"'Mormon Missionary Applications Soar by 471 Percent'
Peggy Fletcher Stack /
"The Salt Lake Tribune"
24 October 2012

"SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland predicted that lowering the age limits for young Mormon missionaries would trigger a “dramatic” uptick in their numbers.

"Turns out, 'dramatic' was an understatement. Try a 471 percent jump in applications — so far.

"Just two weeks since Mormon President Thomas S. Monson announced that young men could go on full-time missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 18 (down from 19) and young women could go at 19 (down from 21), the Utah-based church has seen applications skyrocket from an average of 700 a week to 4,000 a week.

“'Slightly more than half of the applicants are women,' LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter said Monday (Oct. 22).

"That represents a massive shift. Typically, women make up fewer than a fifth of the LDS missionary force, which currently stands at more than 58,000 worldwide.

"Ultimately, Mormon leaders hope more missionaries will translate into more converts. Indeed, that may happen.

"Matt Martinich, who tracks LDS growth, said in the past 33 years, he found each missionary has baptized — on average — six converts, though that number has dipped to five during the past decade.

"The Church reported 281,312 converts last year. If it sustains the current ratio of one missionary for every five converts a year, Martinich said, there would be 300,000 such baptisms when the number of missionaries reaches 60,000; 350,000 if the number of missionaries reaches 70,000; and 400,000 if the proselytizing force reaches 80,000.

"This missionary age adjustment could generate as many as 15,000 more young male missionaries and 7,500 more female missionaries in the first year, Martinich said in a report at ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com."

http://www.religionnews.com/faith/leaders-and-institutions/mormon-missionary-applications-soar-by-471-percent

_______________


Can this possibly be true?

Just let me just say that inquiring minds want to know.

:)



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2012 02:51PM by steve benson.

More dumb pushy kids pestering normal people on the streets and at their doorsteps.

The KKKult is going all-out in the "alienate the public" department.

the talk at work from my TBM co-workers is that the young women who are close to graduating from high school are now all thinking more about a mission because the age has been lowered.

My prediction---even if these young women get one year of college in before missions, most of them will NOT go back to college when returning because they will be so anxious to get married and the RM's who are just 20 will be anxious to oblige.

keep 'em young and dumb right? Way to go TSCC!

Keep the women dumb and in the church. Oh man, the peer pressure these women must feel if they decide to go to school instead of a mission. Whoa.

Oooo, all the kool kids are applying for missions! Let's not be left out!

Monson should have started that announcement at conference in a swanky dj voice saying "this next announcement .... is for all the ladies out there...."

Ha, yeah. Then a pause and one of his creepy smiles.

It might be, and the reason behind it is because the boys are still at home, under mom and dad, and still listen. They have them applying for a mission before they are even out of high school now, and out the door within a few months. The women, same reason for most I'm sure. No reason to go to a year of college now for the women, just get a job, save for the mission for a year and go. When they come back, their boyfriends will just be back and they can get married, pop out kids, and the future mormons education will drop, due to no one having past a high school education. You'll have a church full of paycheck to paycheck people, scraping by on the blessings of the lord - 10% at a time.........

OK, let me try some math.
The LDS church fields about 25,ooo missionaries per year right?
That means their baseline application rate would be about 25,ooo/52 = 480 per week, let's round up to 500 per week.

Give me the assumption that they apply at the time they come-of-age.
And, let's work with the estimate that 20% are women, 80% men.

Then the church lowers the age threshold.

Overnight, 1 years' worth of men, 25,000 x 80%, come-of-age all at once, that's 20,000 men.
And, overnight, 2 years' worth of women, 50,000 x 20%, come-of-age all at once, that's 10,000 women.

So there's a baseline of 500 applications per week, then in 1 day 30,000 people become eligible to apply.

If they all applied at the same time, you'd see a 30,ooo/5oo = a 6ooo% surge that week.
If they applied over the course of a month...75oo/5oo = 1500% surge for 4 weeks
If they applied over the course of three months...25oo/5oo = 500% surge for 12 weeks...and that's about where the surge is now, kinda exactly fits what we'd expect...they all apply within a few months.

THEN...applications should return to baseline. It looks like we can predict this surge will last about 3 months...at least it will take 3 months to "break even" at this rate...meaning until then they're just using up who was already going and who are just going early now. Only if this rate keeps up LONGER than 3 months are we seeing bonus applicants.

They only get the surge for 2 years. Missionaries shoot up from 50,000 to 80,000 while the surgers tour, then in 18-24 months abruptly drops back down to a baseline of 50,000.

That's about what I expect.

The wildcard is whether there will actually be alot more sister missionaries. Will it really prompt large numbers of women to go who otherwise would have married at age 19 or 20 instead? Is that really why sisters go on missions less than men?

OK then, the statistic I need is how many 19 and 20 year old LDS women get married every year. That would be the maximum pool of bonus sister missionaries.

Bottom line is, 471% is NOT impressive yet. They have to keep it up for months in order for it to represent an increase in their baseline force.

There was an article in this week's Price, UT newspaper about how enrollment is down at Utah State U's branch there and they're really worried this new age will affect their future enrollment. Sorry, no link, but it's called Carbon County News or something like that.

What an effed up cult.

All the men were going to go next year. So now they go early and come home early. Next year's crop of Elders will be like last year's. Two years from now, the surge of 18 year olds come home at 20, and then they face a huge drop in missionaries back to current levels.

Maybe the change for the women will make a permanent increase, but the 18 year old change will only lead to a temporary bump that will drop off in 2 years.

Meanwhile, the number of baptisms per missionary has been abysmal since 1997.

1. You are correct about the drop after the first year.
2. That the number of female applicants is much greater should not surprise anyone as the number of young women 19-21 is three times the usual number reaching 21 in a year, while the number of young men only doubles by changing the age. Again, it merely creates a temporary surge in missionaries and a shortfall of students at BYU and Utah schools. I would imagine it might be an aid to BYU-I students who are not only able to go two terms a year and there will be room for many on a three term a year program.
3. After the surge is over, TSCC will, as the above writer noted, have to pull back to the normal number going into the field.
4. To expect the number of converts per missionary to remain constant is probably in error because the church puts as many as can work in areas of higher baptism rates, to the point of saturation. The added numbers will probably end up going to places with less than average baptism rates.

Why would a young lady of 18 want to go on a mission right out of high school when she is seeking mainly marriage?

Because it's Where The Boys Are.

And she gets out of the house.

I predict a huge flood of returning female missionaries as soon as they realize they will NOT be texting their peeps during discussions.


Anagrammy

It may increase baptisms for a couple of years, but it won't increase the retention rate for new converts.

Most will still leave within months. Most will still be very needy, psychologically, culturally, physically or financially.

Yup. They still haven't figured out that pesky.retention problem. Newsflash...the product sucks!

But it's not about the converts. I've always thought of a mission as the last step in the brainwashing and then it's just repetition from there on out. If they can solidify loyalty to the church through the women, then perhaps there is more pressure on them to keep the men and their children in line.

Yep, it's not about converts. The core of mormon growth (the real and pathetically small one) is in births. More women getting out on a mission and getting home earlier jumping in to marrige without an education. This probably translates to fewer apostates and more babies.

There will be a significant increase in female missionaries that will continue because many more will want to go at 19 then want to wait until their 21. There will also be an increase in guys because some of those that would have left the church between the age of 18 and 19 will go on missions. For the guys, those that would have left the church prior to age 19 will instead leave the church when they return from their missions so you will see an increase in return missionaries posting on this board in about 3 years.

I'd like to know who's going to pay for all these just out of high school missionaries? What's it cost to go these days? $500/month or so? 24 months * $500 = $12,000. Where is a high school kid going to get $12,000?

Mummy and daddy.

IMHO- if TSCC can get these kids to give themselves a huge case of cog-dis then they have them hook line and sinker. It isnt about them converting others- it is about them "converting" themselves. Pay pray and obey and STAY!!

Hundreds of thousands of converts. How exciting! How about some stats on how many of those converts bail once they figure out they've been duped. Once again the Morg tries to impress with bogus numbers. Do these questions simply not occur to Peggy Fletcher Stack?

my niece as well....ugh what a joke! It makes me so sick that they can't recognize brainwashing as it's happening to them.

steve benson Wrote:

> "Turns out, 'dramatic' was an understatement. Try
> a 471 percent jump in applications — so far.

For this month LDS, Inc. has 12 times as many eligible young men and 24 times as many young women compared to before the change. But that will go down incrementally for one year until it's back down to where it was.

Big picture-wise the same number of missionaries will serve, so in other words not much changes for the long run.

I STILL do not believe this number.

It took me 2 months to fill out my papers. Dr. and dentist visits, interviews by SP and BP. How could all those people get interviewed in just 2 weeks?

The church is lying, just like they about membership numbers.

I think you are right.

Every week a few thousand LDS young men and women have birthdays making them eligible for missions. With the age change, 52 weeks of birthdays got dumped into the pool for men, and 104 weeks of birthdays got dumped into the pool for women.

Plus, a fair number of the women either got married or left LDS Inc between ages 19 and 21, so the increase in the number of women available to go each week spiked up well over 100 fold for that one week. A five fold increase in applicants should be no surprise. That the increase is predominantly female should be no surprise either. More than twice as many females were added to the pool of applicants, compared to males.

The pool of applicants just spiked way up. It will take a year or more for it to drop back to what it used to be. The pool of female applicants will be permanently higher, but not by a large amount.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2012 07:55AM by Brother Of Jerry.

If you see injecting a bunch of 19 to 20 year old young women into the missionary equation as a positive for getting more missionary results then you must be a REAL MORmON!

we have had two young women come in for their mission exams at the dental office, one was having the bishop pay for the exam and the other was worried about us charging her for an exam since she was in for an exam in sept. I guess im just surprised that the are in such a hurry to go if the cant afford it. I told one of them that due to the bump there maybe less visas to go foreign she wasnt too happy about that. I always want to say more to these kids getting exams for the mission but i dont want to get fired.