How long would a person be listed on Church membership records (you know, the ones the Church brags about every April that clearly Prove the Church is True) --

1. If they lived a devout life to the Church and died at age 55? Do they stay on for another 60 years or are they actually no longer included in membership totals?

2. If they were born to an LDS member, was baptized at age 8 but never attended for another nanosecond after stepping out of the baptismal font?

3. If they were born to an LDS member but never given a 'blessing', never baptized, never subjected to HTs/VTs and never had anything to do with Church?

Muchos thanksos!

1) active member dies: removed from membership totals
2) member of record, no way to know where they are: counted until they would have been 110 years old
3) not counted as a member.

Don't understand #3, can you elaborate?

#3 If this person's name shows up on any record, for example as a child of the parent or as a relative of a relative, they will be counted as a member.

It does not matter if they never set foot in a Mormon church.

au contraire mon ami

When we moved into our new ward two guys from the church stopped by and walked into the open door of our garage. My husband was totally surprised by them. I came out they were bent down trying to talk to our 3 year old daughter. They ask her name and I told them "michelle" My husband just turned and looked at me bewildered because that is not my daughters name. Then catching on he said " go in the house "michelle" Well we got rid of them and guess what low an behold about two months later I got a welcome letter with our membership data. It had "michelle" listed in the ward printout without a birthday. I can't remember if it had a membership number by it but you bet your butt they are probably counting her.

If my MIL decides to be a pain she could just helpfully give them my childrens names and birthdates and they would be under our information.


I even remember on the ward lists seeing nonmember spouses names on the ward directory.

Makes you wonder where they get their numbers

There is a difference between the ward list and the numbers reported in general conference.

The numbers in general conference are baptized members. Part of the report is the # of child of record baptisms and convert baptisms.

They have a lot more people in their database than members. Usually non-member / never-member spouses and children are included especially if the member is active.

Often complete non-members are included on the ward list in Utah especially is the non-members have a good relationship with the ward - it does happen; unfortunately thanks to my wife and kids this is true of our Chinese next door neighbors and their 12 year old son just got baptized..

My grandmother was born in 1905, baptized at 8, died in 1990 as a faithful and active member of the church. Her bishop presided at the graveside service.

In 2005, I happened to stumble upon the fact that the IGA still listed her a LIVING. I have no idea how that even happens, but my assumption is that she would have still be counted in the membership numbers.

Stupid.

So if someone was baptized 50 years ago in a country and then moved to another country (without the church knowing), would that membership be kept all of those years in the ward or branch where they were baptized?

There is a general salt lake file that it gets sent to.

Once it sits in the salt lake file long enough the church sends a letter out to relatives on file asking if they know your where-abouts so that they can send your records to the corresponding ward.

Sometimes wards will keep inactive adult children in their parents wards - especially if the parents request it to prevent their kids from getting bugged.

It's typically fairly difficult to move a record to the Salt Lake file - Salt Lake wants you to try pretty darn hard to figure out where they moved and send the record their first, but eventually they will accept it. Wards are motivated to get the records out because they negatively impact all their stats like home teaching percentage, activity percentage, etc. Which the stake is always on the bishop and EQP about...

some "lost" members are kept on ward lists but not all

there is a process for removing those names from the ward list (so that the activity rates improve...)

i was part of this effort many years ago so the process could have changed but there was a checklist with things like "go to the last known address and see if the current occupant knows where they are" and so on

i remember one of the steps was to mail a letter (anything - ward "newsletter" - doesn't matter what's inside...) with "address service requested" stamped on the outside - that means that if the address is forwardable the post office (in the US) will give the sender the new address

so once the ward leadership signs-off saying that the member is indeed "lost" then the record goes to SLC

there are senior missionaries in SLC that work this list - often calling family members and such - if they are "found" again then the record goes to the ward where they are currently living

you can be sure that this "lost" list is included in the total membership tally

i seem to remember that someone here said that the list in SLC has over a million records...

Same process today - at least a year ago. Sometimes SLC is anal about making you go through the whole process; typically they just let you send the record in.

My SIL hasn't attended church in 10 years. She is now 25 and has some of her mail sent to our house because she moves around a lot. Somebody from the COB called our house inquiring as to her whereabouts. She was actually living in Europe at the time and I let them know that. They were wanting to get her records transferred to our ward apparently. She has never lived with us. They asked for me to let her know that she needs to contact them as soon as she gets back to Utah. Like she even cares.

When I was the ward membership clerk a sister passed away shortly after giving birth. I didn't know how to enter a date of death and looked every where in the system for a place to enter it. I couldn't find one. I read through he training manual and couldnt find it there either. I called another clerk who said he didn't know and had never entered a deceased persons date either. He told me he thought salt lake did it. I asked how salt lake would know? Was I supposed to call someone? Nope. So it never was entered. To this day I believe this lady is still on the rolls.