A tiny bit of truth squeaks out of LDS HQ on growth

[_Polygamy-Porter]

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/topic/church-growth

The Church makes no statistical comparisons with other churches and makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination despite frequent news media comments to that effect.

Such comparisons rarely take account of a multiplicity of complex factors, including activity rates and death rates, the methodology used in registering or counting members and what factors constitute membership.

Growth rates also vary significantly across the world. Additionally, many other factors contribute to the strength of the Church, most especially the devotion and commitment of its members.

How soon before we see hard numbers that represent the above statements?

[_Philidel]

Wow. Did the temperature in Hell just drop a few degrees?

[_TrashcanMan79]

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/topic/church-growth

The Church makes no statistical comparisons with other churches and makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination despite frequent news media comments to that effect.

The Church tends to go with the more slippery "one of the fastest-growing," though they don't always.

[T]here are now over 13 million members in 176 countries and territories. About 6 million of these are in the United States, making us the fourth largest Christian denomination in America. As one of the fastest growing Christian faiths in the world, we complete a new chapel every working day.

The growth statistics of the Church are impressive and gratifying. They call to mind a broadcast in recent years when the head of the National Council of Churches was interviewed, and he spoke of the declining membership of some of the larger well-known religious bodies, and also of the accelerating growth of others. He gave as the reason for the decline: “Because they have become permissive; they allow just anybody to become members or remain members. They don’t insist on any rigorous requirements of belief or of contributions.” He pointed out, on the other hand, that those groups which require sacrifice of time and effort and means are enjoying vigorous growth.

He then went on to say: “The fastest growing church [of] over a million members in this country is the Mormon Church, the Latter-day Saints, with headquarters in Salt Lake City, which is growing at five percent a year, [and] that’s a very rapid increase.”

One day on the school bus, Rachel Chase and Lauren Smith, both in the Acworth Ward seminary, were talking about what a good seminary lesson they had that day. Curtis Clinch repeated something his pastor had told him about the Latter-day Saints being one of the fastest growing religions.

Rachel agreed and said, “It kind of makes you think, doesn’t it, Curtis?”

He answered, “Yeah, it kind of does.”

LDS Church Is United States’ Fastest Growing Denomination

In a study updated every 10 years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was named the fastest growing denomination in the United States for the years 1990 to 2000.

The study also indicated that the fastest growing churches were those considered socially conservative—and that the slowest growing churches were those viewed as socially liberal. With a growth rate of 19.3 percent, the Church led the trend toward conservative religion in the United States. The next fastest growing religions were the Churches of Christ, the Assemblies of God, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In 2004, worldwide Church membership reached 12 million, the Church was ranked among the fastest-growing churches in the United States, and Mexico became the first nation outside of the U.S. to top one million members. Brazil is projected to surpass one million members during 2007.

Growth outside of the United States continues to surpass growth within the U.S.

Although 5.5 million members reside within the United States—where the Church is ranked as the second-fastest-growing religion, according to the 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches—more than half the Church’s members (6.6 million) live outside the United States in more than 160 countries worldwide. During the last five years, Church membership has grown 17.2 percent outside the U.S. and Canada, at almost double the growth rate within the U.S. and Canada (9.2 percent).

Polls by British newspapers show the LDS church to be one of the fastest-growing Christian denominations.

New temples in Australia are a visible evidence of strong Church growth in this nation. The Church here has grown from just 3,000 members in 1955 to 100,000 members today. In the latest census of Australia, the Church was the fastest-growing Christian faith.

[_DrW]

The squeak of truth in the article was a tiny one alright.

This accelerating growth pattern has continued with about a million new members now being added every three years or less. Growth consists both of convert baptisms and natural growth through the birth of children.

Church membership today is over 14 million.

For an article that was supposedly intended to caution against unfounded claims of rapid growth, this article certainly included a lot of unfounded claims concerning rapid growth.

Even if true, the claim that the Church is adding a steady million members a year does not reflect an "accelerating growth pattern". In fact, it says exactly the opposite. With a steady increase of a million new members a year, the rate of growth is actually decreasing.

(At a membership of 10 million, and increase of a million members is a 10% growth rate. At 14 million members, an additional million members represents a growth rate of only 7%. Unless one is a magical thinker, the numbers quoted do not represent an accelerating rate or an "accelerating growth pattern".)

And if, as the Church recommends in the article, one looks at the "devotion and commitment" of members (such as the willingness to even identify themselves as LDS), the Church is not doing nearly as well as it claims. Based on census data and independent polling numbers from various countries regarding people who self-identify as Mormon, active or semi-active Church membership is more like 5 million instead of the claimed 14 million.

[_Tim the Enchanter]

Isn't the death rate of every church exactly the same? As in, 100%?

[_DrW]

Isn't the death rate of every church exactly the same? As in, 100%?

Good point.

The death rate they were referring to, though, would be the statistical death rate expressed in terms of number of deaths per 1000 members per year.

For example, the estimated US death rate overall in 2010 was just over 8 deaths per 1000 population.

As the average age of Church members increases, the death rate will increase as well.

[Guest]

The Church makes no statistical comparisons with other churches and makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination despite frequent news media comments to that effect.

The utter cynicism of Trotter. Purdy, Otterson, and Farah never ceases to leave me gobsmacked.

They have perfected the art of leaving the reader with a gross misimpression while being able to say, as a technical matter, that they are not lying. Note in the above-referenced quote how they leave the impression that the church is not the one that has claimed to be the "fastest-growing," but rather the news media has trumpeted that fact, apparently without the church's knowledge or participation. The church PR folks are essentially saying "Where on earth did those silly media folk ever get the notion that we think we are the fastest-growing church?" But also note how they are careful not to say that "the Church has made no claim . . ." All they are saying is that the church "makes" no claim now. Present tense. That way, when someone points out (as TrashcanMan79 has done in this thread) all the times when President Newsroom or Elder LDS.org has made the claim, they can just wave their hands and say "yeah, maybe some in the church made that claim in the past, but that was just a little fleck of history; we are not making that claim now, but of course we are still better than all the other churches because we are growing and our members are more devoted than the ones who wear jeans and listen to so-called Christian rock music on Sunday mornings in the megachurches."

[_Equality]

In a recent article, a non-LDS scholar gave a fresh and interesting perspective to the development of the Church and its spectacular growth throughout much of the world during its 157-year existence.

In his essay entitled “The Rise of a New World Faith” (1984), Rodney Stark, a sociologist specializing in religion at the University of Washington, describes Church growth as a “miracle,” a “rare event” which his fellow sociologists have not fully recognized. Establishment and growth of the Church has constituted, Stark says, “the rise of a new world religion” which “will soon achieve a worldwide following comparable to that of Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and the other dominant faiths. … Indeed, today they [Latter-day Saints] stand on the threshold of becoming the first major faith to appear on earth since the Prophet Mohammed rode out of the desert.” 1

Stark has been particularly fascinated with the consistency of Church growth against the backdrop of countless other “new” religions of the nineteenth century that sprouted, then quickly wilted and died. It is not just the steady increase of Latter-day Saints from six to six million that has caught his attention, but the rate of growth, which has never been less than 28 percent per decade, and in the past thirty years has exceeded 50 percent. And this has been achieved in an ever-more secularized world. Using his growth calculations, Professor Stark projects the possibility of 63 million Latter-day Saints in the world by the year 2080, if a 30 percent growth rate is maintained, and a dizzying 265 million if the higher 50 percent rate is used. 2

Link to LDS.org

The LDS church was very receptive to Rodney Stark's "research":

Professor Mauss suggested that Latter-day Saints might better be classified as members of “a new world religion,” as a colleague of his, Rodney Stark, has suggested. A professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington, Rodney Stark wrote in a paper prepared for the conference:

“We are seeing the rapid rise of the first new world faith since Islam appeared 1,400 years ago.”

“If one examines the pattern of Mormon growth over the past few decades,” he said, “the rate is always greater than fifty percent per decade,” and, “the more rapid growth is overseas, in Latin America and Asia especially.” At present growth rates, the Church would have more than two hundred million members one hundred years from now; it “will become a major world faith.”

Link to LDS.org
And again:

A very recent study by sociologist Rodney Stark of the Micro-Case Corporation recognizes the great religious movement that the Church has become in our day. He projects that based on past growth in membership, membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will reach 265 million by the end of 2080. 6 He writes: “We are observing an extraordinarily rare event. After a hiatus of fourteen hundred years, in our time a new world faith seems to be stirring.”
7

Link to LDS.org

Now where on earth did the media ever get the idea that the church thought its growth rate was higher and faster than any other church's? Hmmmmmmmm........

[_hobo1512]

The bleeding of members has gotten bad enough they are starting to use band-aids.

[_Tim the Enchanter]

Isn't the death rate of every church exactly the same? As in, 100%?

Good point.

The death rate they were referring to, though, would be the statistical death rate expressed in terms of number of deaths per 1000 members per year.

For example, the estimated US death rate overall in 2010 was just over 8 deaths per 1000 population.

As the average age of Church members increases, the death rate will increase as well.

Ah, understood.

Wait! I know! They are counting the 3 Nephites and John. Thus, the death rate for the church would be 99.99999%. Every other church has a 100% death rate, but not the Mormons! Checkmate.