I'm curious, how small is membership in Europe? My guess is it's the worst in either Italy or France.

Topping...curious too.

What is Mormon membership in Europe?

Dismal.

Active membership according to this site
http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=main

France: 10391
Germany: 11147
Italy: 5658
Switzerland: 1968
Austria: 1252
Sweden: 2207
Denmark: 1302
Netherlands: 2564
Norway: 1237
Czech Republic: 507
Greece: 198
Serbia: 82
UK: 54526 - this is only 0.30% of the population
Russia: 4684 - 0.01% of the population
Spain: 7182

Activity rates all seem to be in the 25-30% range (note that active membership numbers are estimates).

Are these actual people because the number for Norway and Spain seem awfully low. Believable, but low. I mean, there is a temple in Spain and there aren't even 8,000 active members there?

The numbers are based on the reported total membership in each country corrected for estimated activity rates - the brethren don't release the actual numbers of active members.

OK - that makes sense. I know the members/activity rates in some of these countries is dismal I guess it was just shocking for me to see the hard numbers.

As a missionary in Denmark about 15 years ago, these numbers are pretty close to accurate. We knew the total membership was somewhere around 5,000, but the actual active membership was about half that.

JW's, on the other hand, claimed somewhere in the 11-14,000 range, which was disappointing for a young religion salesman like myself.

(We would joke, too, that all of the good people must have left in the Mormon migrations between 1850-1950s, when 30,000 Danes joined the church and then moved to "Zion".) What is more likely is that post WWII, the nation prospered, set up a decent social system, and eliminated most of their poverty. This is one of the reasons they are consistently ranked in the "happiest people in the world". Well, maybe that or that their LDS membership is so low.

I figured there should be a strong sampling of Danish mission RMs here. You were probably leaving just as I arrived.

Ever serve in Amager, Odense, Skive, or Allerod?

Not sure about Norway or Spain, but Denmark looks about right.

I estimated about 1500 active of the approximately 5000 total members in 2000 (last year of my mission there).

As membership was in decline back then, I would wager nonamekid's estimate of 1302 is pretty darn accurate.

Fun facts:

Denmark's population = 5.5 million.
Total Members = 4400, or less than .001% of the population
Active Members = .0002% of Danish population

Temple: Dedicated 2004

Not my estimates, but taken from cumorah.com

J/k. Common error. Number of Danish members is either 0.1%, or a factor of 0.001 of the population, but not 0.001%

Right. Why no one should post anything requiring even basic math past midnight. Thanks for correction. :)

There's a temple in Kona, HI, on an island with two stakes. So maybe 2000-4000 actives? Maybe 300-600 TR's?

Place is a tomb all week, then Friday night and Saturday morning (mostly Kona) ward temple activities.

I recently read that Italy went from three missions to two. Two missions with a membership of 5,300.

Fortunately for the leadership of the Corporation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints it is a privately owned corporation with no public quarter to quarter accountability. There is little business rationale for operating in these markets except for appearances.

Yeah, and when the Catania mission in Sicily closed, the former mission president announced that they closed it due to the success they had there, claiming that the area had "matured," making a mission unnecessary. Someone here on RfM declared something like, "Due to Ford's fantastic success, they are closing dealerships across the country." (I'd find the original quote, but the search function on exmormon.org is not working.)

So why the temple in Rome? God, who knows nowadays? The church always used to withhold building a temple in an area until there were enough members to support it. Back in the 1990s, the church basically told the Italians that it was not bloody likely that they'd ever see a temple there. They had to have a stake first. But there was not enough stable leadership (emphasis on "stable"), to warrent a stake. Then Craig Pacini became mission president there in 1999 with the express purpose to create a stake. It didn't happen during his tenure, but shortly afterward, although it's got to be the smallest stake in the world and the most dysfunctional, with few leadership and almost no tithe payers. The temple is probably just meant to be a jewel in the crown and not perform any specific role beyond that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2013 09:24AM by cludgie.

It is also becoming more clear that this is how they are able to distribute tithing to their construction benefactors. I imagine their accounting experts have figured out a way to take the tax deducted, tax exempted revenues of tithes and convert them into revenue for contractors, suppliers, agents, lobbyists, and lawyers required to build a temple. The benefit is creating the image of growth by temple and growth by penetration--"look dear, there is a temple in Rome now"

This is an example of how large corporations with unimaginable resources can write US tax code to eliminate participating in the common expenses of their expenses. US citizens are subsidizing their building Ponzi scheme. Take away the tax breaks, the building will stop.

I know that France has about 500-800 missionaries at a time. That is 3000-4000 per decade. In 25 years, that is more RMs created than active members in France.

I don't have the numbers for you, but there are places on God's green earth where Mormonism is done. Toast. And they know it. In certain places they've essentially given up.

I heard that those places were the nordic countries where they have a really hard time convincing people to get baptized.

because in the nordic countries its cold and they already have the true religion of the fridge :)

garmies dont go with a sauna culture

It looks to me like they need to shut down nearly all the temples in Europe & the UK. They should just keep open a few of the oldest ones, such as the Swiss temple which is 58 years old.

I just don't think they'd ever sell off any temples, even if there were only 10 Mormons left on the planet. Too much pride.

A guy from our ward left for Germany in 2009. While there, his mission was closed and split into two other missions.

and that from a superduperhyper TBM. So I suppose it's even lower than that, in reality.

One temple, two stakes. Official membership around 4500. But patrons come from a part of Russia and some Baltic countries, too.

They baptize perhaps 50-60 people every year but a lot of them drop out only 1-2 years after that. Converts are often immigrants.

ipo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Converts are often immigrants.

that is true for a lot of countries

I have a distant cousin who is a Mormon in Finland where I served a mission years ago. I was back in Finland 18 years ago on business and had dinner with my cousin and his wife. His first question was "Are you still active?". Then he told me that monies (tithing) could not be sent back to the states due to Finnish laws and there was all this money piling up, so they decided they were going to build a temple in Helsinki. I don't know if some money from Finland winds up back in SLC, but there was clearly a surplus of funds laying around. The temple was built some years after my trip. It was interesting to get a little background on it and why it was built.

Here are the official figures.

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/

Of the 190,000 claimed members in the UK across 330 congregations, I estimate activity averages at between 100 - 200 members per congregation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2013 08:08AM by Stumbling.

My sister and brother-in-law served two missions in Denmark (he was born there). He said people there are too satisfied with life and see no need for religion. He seriously wished God would send some sort of trouble to shake things up, make people scared and humble and needing God. Um, okay.

Why doesn't he just move to Sierra Lieone?

There were 5 missions in Spain when I was there in the early 90s. Now there are 3. The numbers went down in the decades AFTER they built the temple (1992). I thought missionary work took off after temples were built in a country because of "the spirit" that entered the country. Guess not so much. Also, while I was on my mission, one of my good friends was on her mission in Denmark. She said she didn't have a single baptism of a native Dane - all of them were immigrants. This was 20 years ago that Denmark was already wising up to how useless the church was in their already happy lives.

There was a heartbreaking story from an early 1900's a New York newspaper posted on RfM recently about a man born into polygamy to a Danish born mother that was recruited to Utah from her small town in Denmark. Upon her arrival to a small town in Utah she was informed by her Bishop, she was to become his second wife.

I find Danish women attractive too.

Anyways, she was horrified and I can't even begin imagine her distress. Her son went on to travel in Europe telling the truth about Mormons and the story of his mother. I think Mormon name in Europe is mud.

Norway has Lots of ('North Sea') oil. they literally couldn't be a happier people anywhere.
the exchange rate keeps out lots of tourists & people who might otherwise visit/move there, + regulations make it difficult. Has anyone ever heard of a 'guest worker' in Norway? I guess not.
National Debt in Norway: ~ 0

I wonder how the German numbers break down. My mission was in Germany before reunification. I would have put the total active membership at 3000 back then. And it wouldn't have grown all that much since. So If that 11K is accurate, which seems overly optimistic to me, that would put the bulk of the membership in what used to be East Germany.

Scroll down to Congregational Growth

http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=missiology_articles&story_id=155

The Church has been so successful in Ireland (2805 members, 841 active) that they closed down the mission and folded it in with the Scotland mission.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2013 01:58PM by Makurosu.