth, look them in eye and say, come on now, you served a mission, are those baptisms REALLY something to brag about?

Perhaps some (as I did) think that it is growing in parts OTHER than where you went.

I was in Japan and saw very little if no growth (partly thanks to me - I hated selling this BS door to door).

When I got home I heard of insane growth in other areas - I just believed it wholesale.

My first and second to last area was the same. Conversions from when I was there the first time had stopped going to church. I honestly don't remember thinking about it. I also didn't think about all the inactives on the roles that we would try to visit and they would hide from us.

They aren't the fastest growing church. Seventh Day Adventist holds that prideful title.

If as a recent RM someone looked me in the eye and asked me that I would definitely agreed with them. But, I would have felt bad about myself, about the crappy job I had done. I wouldn't have every blamed it on the product I was selling.

What growth?

http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/

"Three stakes discontinued in Utah"
"Stake discontinued in California"

"The ten countries which experienced the greatest percentage decrease in congregations between 2000 and 2010 included:

Niue - -50% - 2
Belgium - -35% - 17
Chile - -30% - 620
Panama - -29% - 78
Poland - -28% - 13
Italy - -23% - 99
Netherlands - -23% - 13
Austria - -23% - 17
Portugal - -22% - 68
Sweden - -22% - 40 "

http://www.mormonwiki.org/Population_and_growth_rate

"According to the Church’s Member and Statistical Records Division, first-generation members made up 64% of total Church membership as of July 2006 Per David Stewart, 70% to 80% are inactive."

"Sociologist Armand Mauss estimates that 50 percent of LDS converts within the United States stop attending within a year of conversion, and 75 percent of foreign converts fail to attend after a year."

And the best parts: "While LDS activity rates in the United States are among the highest of any country in the world, less than half of members on the rolls are active."

And this: "For the U.S. as a whole, only 59% of baptized males ever receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. In the South Pacific, the figure drops to 35%; in Great Britain, 29%. In Mexico (with almost 850,000 members) the figure is 19%; and in Japan, only 17% of the male members ever make it past the Aaronic Priesthood."

Finally, one quote with very enlightening statistics: "For instance, official church statistics report that in the two year interval between 2000 and 2002–the years relevant to the census data used above–Argentina added one stake and 19,500 new members. Venezuela also gained one stake and 16,320 members. Church-wide, however, the average number of members per stake is 4370. In the U.S. there are only about 4000 members per stake. Thus, based on the church-wide mean, Venezuela added over three stakes’ worth of members for its one new stake, and Argentina added the equivalent of four stakes’ worth of members for its new stake. In this same two year span, neither Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala or Honduras added a single new stake, but between them they added 38,185 (or almost 9 stakes’ worth) of new members. Colombia lost a stake through consolidation–going from 23 to 22–but added 6385 members. Peru lost a stake as well, but managed to add 19,731 new members. Finally, Brazil lost 3 stakes and a total of 190 congregations (88 wards and 102 branches) through consolidation between 2000 and 2002, yet added almost 66,000 new members–going from 743,182 to 808,940. The only explanation for the countervailing pattern of stake consolidation and membership growth in these nations is that rates of convert retention in Latin America are extraordinarily low."

Of course, some people are already spinning the negative growth as a sign of the times! "The slowdown is a sigh of the closing of the times of the gentiles. We should show our fellows how and why this is a natural fulfillment of prophecy" someone commented on yet another pro-mo blog.

I don't even have to read "anti-mormon garbage". The TBM garbage is clear enough. We may have known this for years, but TBMs are beginning to see it too.