My "LDS Church Growth" Hobby Horse

[Res Ipsa]

What I find interesting is how the Mormon Church has slipped into third place in growth when compared to the Jehovah Witnesses and the 7th Day Adventists. Each of these other churches continue to maintain growth while the Mormon's are dropping faster than a lead balloon.

Again the church has the burden of pushing a verifiably false narrative that can be quickly fact checked, thus the change in its branding to the church of blah blah blah, while the other just have their particular flavor of Christianity which emphasize their unique interpretations of the Bible

The Mormon's have a heavier load to lift to indoctrinate someone towards belief and baptism but even after that hurdle is reached the Mormon's can't keep em. New converts come and go seemingly within a very short time while both the JW's and Adventists keep em in.

If I recall correctly, both the Witnesses and the Adventists made aggressive missionary efforts in Africa before the LDS church really got in the game there. Christianity is projected to continue to grow, largely due to untapped markets in Africa, the predicted population growth in Africa, and the relative youth of the population in Africa. I also believe they are much better at retention than the LDS church, perhaps due to a higher level of commitment required before they are counted as members.

[Gadianton]

I think in terms of disposition, in Africa, blacks are more comfortable in churches with some energy. Mormonism is really geared toward the milquetoast middleclass whites and fifth-generation wealthy who descended from polygamists. A friend who served in Germany said Mormonism struggled for the opposite reasons. Among the cults, Jehovah's Witnesses did very well because it appealed to the conservative, overly-serious lemonesque.

Internationally the LDS church will do better than it does at home where the ruse is up, but Pentecostalism will 100x Mormonism.

[Philo Sofee]

I think in terms of disposition, in Africa, blacks are more comfortable in churches with some energy. Mormonism is really geared toward the milquetoast middleclass whites and fifth-generation wealthy who descended from polygamists. A friend who served in Germany said Mormonism struggled for the opposite reasons. Among the cults, Jehovah's Witnesses did very well because it appealed to the conservative, overly-serious lemonesque.

Internationally the LDS church will do better than it does at home where the ruse is up, but Pentecostalism will 100x Mormonism.

You mean people want churches with excitement, pazzazz, and flair? Whodathunkit?

[Gabriel]

This is what Russell had to say about his role in the growth of the Church. Given his penchant for self-promotion, I can only assume that he is implying that the desert has blossomed as a rose since he took on the prophet's mantle.

THE MOST AMERICAN RELIGION
Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis. What will the third century of the faith look like?
By McKay Coppins

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... on/617263/

As we neared the end of our conversation, the prophet closed his binder and became quiet. “Judgment Day is coming for me pretty soon,” he said. It was a strange sort of confession—both startling and obvious, at least from an actuarial standpoint—and I didn’t know how to respond. After another pause, Nelson began to contemplate what he would have to answer for in his imminent “interview” with God. “I doubt if I’ll be judged by the number of operations I did, or the number of scientific publications I had,” he told me. “I doubt if I’ll even be judged by the growth of the Church during my presidency. I don’t think it’ll be a quantitative experience. I think he’ll want to know: What about your faith? What about virtue? What about your knowledge? Were you temperate? Were you kind to people? Did you have charity, humility?”

[Jason Bourne]

Cheers DrW. Those are very interesting observations re rural Utah.

I think social media is the main problem.The church uses authority to speak to its members, but it's very difficult in today's world to maintain that authority on social media. Its becoming harder to distinguish exmormon from Mormon content. Many people only pick up on it after the message has been delivered. This is especially true with the emerging platforms like TiKTok. This means millenials are hearing about EVERY problem in a very short space of time. They do a bit more research and bam, it's all confirmed.

Having well informed millennials creates a knock on effect for the older generations, many of whom live in Southern Utah. They feel threatened because they hear about all these problems from their kids and grandkids. Some leave the church, but as you say there are many who yearn for their fundamentalist past. This is why the average age of people attending Rodney Meldrum's Heartland conferences is about 75.

It sounds like what we are seeing globally is being reflected within Utah. The church is rotting inwards to its core in Provo. The church is collapsing in the developed world outside of North America. If southern Utah is disillusioned with the SL leadership you can imagine how many non-Utah/US Mormons will feel.

Thanks for your analysis Simon.

I live in Western NYS. I have been here about 40 of my 62 years. Served my mission here. Married a girl I baptized.

There has been little to no growth here in all that time. In 1985 the Rochester stake divided and the Palmyra NY stake was created. There has not been any net growth in that time. The Palmyra stake added one branch in the early 1990s. That is it. About 8 years ago the state carved off parts of three wards to toss into a neighboring ward in order to keep that ward alive.

The mission boundaries of the Rochester NY mission included most of NY outside of NY just before I arrived in 1979. The mission divided a number of times over the years to the point where my mission area was three missions up to about 10 years ago. Now the opposite has happened and the mission is geographically as large as it was when I was a missionary.

The ward I live in, the Palmyra NY ward is an aging ward. Many of the older folks are being recycled through leadership callings. The 30 to 45 year old parents with young families are fewer. Converts are not families. Have not been hardly any for many years. Many single sisters. When I was the bishop out of about 500 member we had about 180 single sisters on the rolls most of who did not attend.

The two most robust wards in our stake that always seemed to have lots of families and youth are stagnant. That is because Kodak and Xerox used to bring a lot of LDS employees into the area. And those employers are pretty much dead.

I know this is just a snap shot of another area but the entire Northeast of the USA is that way.

[simon southerton]

I don't know how the church decides to create new units but I can imagine two alternative strategies. One would be the conservative one of splitting wards when they grow so big that it's hard to fit everyone in the building or let everyone participate. The other would be the aggressive one of "if you build it, they will come", where little skeleton-crew branches are created in hope they will grow. Quite possibly the church pursues both strategies in different times and places.

There is a third option that I have witnessed. If a District President has a big enough ego he can manipulate data to make the district look big enough to convert to a stake. I saw this happen in Canberra as I was on the high council. The DP desperately wanted there to be a stake in the nation's capital so they inflated true attendance, created an extra unit and they became a stake. Twenty years later one unit is gone and the remaining four wards are struggling, like they always have. So I am sure there are bishops and SPs who fudge activity rates in order to stroke their own egos.

But I think "if you build it, they will come" was the problem in the 90s. I know a member in Canberra who was very critical of this philosophy because he had hard data that proved it did not work. I have always hated this idea because it separates youth into very small wards and they lose contacts with friends. I saw this happen in Brisbane. They split the ward down the middle but 70% of the youth went into one and 30% into the other. They tried to force me to create 2 seminaries but I refused. It made no bloody sense because all of the kids went to the same high school!

The big drop in unit formation in 1999 seems too large to attribute to an abrupt halt in the growth of large wards. I can more easily imagine that there was an ambitious phase of planting new units in the 1990s, as you suggest, and it was abruptly cut back after disappointing results. If it's true that a lot of the units that were being launched in the earlier 90's were optimistic "sprig" branches rather than thriving ward splits, then that itself might have been an attempt to kick-start growth that had been perceived, even then, to have stalled.

The difficulty with counting church growth through units is that their number has an elastic relationship to active membership number. Maybe the '99 crash was just the elastic snapping back after being stretched, and nothing dramatic happened to active membership numbers in that particular year.

Is there any way to dig more deeply into the numbers and find out how large the new units were in each year, or what kind of new units they were?

The big sudden drop smacks of a church-wide policy change, however, I have never heard a peep about this, even on the TBM websites that track growth. But slowing growth in the previous 3-4 years seems the most likely underlying cause, resulting in too many units failing. The only way we could find out about the history of unit sizes would be a leak.

[simon southerton]

The ward I live in, the Palmyra NY ward is an aging ward. Many of the older folks are being recycled through leadership callings. The 30 to 45 year old parents with young families are fewer. Converts are not families. Have not been hardly any for many years. Many single sisters. When I was the bishop out of about 500 member we had about 180 single sisters on the rolls most of who did not attend.

I know this is just a snap shot of another area but the entire Northeast of the USA is that way.

You are describing what is happening in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the UK and virtually every other developed country. The only UK stakes showing growth in attendance had either recently absorbed a district or they were in the vicinity of a temple where retiring Mormons were moving.

[dastardly stem]

Going on SImon's theme of congregations being a good sign of membership data, I decided to create some charts:

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Africa C.JPG (49.17 KiB) Viewed 1120 times

[dastardly stem]

Asia C.JPG (46.44 KiB) Viewed 1119 times

NA C.JPG (47.14 KiB) Viewed 1119 times

Oceania C.JPG (44.56 KiB) Viewed 1119 times

[Lem]

Going on SImon's theme of congregations being a good sign of membership data, I decided to create some charts...

Very interesting, DStem. Are those changes in total count? It would be interesting to also see the %-age changes, if you are so inclined (this is me, hoping and asking as nicely as I can ).