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RockSlider wrote:

I have a question wrote:
The most recently leaked Europe Area Presidency report ...

link?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32343&p=776930

Interestingly, when the report was leaked 18 months ago the clear objective was to double the active membership from the 2009 level. The target seems to have been missed by a Kolobian distance. Now the objective is to bring a friend, stop asking the Church for stuff and find an excuse to go to the temple.

Inspiring stuff.

I have a question wrote:

While the members of the Europe Area presidency have changed, the presidency’s overall desires and objectives for the Europe Area have not. “We have seen a steady push forward with clear goals in mind,” says Elder Dyches, speaking about the past few years. President Kearon says that the presidency’s main priority remains to encourage members living within the Europe Area to focus on the Area Plan, which is comprised of three goals. They are: 1) Bring a Friend, by cultivating both a spirit of inclusiveness and a genuinely welcoming attitude with those of all faiths or no faith at all, 2) Become Spiritually and Temporally Self-Reliant, and 3) Find an Ancestor and perform sacred ordinances for them in the temple. In temples, Latter-day Saints conduct the highest sacraments of their faith – for themselves and vicariously in behalf of their deceased ancestors.

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.uk/articl ... presidency

Once again the poor and the hungry don't feature prominently.
Number two is interesting.

And I have a question is off in neverland again.....
Though his brain resists the truth and reality, though recognizing #2 as simply "interesting".
#2 is actually addressing the poor and hungry. The Church is about lifting people, not simply giving handouts.
This is how Governments etc. should be run, how the Church runs welfare.

hagoth7 wrote:The briefest glimpse I can provide at this time would be something along these lines: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/a-of ... lang=eng#8

To provide a bit more detail, I wrote a senior paper in college decades back documenting why the church succeeded so well during its early years in one area of Europe. Furthermore, based on recent observations, certain things are moving into position now, from different directions, that I believe will replicate some of those earlier results, to at least some degree.

You don't say anything above that would communicate anything other then you have ideas about why there might be a rebound. Nothing about what those ideas are. If you don't want to say that's fine.

So if we're all still around in a few decades, perhaps we'll see whose projection was more accurate, DrW's, or mine.

Perhaps.

Themis wrote:You don't say anything above that would communicate anything other then you have ideas about why there might be a rebound. Nothing about what those ideas are. If you don't want to say that's fine.

Seems to me that the church was successful in Europe in the 19th century because 1) it was a good fit for a lot of religious seekers and 2) a lot of people wanted to go to America to escape the poverty of industrial revolution Europe. I don't see either of those factors returning to Europe anytime soon. The church has struggled for a long time in Europe, but in the last 15 years or so, it's seen a pretty significant decline in activity rates and membership growth. I have no idea what hagoth7 has in mind, so I can't really say whether he's right or not.

It's difficult to predict the future, but the church is clearly on a downturn at present. Could something happen to reverse that? Sure, but I don't know what.

I have a question wrote:

hagoth7 wrote:So if we're all still around in a few decades, perhaps we'll see whose projection was more accurate, DrW's, or mine.

What metric are you using?

The most recently leaked Europe Area Presidency report had activity rates running at 20%, with adult tithe payers equating to 10% of the total membership number. What would constitute a rebound from that?

What metric, indeed.

If Hagoth7's overall physiological vital signs were at 20% and his cardiac output was 10%, he would definitely be moribund, and probably dead already.

Even if one were to normalize these sorry performance parameter values to the Church average (making the percentages about 50% and 20% of the normal range, respectively), I would say the organism was moribund now. No need to wait another 20 years.

I see very little hope for recovery in Europe, especially given the recent trend line.

Let's face it, easy public access to factual information on the internet has poisoned the artificial environment that the LDS Church has so carefully created for itself over the last century or so.

DrW wrote:If Hagoth7's overall physiological vital signs were at 20% and his cardiac output was 10%, he would definitely be moribund, and probably dead already.

Even if one were to normalize these sorry performance parameter values to the Church average (making the percentages about 50% and 20% of the normal range, respectively), I would say the organism was moribund already. No need to wait another 20 years.

I see very little hope for recovery in Europe, especially given the recent trend line.

Let's face it, easy public access to information on the internet has poisoned the artificial environment that the LDS Church has so carefully created for itself over the last century or so.

Anything's possible, but the church was already a hard sell in Europe because it requires belief in angels and seer stones, and Europe is, by and large, a pretty skeptical place. With the advent of the Internet, even the curious need only a few minutes of quality time with Google to quell interest in the church. The bigger worry, I think, is that the same applies to the rising generation of church members in Europe. Heck, even some of the stalwart are heading for the exits, hence the Swedish Rescue and the weird Givens "Crucible of Doubt" tour.

Runtu wrote: Heck, even some of the stalwart are heading for the exits, hence the Swedish Rescue and the weird Givens "Crucible of Doubt" tour.

Someone with graphics skills should design a poster for for the "Crucible of Doubt Tour".

Such a poster could feature the LDS Rock Stars who went on the tour and portray all the drama and excitement that ensued.

DrW wrote:Someone with graphics skills should design a poster for for the "Crucible of Doubt Tour".

Such a poster could feature the LDS Rock Stars who went on the tour and portray all the drama and excitement that ensued.

I just got PhotoShop installed recently. :)

Runtu wrote:

Themis wrote:You don't say anything above that would communicate anything other then you have ideas about why there might be a rebound. Nothing about what those ideas are. If you don't want to say that's fine.

Seems to me that the church was successful in Europe in the 19th century because 1) it was a good fit for a lot of religious seekers and 2) a lot of people wanted to go to America to escape the poverty of industrial revolution Europe. I don't see either of those factors returning to Europe anytime soon. The church has struggled for a long time in Europe, but in the last 15 years or so, it's seen a pretty significant decline in activity rates and membership growth. I have no idea what hagoth7 has in mind, so I can't really say whether he's right or not.

It's difficult to predict the future, but the church is clearly on a downturn at present. Could something happen to reverse that? Sure, but I don't know what.

I agree. There were conditions like you describe back then you do not see today and I cannot see how they would return. People then were very religiously minded and saw opportunity in the new land. European mass migration to the America's is long over. They have a great environment to live in and are very secular minded. You would need some real disasters to create that kind of change.

I have a question wrote:The reasons for a rebound are because the scriptures you use say something ambiguous about something indeterminable?

No.

I just happen to see a fulfillment of such general promises coming into play, through specific things that are already beginning to surface. Combined, those things suggest a more favorable outcome for growth/commitment in coming years.

I have a question wrote:I'm clearly not seeing the same thing you are in these verses.

9 We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

It's actually not what I happen to see in that verse.
Instead, it's several things I happen to see moving into position that happen to fulfill, in part, the kinds of promise suggested in that verse.