DiscussMormonism.com

I like how Stack includes the bit at the end about Protestant growth rates not reflecting the same discrepancy between church and census numbers. Completely destroys whatever excuses the church (or this Cumorah fellow) might come up with to explain it away.

And it looks like the Protestants have found them....

During the same period, the census revealed that Protestants have experienced major growth reflected in both church-reported members and census-reported members. In the past 30 years, the Brazilian census has revealed that the percentage of Protestants in the population jumped from 6.6 percent to 22.2 percent.

I don't find this surprising at all. I've seriously disliked how the LDS Church goes about converting people and reporting about who is a member for a long time. Membership should be a privilege and if they haven't seen you in the past 3 months, they should kick you out (with understandable exceptions of course).

And the whole 19 year old missionary thing should also be given the boot. Have them get an education first, then if they wish to serve their communities in actual service and feel called upon by God to do such a thing - then the Church should support them in that.

The Church should also use its vast wealth in community causes like opening hospitals, food banks, and other worthwhile programs. That would do far more to promote the gospel than anything they do now.

What the church is saying to over 900,000 Brazilians is this: we know better than you do what religion you adhere to.

“We know that the church is struggling to maintain self-sufficiency in Brazil, with Brazilians staffing all 27 missions. The church can't do it, even with all the members they have.”

So the church says it has over a million members in Brazil but it can't staff 27 missions. How pathetic is that?

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been through Primary. Any Primary child can tell you that the Lamanites became a lazy and idle people...

Equality wrote:What the church is saying to over 900,000 Brazilians is this: we know better than you do what religion you adhere to.

Not really. The church just reports everyone who has been baptized, whether they still attend. Some church's actually don't report members who have not shown up for a year or more. This seems a more accurate method. The problem the church faces is it can't change how it reports their numbers without looking bad, and PR is very important to the church. You can get a better idea by looking at wards and stakes.

Themis wrote:

Equality wrote:What the church is saying to over 900,000 Brazilians is this: we know better than you do what religion you adhere to.

Not really. The church just reports everyone who has been baptized, whether they still attend. Some church's actually don't report members who have not shown up for a year or more. This seems a more accurate method. The problem the church faces is it can't change how it reports their numbers without looking bad, and PR is very important to the church. You can get a better idea by looking at wards and stakes.

You could get a better idea by looking at Sacrament meeting attendance year over year. But the church doesn't report those numbers. Or by tithing contributions year over year. Or Melch. priesthood ordinations year over year. The baptismal numbers are meaningless and the church knows it.

So...activity in Brazil is running at circa 25%....