DiscussMormonism.com

In a Religion News article we get

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just reported its highest convert growth in history. Over the weekend at its semiannual General Conference, the church released its 2025 membership statistics that indicate an almost 25% increase in convert baptisms in 2025, compared to 2024.

Sounds good for a sound bite at General Conference. However…

2025 data from the Cooperative Election Study, also made available last week, tells a different story. In the United States at least, fewer adults are self-identifying as Latter-day Saints than at any other time since the survey began nearly 20 years ago.

The bottom line being that the amount of names on a membership list does not equal the amount of people actively participating.

The CES, by contrast, counts only those adults who self-report that they’re Latter-day Saints. And that population has been nearly cut in half over the same period.

Researcher Alex Bass of Mormon Metrics said the 2025 CES had only 161 LDS respondents out of the total sample of 17,000 people, the lowest LDS sample size to date. This creates “more uncertainty compared to previous CES years,” he cautioned.

Still, the 2025 numbers continue the overall trend. The gap continues to widen between the church’s records of how many U.S. members are on the rolls and the national data of how many Americans actually say they are LDS.

A lot of this is driven by people leaving the church in the U.S. Most who leave don’t remove their names from the official records, so the church still counts them as members even though they may no longer see themselves as such.

Total membership is a vanity metric. People in the pews on any given Sunday is reality. The Church won’t publish the activity stats (even though they have them), because it undermines all the years they’ve focussed on shouting about total membership “growth”. Which would be a more honest reflection of the strength of the Church - total membership, or number of people who actively see themselves as LDS?

So, there you have it: a very encouraging internal church report about LDS baptisms around the world, alongside a mostly discouraging independent report about the decline of LDS membership in the U.S. specifically.

Vanity metric vs reality.

The number of active members is what really matters and it’s a number the church does not publish. By most reasonable estimates, that figure has plateaued somewhere in the 4–6 million range, despite continued convert baptisms.

What that suggests is that the roughly 20–40% of converts who remain active are only offsetting the steady loss of long-term members who drift away. Much of the current active growth is occurring outside the U.S., particularly in developing countries, where long-term retention remains uncertain as access to information increases.

The church isn’t going to disappear, but it is no longer experiencing meaningful growth in active participation.

So now, there are more Americans on the LDS' membership rolls that do not call themselves LDS than there are that self-identify as LDS. A peculiar people indeed.

I remember the roll call sheet being passed around at church. They keep meticulous records of attendance, and used to keep them for home teaching too.

If the numbers were good they would showcase them to the world.

drumdude wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 4:34 pm

I remember the roll call sheet being passed around at church. They keep meticulous records of attendance, and used to keep them for home teaching too.

If the numbers were good they would showcase them to the world.

They collate “attendance” figures on a fairly informal basis - a simple headcount done once a month during a sacrament meeting. People being people, these informal headcount’s are usually inflated. I know of more than one Bishop who assigned the headcount to someone they knew would inflate the actual numbers so as to protect their status as a ward or to avoid dipping below 50. We did see a leaked European Area Presidency report some years ago, which had activity levels across Europe at 20%. It hasn’t changed much since then, if at all.

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

The number of active members is what really matters and it’s a number the church does not publish. By most reasonable estimates, that figure has plateaued somewhere in the 4–6 million range, despite continued convert baptisms.

What that suggests is that the roughly 20–40% of converts who remain active are only offsetting the steady loss of long-term members who drift away. Much of the current active growth is occurring outside the U.S., particularly in developing countries, where long-term retention remains uncertain as access to information increases.

The church isn’t going to disappear, but it is no longer experiencing meaningful growth in active participation.

Depending on how you define "active", I might even go a bit further than that.

What I believe indicates some level of commitment are the numbers in each of these categories:

• Adult Temple Recommend holder who regularly perform vicarious ordinances
• Adults who remained members during their teens and after serving a full-time mission
• Adults who pay a full tithing **
• Adults who will accept a calling **
  • Men who will accept the calling as Young Men's President A few years ago I would have said Scout Leader

For all of these groups, the most significant for the operation of the church, are the numbers of Melchizedek Priesthood holders. Those marked with ** are the numbers that must be attained and maintained for units to qualify as Wards and Stakes.

Worth noting is that an adult can satisfy all of these criteria without believing in the church. It would be interesting to be able to determine how many in each category believe, and how many are PIMO. My experience in various positions tells me that (at least as of 20 or so years ago) there's a lot of PIMOs, for various reasons. And I've been startled to discover that several folks I thought were rock-solid members are just going through the motions, and/or holding on hoping not to be "discovered.

malkie wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 7:38 pm

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

The number of active members is what really matters and it’s a number the church does not publish. By most reasonable estimates, that figure has plateaued somewhere in the 4–6 million range, despite continued convert baptisms.

What that suggests is that the roughly 20–40% of converts who remain active are only offsetting the steady loss of long-term members who drift away. Much of the current active growth is occurring outside the U.S., particularly in developing countries, where long-term retention remains uncertain as access to information increases.

The church isn’t going to disappear, but it is no longer experiencing meaningful growth in active participation.

Depending on how you define "active", I might even go a bit further than that.

What I believe indicates some level of commitment are the numbers in each of these categories:

• Adult Temple Recommend holder who regularly perform vicarious ordinances
• Adults who remained members during their teens and after serving a full-time mission
• Adults who pay a full tithing **
• Adults who will accept a calling **
  • Men who will accept the calling as Young Men's President A few years ago I would have said Scout Leader

For all of these groups, the most significant for the operation of the church, are the numbers of Melchizedek Priesthood holders. Those marked with ** are the numbers that must be attained and maintained for units to qualify as Wards and Stakes.

Worth noting is that an adult can satisfy all of these criteria without believing in the church. It would be interesting to be able to determine how many in each category believe, and how many are PIMO. My experience in various positions tells me that (at least as of 20 or so years ago) there's a lot of PIMOs, for various reasons. And I've been startled to discover that several folks I thought were rock-solid members are just going through the motions, and/or holding on hoping not to be "discovered.

malkie, Young Men’s President is now a duty fulfilled by Bishops, and only Bishops. “Adults paying a full tithe” would be an enlightening number. It’s the acid test, putting your money where your mouth is. Paying tithing is a sign of commitment to the Church. They will never publicise that number, even though they know it precisely, because it will put paid to the lie that the Church has over seventeen million members.

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

The number of active members is what really matters and it’s a number the church does not publish.

I don't know that this IS what really matters. What matters is the OPPORTUNITY to be an active member and live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many will start on the path and wander off on "strange roads". The Book of Mormon narrative of the Great and Spacious Building and the Tree of Life makes this very clear.

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

By most reasonable estimates, that figure has plateaued somewhere in the 4–6 million range, despite continued convert baptisms.

CFR? There should be a number of reliable unbiased sources you can link to.

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

What that suggests is that the roughly 20–40% of converts who remain active are only offsetting the steady loss of long-term members who drift away.

Are you creating a strawman?

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

Much of the current active growth is occurring outside the U.S., particularly in developing countries, where long-term retention remains uncertain as access to information increases.

Again, you are saying what you WANT to say with little or no evidence that what I'm describing in my opening response in this post is not happening. One would EXPECT it to happen. The Gospel of Jesus Christ in its fullness isn't for everyone. Many scriptures allude to that fact.

Not that everyone can't receive the opportunity to accept.

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

The church isn’t going to disappear, but it is no longer experiencing meaningful growth in active participation.

You've built your conclusion on a sandy foundation based on potentially incomplete/skewed information. And again, I will repeat one more time:

I don't know that this IS what really matters. What matters is the OPPORTUNITY to be an active member and live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many will start on the path and wander off on "strange roads". The Book of Mormon narrative of the Great and Spacious Building and the Tree of Life makes this very clear.

You've wandered off, right? You are one of those church members (if you're still on record) that falls right within the category you're referring to.

Regards,
MG

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2026 1:34 pm

The number of active members is what really matters and it’s a number the church does not publish. By most reasonable estimates, that figure has plateaued somewhere in the 4–6 million range, despite continued convert baptisms.

What that suggests is that the roughly 20–40% of converts who remain active are only offsetting the steady loss of long-term members who drift away. Much of the current active growth is occurring outside the U.S., particularly in developing countries, where long-term retention remains uncertain as access to information increases.

The church isn’t going to disappear, but it is no longer experiencing meaningful growth in active participation.

I agree. The number of active, tithe paying members is the key number to understanding just how misleading the membership number is that gets trotted out at conference. The survey results noted in the OP are consistent with the pattern across the last 20 years of data. We also have the leaked Area Presidency report that is also consistent with the estimate that the majority of people listed as a “member” and included in the total member number, are not actively participating in the church. The data across multiple sources confirms this. The Church’s refusal to publish that metric also confirms it. As drumdude pointed out, if it were faith promoting it would be published in a heartbeat. The church knows that a claim of 17,500,000 members is so misleading as to be dishonest. But that’s the number they put out because it’s a good vanity driven soundbite.

The Utah numbers are tanking faster than a Jaredite submarine with a leak: