I just got an email from Peggy Fletcher Stack that she wrote a revision to her earlier article. It reads much differently:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54036926-78/church-lds-membership-growth.html.csp

Gotta love the church's explanation for this.

Tall Man was wrong to suspect that the church was not behind this inflation of numbers, and he hereby repents.

I have just been reading through the comments.
Really, really interesting.
I think the pressure is building in slc.
There is no way they can stop this train wreck now.

yeah wow, the comments are clearly not in support of the Mo church. The active members must have a hard time when they read this stuff.

Good that she wrote a sort of correction. Please contribute to the comments.

Classic statement in the comments:

"it takes more faith to believe their statisticians than their prophets"

That may have been my favorite!

I almost fell out of my chair laughing when i read that.

Classic.

And sadly, how true......

Due to the anchoring effect, the first reported figures are the ones that will stick in people's heads.

I demonstrate this in my class, and you can try it for yourself by having a guess at how many people died on 911, and asking a few friends to do the same. Then go wiki the actual figure. And be prepared for a surprise.

Marketing and political people are well aware of the anchoring effect and will cynically get in first and issue "estimates" that support whatever agenda they are pushing. Subsequent retractions and corrections mean bugger all. They have planted the meme they want, and it is basically impossible to replace the wrong info with corrections that are much more weakly linked to the main story.

In effect it means they really don't even have to bother about getting caught out. The only possible countereffect is to incorporate the true information in a much bigger, startling, attention-grabbing story that steam-rolls the first.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 09:15PM by spanner.

I'm after numbers for 2009. Does anyone have access to an almanac?

2004 12,463
2005 12,753
2006 13,010
2007 13,201
2008 13,363
2009
2010 13,601
2011 13,628



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 09:33AM by Simon in Oz.

I found this amusing;

To be accurate, the LDS church should report membership by degrees of glory:
celestial members--those who are paid in full. Terrestrial members--Don't pay their 10%.
Telestial members--church doesn't have a current billing address

posted by Select Star

Directory to other threads (may have missed one)


by The Man in Black:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,491717

by Suckafoo:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,490651

Simon in Oz:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,490639


by Tall Man, Short Hair:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,491580


by Tall Man, Short Hair:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,491496

by mckay:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,490160

The church's desperation is showing. Read this very carefully, as I just got confirmation from Peggy Fletcher Stack about this:

The church submitted to the survey an entirely new number for their year 2000 membership. This number is different AND LOWER than they publish in their own almanac. The reason this number is lower is that they removed about a million members who they say had no specific congregation affiliation at that time.

BUT, and this is the most important part.

WITHIN THE SAME DATASET, they used an entirely different method of accounting for the 2010 member numbers to include EVERYBODY who has ever been born or baptized into the faith -- including those who are not currently assigned to any congregation.

THIS IS A HUGE DECEPTION.

By artificially creating a lower starting number (A NUMBER THEY HAVE NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED USING AN ACCOUNTING METHOD THEY DO NOT CURRENTLY USE AND HAVE NEVER USED BEFORE), the church gives the entirely false impression that they are growing at a faster rate.

If a national company used two entirely different accounting methods within the same report to give the appearance that their profits were double what they actually were, we'd be reading stories about investigations and indictments. It is a willing and very public attempt to falsify the data.

We all need to understand the evidence of desperation that this gives us. We're seeing into the soul of an organization coming to terms with its own very public death. There was likely a group of men sitting at a table facing the excruciating fact that if they submitted accurate numbers to this survey, it would show the world they have stopped growing. So they did what the church always does. They decided to change history and create a lie. Again.

They decided to use new numbers that conflicted with their own published numbers. Even though they had to know their lie would be quickly exposed, it was better than telling the truth. And they got the mileage from it that they wanted. At a time of unrivaled visibility around the world, headlines splashed that the Mormon church is once again the fastest growing religion. As Winston Churchill said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

I've already emailed a number of the journalists that initially reported this and at least one has replied that "modifying numbers in a survey" isn't that big a deal. They'll stand by their initial report. The church admirably played the media, and largely won.

"admirably" is not the word I would choose to describe their actions.

Bottom line is they compared an orange to an apple in their own standards of counting. The orange being the 2000 numbers which reflected an estimate of members in good standing, and the apple in 2010 of all members ever baptized and still alive without excomm/removal.


Still, I question that they actually take out the numbers of those who resign. Somehow I bet they keep them as members for public consumption.

And unfortunately, it won't be seen as a big deal to anyone else outside of the exmo community. No one really cares.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 02:37PM by Jesus Smith.

This will seem nitpicky, and I don't wish to pick on you Hay-soos Smith, but the figure for 2000 that you mention, as I understand Trotter's excuse making effort, is not the number of members "in good standing", which I take to mean officially active. Trotter said this number represents those who are affiliated with a specific congregation, so that would include even inactives who are listed on a ward roll somewhere.

Those not assigned to a congregation at all would be those whom the church can no longer find at all, and whose names and records have been sent to SLC by wards as "unfindable". This is a much smaller number than simply "all inactives". And yet, it seems to have equaled approx. one million, if the church's numbers are to be believed.

So, one million lost or misplaced members in USA. Am I understanding this correctly? The number of total inactives would include these people, but also all those whose location is known by the church, but who simply don't attend their assigned wards often enough to qualify as "active members".

That's a good point. The diss-congregationalized could reflect the exmos who haven't officially resigned. Anyone who goes inactive for such a period as to be lost from a ward is probably out for good.

Was the number between the two calculation methods ~ one million ??

That's a lot of exmos.

Yes, that's the approx. difference between the low number TSCC gave to the survey for 2000, and the number in the almanac for 2000, which supposedly would include the unfindables, if Trotter's excuses are to be believed..

And more, since most of the resigned are in fact known and located, the resigned are in addition to this number for the "unfindable". And then there are the findable, known members of wards who simply do not attend any more, and are thus inactive.

That's a dam lot of inactives, as well as exmos.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 04:41PM by hello.

I will myself in the morning, but I'm too tired to type coherently now -- it's late. He's been assiduous on report Mitt's lies. I think pointing out that the lies are part of larger context of organisational lying/distortion of history is to the point. This thread is a good example, laid out, of how the Morg systematically distorts truth.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/

Create an artificially low starting point, then use data from sources that only show high subsequent results.

Are these people in the COB insane? Every lie builds on the last until soon they will have a few million actives paying to maintain empty temples and buildings.

How do they expect this to end?

Yes, there's a tale to be told in this deception. The problem is there's no reason to believe anything they say about their membership numbers, so that's an immediate handicap.

BUT, let's listen to what they've just told us with this altering of the year 2000 membership numbers: "Back in the year 2000 we had nearly a million members on our books that we simply could not locate," that speaks volumes to our understanding of their current troubles. And it's very safe to assume the problem in 2000 was significantly larger than they're willing to disclose.

Remember, the Internet was still somewhat of an infant in 2000, There was no Mitt Romney on the scene bringing the bright light of scrutiny on the church. And at that moment in time, the church admits that about 20% of their membership was so far off the reservation that they couldn't even assign a local meetinghouse for them. I know that I was inactive for decades before I left the church, but through forwarding addresses and info from relatives, they ALWAYS had me assigned to a local congregation.

I honestly think we're starting to see the cracks and fissures deepen. The current level of inactivity may well be running wildly higher than any of us imagine. 60%? 70%? Who knows? This attempted manipulation of the reporting on their membership numbers was a desperate move in their attempt to avoid having the world see they've stopped growing. We should keep our eyes open for further desperate moves. I'm sure we'll see them.

So 20% not assigned to a ward. 40-50% of ward (representing 80% of total members) actually attends. 40-50% of 80% is 32-40% of members attending. Yes, 60-70% inactivity.

Now, though they were more accurate with 2000 numbers, they are back to using inflated numbers in 2010. What a sham.

This whole thing has actually workednout well. We have always wanted to have a better feel for the activity rates. The church doesn't know where 20% of its US members are. Add to that the estimated activity rates in our wards and the percentages of inactives gets big.

It puts a smile on your face thinking of what the percentage of missing in foreign countries. For one, I am glad this came out. 20% is now my favorite number.

The real smile comes with the realization that Mormons are continuing to play the numbers game EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T MATTER.

They continue to use the old advertising strategy, "Lots of people are doing it, therefore, it must something to it."

If I convinced you many/most people are Scientologists, would you be interested in hearing more?

The negative public opinion which has been established is that Mormons are weird. Mormons are trying to change this, but their best efforts are not overcoming Mormonism's bad reputation and demonstrable disrespect in baptizing Holocaust victims after promising not to. Couple that with the the Johnny-Come-Lately to racial equality and people draw the conclusion that the religion is simply not in the mainstream. Worse yet, they are disingenuous and express outrage about being questioned regarding contradictions in its belief system. "What belief system" is not an answer.

This state of affairs takes place against the backdrop of City Creek Mall, the firing of the janitors and the gardeners and the calling of volunteers to take up the slack for the financially strapped rhinestone-covered, gold cowboy hat-wearing, Cadillac driving, private jet borrowing humble followers of Jesus.

Anagrammy

anagrammy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> The negative public opinion which has been
> established is that Mormons are weird. Mormons
> are trying to change this, but their best efforts
> are not overcoming Mormonism's bad reputation and
> demonstrable disrespect in baptizing Holocaust
> victims after promising not to. Couple that with
> the the Johnny-Come-Lately to racial equality and
> people draw the conclusion that the religion is
> simply not in the mainstream. Worse yet, they are
> disingenuous and express outrage about being
> questioned regarding contradictions in its belief
> system. "What belief system" is not an answer.
>
> Anagrammy

People are terrified of cults; too many people remember Jonestown, the Moonies, Heaven's Gate, the Tom Cruise Scientology video, and all the investigative journalism on the smaller cults (the Garbage Eaters come to mind)....the Internet has helped this tremendously, with the Rick Ross anti-cult website a good jumping-off point, that and all the news clips on YouTube; nothing important is forgotten on the Internet. Which brings me to Mormonism; there are too many truth-telling websites out there, too many ex-member websites telling their personal stories. The missionaries do not have a chance.

” If I convinced you many/most people are Scientologists, would you be interested in hearing more? ”

Not us here at rfm. But world is full of lemmings. We're the exceptions.

I spent so much time outraged at the lie with these numbers that I completely missed the signs that there may well be a phase 2 coming on the horizon. And it may have started today.

In today's Deseret News the church admitted its growth from 2000 to 2010 was 18%, not the 45% previously reported. Everybody interviewed for the article agrees it was just a simple accounting error. Ahem.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865555185/LDS-Church-reports-18-percent-growth-in-2000s.html

But, the best is yet to come. If the church sticks to a 2010 US membership number of 6,144,582, they can pair that with their reported US membership in 2011 of 8,251,430 and declare "the worst days are behind us. In a single year from 2010 to 2011 we grew at a rate of 34% -- nearly double our growth rate for the entire previous decade. All is well; all is well."

I'm gonna go have a Mountain Dew.

How can that reported amazing degree of rise for 2011 possibly square with the reported drastic drop in unit creation for the same period?

Consolidation to better utilize building assets--an economy measures.

The church is ever trying to be better stewards of tithing dollars.

Anagrammy the Apologist

Stage Two - 10 years later. Figures show Mormons have large families. To ensure all LDS people are counted, each "family" (member) will now represent 10 people. Also, people are living longer now. LDS individuals will be counted until their 150th birthday.

THE CHURCH IS TWOO!!

Would love to see the churn rate. How come no one has asked for a public announcement for the number of resignation requests and resignations granted?

The last few weeks have been very stressful for me. For some weird reason this article made my day. Is that so wrong?

It's pretty clear that the LDS infatuation with "growth" hasn't really subsided as I thought it had.

So, maybe we can help them out: the original Stack article stated 45.5% growth, so let's give them a few:

50.5% growth?

No, that's insufficiently faith affirming

75.5% growth?

Getting warmer

125.5% growth?

Pretty warm

275.5% growth?

That's the ticket- that ought to assuage Mormon Fragile Faith Syndrome.

RFM hereby declares and affirms that the LDS "religion" has experienced 275.5% growth over the last decade.

This church is TRUE (gush)!