I follow a few blogs of Mormons. This partly as a glimpse into the Mormon lifestyle but also the good content that is otherwise not Mormon related. Of course most of these families have several children. I keep wondering what the likelihood is that these kids will eventually leave after they’ve grown up, and if that’s more likely now than it was in the past. Similarly, it’s made me wonder what this church will look like 20-30 years down the line. What do those of you who are in the know predict? Will we see more of an exodus with kids like this?

I say the church will continue to grow, in numbers, but not in sufficiently to avoid shrinking, percentage-wise, against the total population.

A good buttress to this POV is that the Amish continue to grow! who would have guessed!

http://amishamerica.com/amish-grew-by-100000-from-2007-2017/

If mormonism isn't as 'wacky' as being Amish, then I could be wrong.

I'm interested in how "poor" mormons are going to fare. It's a tough religion to be poor in. There has to be a tendency on all involved to wonder if the poor mormon is a sinning mormon, because isn't the promise that the windows of heaven will open, if the mormon will tithe?

I can hear the bishop asking, "So, what sins do you have to stop committing in order to turn your ship around?"

The Amish are growing because they have a high birth rate compared to the rest of the population. 5+, or even 10 children is not uncommon in Amish families. Much like the Mormons.

I tend to believe that these religious groups encourage so many children so that the religion never dies out.

You may be right, as I know of no requirement in Amish theology to have a big family. My wife's Mom's family is Mennonite.

Straight up OG Mennonite (origin of Amish) was not really so odd in terms of European Christian culture. LDS is much weirder imo. Dutch Protestants, who didn't wish to follow the Dutch Reformed Church, and thought infant baptism was wrong. They were persecuted, driven out of Holland, and eventually, after long stints in Germany and Ukraine, migrated to USA. They have an agrarian tradition, and big families likely helped them survive and prosper in a foreign land. It gave them a bigger marriage pool too, as they did not wish to marry outside their faith. The community model of big families with shared industry, with complex marriage and blood ties in a closed patriarchal church, would be more likely to persist in a changing world. I would think that 100,000 new members a year is about right (especially if you include Canadians), with almost all active young adults having been born in the church, along of course with all the minors. They don't seek converts.

But if there are that many new members to the Amish group (and DW tells me Mennonites are not counted among the Amish), that can't be net growth, and must not include deaths. Can there be that many Amish in the US?

Did you check the link I put in, above? I can't vouch for its accuracy...

I remember when I used to believe this Prosperity=Righteousness formula. How stupid I was.

There is a reason why people feel demoralized when they have to go to the Bishop for welfare help. Why do many Bishops and RS presidents make their welfare recipients feel bad? No matter how good you act and your record looks, you are morally lacking somehow. Not every Bishop or RS president feels this way, but enough do so that a Bishop's interview for help can be a very trying ordeal. The LDS poor tend to feel inferior and therefore don't attend church much, except when they need to ask for help. This may look hypocritical to others, but in reality they are trying to save themselves from humiliation and emotional turmoil.

TSCC is already approaching a growth rate lower than world population growth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_membership_history#/media/File:LDSvsWorldGrowthRate2015.png

The 2016 growth rate for the church of 1.59% is the lowest since 1937. And the trend continues downward -- which is the opposite of what would be expected given increasing church membership (just births from all those mormons should easily out-pace world population growth -- but it doesn't).

The church in the US is already growing slower than the US population increase, meaning they're losing as a % of the US population, not gaining.

The end can't come too soon IMHO. :)