http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=516&cat_id=30 - thoughts?

Sounds like the LDS church is hoping for a temporary boost in membership, hoping that this will revitalize the faith.

They will, no doubt, achieve some increase in convert baptisms. Having around twice as many missionaries out all of the sudden will almost certainly cause an increase in conversions.

However, if they can't hold onto those new members, they won't really see permanent growth, or get many people excited about missionary work again. I know in my mission, most members expected new converts to leave, because they almost always did. I met many converts who stopped coming to church as soon as the elder who baptized them left the area.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2012 11:10PM by nickname.

Their main problem is that their product STINKS. And I'm talking rotten dead fish sitting on messy diapers in the July sun stinky.

35mm film sales have been declining for several years causing serious financial difficulty for Kodak and Fuji. Do you think that if these companies suddenly announced they are doubling or quadrupeling their sales forces that wall street analysts would then predict revenue and profit growth?

Come on. More pimple-face pre-college dorks with no product knowledge and nothing to offer potential the customer but rotten fish and poop will not result in sustained 'growth'.

Agreed. Well said

For nearly every 18 year-old missionary who is going out now, there will be one less 19 year-old that would have gone out later. (Yes, there are a few whom they will get as 18 year olds who would not have gone later, but I think those numbers are marginal.)

This is eating seed corn. There will be zero long-term gains.

I anticipate greater % of RMs that will leave the Church sooner. More young women will discover the fraud of the Mormon cult and will not temple marry and will not trap their children in the cult.

Seed corn, breed stock, they are eating their young now. Boomers are next in line to die, this will create a numbers decline too. It was a religion of the post WW2 time when it was still okay to be patriarchal, misogynistic, and hate gays and people with non-delightsome skin.

I don't know ow we will be able to prove to a TBM that the Church is dying when that time comes, but I am thinking on the subject. Open to ideas for a third party data sources that a TBM can't wiggle away from.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2012 03:47PM by gentlestrength.

The change in age is an attempt to keep the younger males in the
Church from having their eyes opened during their freshman year
at college. They want to go straight from high-school seminary,
living-with-Mom-and-Dad and being-taken-to-church, to putting in
their papers.

The one segment of a member's life that the Church didn't have
control of was that year between high school and mission. A lot
of kids were going off to college expecting to go on a mission a
year later but completely had their heads turned around by the
freshman-year experience.

So they expect to INCREASE the total number of missionaries even
after the extra year "special increase" is over.

+1

Mostly a one time impact. As we say, the pig in the python. Yes, a few more girls will go, and a few more boys. I will also bet that we will see more go home or be sent home early. Too many mission romances.

OK, here comes the nasty comment: What's better than dressing up for Halloween as a pregnant nun? Going as a pregnant missionary!!

I think TSCC number crunching included the fact that they are losing upwards 25% of their potential missionary force in that 18th year to school, girlfriends, jobs, life, disinterest, etc. I'm just guessing of course, based upon 4 decades of experience - that percentage seems about right. Could be higher. Thus, they anticipate the initial boost, but also they think they'll gain in the long run year after year by increasing their overall missionary pool by 25%, which would translate into the following:
*15-20,000 more missionaries to add to their 60K force already in the field (year after year) since their recouping that 25% that would ahve been lost otherwise in the 18 year.

*50,000K more baptisms - year after year, especially in those 3rd world countries.

*Increased temple building and ward house building


It's all in an effort to appear like their growing, so that the tithing keeps coming in from the base.

The missionary numbers will increase because the church will get them soon after high school and before they lose interest getting a life for that one year.

Looking at those graphs brings the spirit doesn't it? That's the importance of the missionaries and converts. They are not valued as real people, they are just a line heading upwards on a graph determined with numbers pulled out of some authoritative butt. Inspiring indeed.

It's important to note for the lurkers that the church is dishonest as record-keepers. Keeping people on the rolls until age 110 is contrary to life-expectancy experts' predictions of life span as calculated carefully by life insurance companies.

Also, refusal to remove names even after resignation makes all the figures scewed by millions.

I asked to have my name removed in the eighties and discovered in 2006 that it was still there, along with all my children!

Be sure and call back after resignation to check your membership. You might be surprised like I was -why was I surprised?-- that they lied.


Anagrammy

The upper leadership, predicting a Romney win, were probably trying to find a way to increase the number of missionaries in the USA to deal with the hordes of Republican faithful lining up at the waters of baptism following Romney's win. One evangelical group was predicting at least 1 million converts to Mormonism if Romney won.

Appears they are going to have to find something else to do with all these 18 year olds.

for mormon conversions. Instead, the post-Romney mission field may be more hostile, especially after what Romney and his team has said about minorities and the poor.

I think LDS Inc.is going to be over their heads with young teenage missionaries living on their own. Teens have many emotional and mental health issues at this age & are mentally immature.

I predict more behavioral problems in the mission field & many will return home before finishing.

Oh, I would think so. Prior to Rmoney, I had a sort of simplistic and overall neutral view of Mormons as someone without much direct contact. But after doing a little reading as part of wanting to understand the election... I am NOT impressed. I'm a fan of religious traditions generally, but extremism gives religions a bad name. The Mormon faith seems quite problematic, like a milder and smilier version of scientology.

Banging on doors has got to be the absolute WORST method of recruitment. The Morg would shrivel up and blow away if it had to pay for the sales people in white shirts and ties. The attrition rate is extremely high with door-knockered converts....

I didn't go on a mission myself and always suspected that a large number of "converts" left soon after. I'm glad to have that confirmed. Is this worse in third-world countries, or in developed countries? (I know that some developed nations are extremely hard to get converts in, but maybe the ones that do convert are more serious about it?)

If 1 woman can make a baby in 9 months, then 9 women should be able to make one baby in 1 month, right?

Businesses frequently hire a bunch of new people to crank a project out faster, and somehow it doesn't speed up (at least not notably). Many projects just take a certain amount of time, or have a limited amount of input.

With mormonism, the input is gullible people who need a place to belong. You can crank out more missionaries to help find those people faster, but really all your doing is diminishing your perspective pipeline because it is a finite resource.

After this missionary surge has subsided (i.e. 18 months from now) baptisms will see a HUGE decline, because the perspective pipeline has been drained too much (i.e. the surge was effective, but they've overfished).

Yes there will be significant gains in Sis Missionaries but marginal gains in converts/unbabtized 9 year-olds/illegals in non 3rd world countries. I can't imagine how many will volunteer to be mission presidents now ------- they will truly be baby sitters. I can imagine it now: I miss my mommy, I had sins I didn't repent of and should be sent home immediately, I can't live like this, it's too cold/hot/humid/dry to go tracting, I'm sick all the time here, I can't learn this language, I can't eat this food, and this church cannot be true! A major point is maturity ----- an 18 year-old boy out of high school is not like a 19 year-old with 1 more year of experience at college or working to support a mission and a 19 year old girl is not like a 21 year old girl with college or work experience. But luckly the profit of the 'Only' tru church has spoken and his foot right now is very close to his mouth!

This may seem sexist, but I would like to emphasize that these are not my words, but those of multiple ex-mission presidents

"Sister missionaries drove me crazy."
"All of us MPs would say we love sisters more than elders, but it's just a lie. Sister missionaries are awful."
"I hate sister missionaries."

My mission pres said this one to me while I was still on my mission:
--I got called into the mission office to apologize to a sister missionary in my zone that I had offended, but she wouldn't let the MP tell me how I offended her
--After I apologized, I asked him if he could tell me any counsel that might help me avoid whatever I had done in the future
--He said, "I can't without breaching her trust, but just know that I don't think you did anything wrong."
--I said, "Well, not doing something wrong, and doing something better are 2 different things. Could I have done something better?"
--"Elder Bates, really, you shouldn't worry about it. Sister ______ is just kind of crazy. My job would be much easier if I only had Elders."

...later I found out that she had a crush on me and I had somehow snubbed her (like I didn't notice a new dress or something)

TSCC is assuming that more missionaries means more converts -- meaning that there is a pool of future converts that are only still heathens because the mishies haven't found them yet.

That might be true in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and Central America, but not in the US, Canada, and Europe, which have been raked over for decades upon decades.

So, TSCC can send teen missionaries (after only 1/3 as much MTC training) out to politically unstable, scary, unhealthy areas of the world to try and harvest more converts. The problems with this scenario are obvious.

Or, they can offload many of the new missionaries in the farmed-over areas of North America and Europe, where they'll struggle and have little success because people are NOT, in fact, just waiting to be contacted.

The problem is that TSCC doesn't recognize two facts: they are peddling a bad product; and door-to-door sales is dead. Sending 18-year-old boys out in droves to bang on doors is only going to make TSCC look more like a whackjob cult. The converts they do get will mostly be the crazy, unstable ones like they've been getting for the past 20 years or so.

The only longterm gain might be that the missionaries are more likely to stay active and stay in. If they have enough negative experiences, though, even that assumption might prove false.

I sure hope the age lowering backfires like h3!!.

I love comedy...

To increase membership, all we have to do is send out more missionaries. Cause there are sooooo many people out there who want to be members, but haven't, yet, had the missionary two step.

Not only is this total BS, it assumes there are thousands of people just panting to be mormons.

How fun it will be when they realize putting a couple of thousand missionaries isn't going to produce millions of new tithe payers.

It's just going to screw up a lot more lives...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2012 10:20PM by John_Lyle.

wrong place



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2012 06:18PM by John_Lyle.

Missions were ACTUALLY service missions. If kids went out on missions, and got to really help people, there would't be convert stats to get them down. They'd just make a difference and wouldn't be wasting their time trying to sell their snake oil.

And people outside the church would be talking all about how helpful and nice the Mormons are. There would be free publicity on the news, etc.

Based on these numbers, their members are expending $100,000s per convert in paying for missions. If the church had to pay this directly out of tithing, rather than expect it from families, they would go bankrupt.

GA Corporate thinking:

Short-term Revenue growth - NEW SALES - send out more sales people (increase number of missionaries: more missionaries = more baptisms)

Long-term Revenue growth/maintenance - RETAIN CUSTOMERS - send out younger sales people (lower age of missionaries: younger missionaries = permanent/long-term brainwashing effect)

Cut costs - IGNORE UNPROFITABLE CUSTOMERS - if there's no more hope for revenue, move on to other fields (excommunicate deadwood, non-tithing paying members).

GA public Mission Statement to TBMs & the world:

Numbers go up: We're blessed by God
Numbers go down: A sign of the times

LD$ Church & WWII German Army

Someone once claimed that the LD$ church & the German army are the two best organized organizations in history (OWTTE). You could draw some fascinating parallels between the two as you think of how "successful" each one has been.

Who would the Nazi leaders be? Who would the Hitlerjungend be? Who would the conquered nations be? What would the Anschluss be? Who gets killed off?

I think the GAs are doing very similar kinds of things. They're just doing it more nicely.

PapaKen

I would disagree about the German Army.

Hitler had this habit of playing his generals off each other. (actually, so did Stalin, in an even more ruthless manner. At Stalingrad, the NKVD–later the KGB–killed 13,000 of their own men for, among other things, having 'defeatist attitudes.' Stalin set up a race between 2 generals to be first into Berlin. Probably increased casualties by 50% or more.)

The convoluted mess that was the German military was an organizational disaster. The Wehrmacht, (German Army); the Waffen SS, (military branch of the SS); the allgemaine SS; The Totenkampf SS (death's head order, concentration camp guards); the SA (brown shirts); the SD, (security services); Abwehr, (military intelligence); Gestapo; the Kriegsmarine, (German navy, including subs); etc

The SS killed the SA, because the Wehrmacht was afraid the SA would replace them. The Totenkampf SS viewed concentration camps as profit making enterprises and sold concentration camp inmates into slavery to Krupp & IG Farben. Goring had no idea what he was doing with the Luftwaffe and, subsequently, squandered their assets, (during WWI, Goering was an infantry officer). Children were required to join the Hitler Youth. Then there was the Einsatzgruppen (death squads) and the Higher Order Police, (civilian police that cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen).

The Anschluss was a political act. The take over of the Sudetenland was the result of Britian (Chamberlain) and France (Daudilier) selling out Czech president Benes in an attempt to appease Germany.

It was an organizational mess. It's not surprising that the Germans lost, it's surprising it took so long.

The morg wish they had half the power to press gang people into the church that the Germans had. On the other hand, the church is just about as screwed up, organizationally, as the National Socialists... And most of it is made up as they go along.

Hitler was psychotic. He surrounded himself with psychotics. Killing people wasn't that much of a concern.

I don't think there is any direct parallel with the morg.