Posted by:
JoD3:360
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Date: January 24, 2011 10:59AM
More baptisms are only valid if the members actually stay around.
http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=church_growth_articleshttp://cumorah.com/index.php?target=church_growth_articles&story_id=39Over the short term, administrative policies can affect congregational numbers, but over the medium and long term, congregational numbers will always adjust to reflect the realities of actual member participation and convert retention. For instance, during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, many congregations and stakes were formed in Latin America on the basis of raw membership numbers without regard to very low convert retention rates that followed the practice of quickly baptizing inadequately prepared converts with little oversight. The artificially inflated congregational numbers came crashing down between 2000 and 2005, when approximately 1,000 congregations were collapsed throughout Latin America. When missionary work is successful and baptized converts are retained, sustainable new congregations are inevitably created; when congregational numbers are stagnant in spite of significant increases in nominal membership, that is a sign that few of the baptized converts remain active in the church.
http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=church_growth_articles&story_id=21Third, the LDS missionary program has not been as effective in either the United States or in international areas as one would like to believe. Although convert baptisms outpace baptisms of member children by a factor of nearly three to one worldwide and are near parity in the United States, more than three-quarters of Americans identifying themselves as Latter-day Saints in independent sociologic studies are lifelong members. Such figures imply very high attrition of U.S. converts, as most nominal converts fail to become active or participating members. Data from Latin America, the Philippines, and other international areas demonstrate that three quarters of converts are entirely lost to the church within a year after baptism. While raw LDS membership numbers may appear impressive on paper, these numbers have only a fractional relationship to the far more modest number of converts who have experienced a genuine, lasting, and life-changing conversion and who experience the blessings of active participation in the work of the Church. The available evidence suggests that the primary responsibility for these fractional retention rates lie with quick-baptize tactics which have traditionally focused more on meeting monthly baptismal goals than on ensuring that converts have been adequately prepared for baptism. Recent missionary program changes with the "Preach My Gospel" manual have led to at least some improvements in these trends, although significant problems and challenges remain unaddressed.
http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=church_growth_articles&story_id=14CUNY American Religious Identification Survey
The City University of New York (CUNY) American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) queried the self-identified religious affiliation of a large cohort of U.S. citizens in 1990 and 2001.[7] The study found that the LDS Church had one of the highest turnover rates of any U.S. faith. The CUNY authors observe: "Some groups such as Mormons ... rate in the number of Americans identifying themselves as Latter-day Saints appear to attract a large number of converts ('in-switchers'), but also nearly as large a number of apostates ('out-switchers')."
Because of high turnover, the actual growth between 1990 and 2001 was found to be similar to the overall population growth rate, for a proportional net growth rate of close to zero. The study found that just fewer than 2.8 million Americans age eighteen and over identified themselves as Latter-day Saints.
There are 5.3 million U.S. citizens officially on LDS membership rolls, although this includes a declining percentage of minors under age eighteen as well as many inactive and disengaged adults. In contrast, the ARIS survey reported that 1.33 million adults in the U.S. identify themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses, while the Jehovah's Witnesses claim only 980,000 U.S. members.