Does Mormonism Encourage LDS People to Lie? - Brooks

[_Equality]

The affirmative answer to the question in the title of this thread is found in kjones' post over HERE.

[_Bob Loblaw]

I knew the church was bleeding members, but baptisms are down also?

I can't wait to see how they report their "rising membership" numbers in the future.

Do you have any reference for the lower baptism numbers? I would love to read it.

Baptisms are way down except in areas where the Internet is not widely available.

From David Stewart:

"A closer examination of growth and retention data demonstrates that LDS growth trends have been widely overstated. Annual LDS growth has progressively declined from over 5 percent in the late 1980s to less than 3 percent from 2000 to 2005. Since 1990, LDS missionaries have been challenged to double the number of baptisms, but instead the number of baptisms per missionary has halved. During this same period, other international missionary-oriented faiths have reported accelerating growth, including the Seventh-Day Adventists, Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, and Evangelical (5.6 percent annual growth) and Pentecostal churches (7.3 percent annual growth). For 2004, 241,239 LDS convert baptisms were reported, the lowest number of converts since 1987. The number of convert baptisms increased to 272,845 in 2006, but both missionary productivity and the total number of baptisms remained well below the levels of the early 1990s. Even more cause for concern is the fact that little of the growth that occurs is real: while nearly 80 percent of LDS convert baptisms occur outside of the United States, barely one in four international converts becomes an active or participating member of the Church. Natural LDS growth has also fallen as the LDS birth rate has progressively declined. LDS church membership has continued to increase, but the rate of growth has slowed considerably." (Stewart, Jr., David. The Law of the Harvest: Practical Principles of Effective Missionary Work)

[_Stormy Waters]

For anyone who may have missed it, I think Runtus Spinning the mission experience explains well why this happens. It's the pressure to tell the most faith promoting version of events that causes critical omissions to be made.

[_Bob Loblaw]

For anyone who may have missed it, I think Runtus Spinning the mission experience explains well why this happens. It's the pressure to tell the most faith promoting version of events that causes critical omissions to be made.

All my life I was told that people were "watching" me as a member of the church so I needed to be an example and show the positive side of being a Mormon. Looks like I wasn't the only one who was told that.

[Guest]

Your bigger problem is that the "real article" you speak of isn't attractive to anyone but people like you.

Who cares? Regardless of what actually happens in the future as to Church growth, its "people like me" who will be on the lifeboats and well away from the suction when the secularist/progressive Titanic takes its final plunge, along with the rest of the culture, supported, aided, and abetted by people like you and Joanna Brooks.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

I can't wait to see how they report their "rising membership" numbers in the future.

Do you have any reference for the lower baptism numbers? I would love to read it.

for what it's worth, I did an analysis of convert baptisms for each year from 1980 through and including 2011 (it was really just for my own edification). The actual bap numbers and number of missionaries came from the statistical report included in each Ensign for May of a particular year. The first column in the chart below is the year; the second column contains the total convert baps for that year; the third column has the number of full-time missionaries for that year; and the fourth column is the average number of baptisms per missionary for that year. High numbers are in bold.

One can see that the numbers of baps really started to tank after 1997 (at least in baps per missionary) and really haven't recovered since. Moreover, the total number of baps each year has been stagnant at best (meaning a growth percentage that is trending down). The Internet started to be widely available in the late 90's, so perhaps this is one cause for slowing growth.

1980: 221,000 29,953 (7.4 baps per)

1981: 224,000 29,700 (7.5 baps per)

1982: 207,000 26,300 (7.9 baps per)

1983: 189,419 26,565 (7.1 baps per)

1984: 192,983 27,655 (7.0 baps per)

1985: 197,640 29,265 (6.8 baps per)

1986: 216,210 31,803 (6.8 baps per)

1987: 227,284 34,750 (6.5 baps per)

1988: 256,515 36,132 (7.1 baps per)

1989: 318,940 39,739 (8.0 baps per)

1990: 330,877 43,651 (7.6 baps per)

1991: 297,770 43,395 (6.9 baps per)

1992: 274,477 46,025 (6.0 baps per)

1993: 304,808 48,708 (6.3 baps per)

1994: 300,730 47,311 (6.4 baps per)

1995: 304,330 48,631 (6.3 baps per)

1996: 321,385 52,938 (6.1 baps per)

1997: 317,798 56,531 (5.6 baps per)

1998: 299,134 57,853 (5.2 baps per)

1999: 306,171 58,593 (5.2 baps per)

2000: 273,973 60,784 (4.5 baps per)

2001: 292,612 60,850 (4.8 baps per)

2002: 283,138 61,638 (4.6 baps per)

2003: 242,943 56,237 (4.3 baps per)

2004: 241,239 51,067 (4.7 baps per)

2005: 243,108 52,060 (4.7 baps per)

2006: 272,845 53,164 (5.1 baps per)

2007: 279,218 52,286 (5.3 baps per)

2008: 265,593 52,494 (5.1 baps per)

2009: 280,106 51,736 (5.4 baps per)

2010: 272,814 52,225 (5.2 baps per)

2011: 281,312 55,410 (5.1 baps per)

[_3sheets2thewind]

grab your popcorn, Ahab and Paharon are about to throw down. Ahab, has slapped paharon across the face with the gaunlet, not sure if paharon will accept the challenge.

[_Stormy Waters]

So Brooks is now, for all intents and purposes, thoroughly apostate from the Church and its teachings and is shooting from the hip on a continual basis at an ever widening body of doctrinal, historical, and philosophical targets.

I'm sure here and Dehlin get along just marvelously. Brook's new Church of Progressive Postmodern Latter day Academics is not going to have many takers among those who are actually faithful members of the real article.

Unable to address the issue you attack the author. Classic apologetics.

[_Stormy Waters]

I posted this in the MD&D quote thread but I think it gives an insight into the thought process.

You continue to unwittingly make my case. The gospel is about coming to Christ and becoming like him. "Truth" is but one of several means to achieving that end, though only in so far as those "truths" are relevant to that end. Not all "truths" will free us from chains of sin and spiritual death and free us to become like Christ. In fact, some "truths" may distract us from that end, and perhaps enslave us in counterproductive obsessions--as the case may be. This is a "truth" that you seem incapable of getting--which is, in part, why you and others like you haven't been called to the important task of constructing the curriculum for the Church. This is a position which needs to be filled by people who know what they are doing and know what the Church is all about.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_Droopy]

So Brooks is now, for all intents and purposes, thoroughly apostate from the Church and its teachings and is shooting from the hip on a continual basis at an ever widening body of doctrinal, historical, and philosophical targets.

I'm sure here and Dehlin get along just marvelously. Brook's new Church of Progressive Postmodern Latter day Academics is not going to have many takers among those who are actually faithful members of the real article.

Unable to address the issue you attack the author. Classic apologetics.

Actually, its just a elementary logical inference.