Church Membership World wide

[dastardly stem]

pretty cool graphs stem. the Mormon share of the world is increasing?

It looks like after watching Witnesses, you had to immerse yourself in cold hard facts to prevent madness. totally understand.

Lol. Yes...that was it. Witnesses tried to do a number on me, but I took a breath and recovered, I think.

[dastardly stem]

The true story of church membership growth is revealed in the rate of creation of new units.

In most western countries the church stopped growing or went into decline 20 years ago. If it wasn't for Western Africa, the decline of the church globally would have been far more apparent.


Screen Shot 2021-06-18 at 11.10.45 am.png

Thanks, Simon. I love this little graph. Nigeria is booming for the Church, along with much of Africa. And it appears they are with that excitement of growth maintaining a pretty high level of activity compared to other parts of the world. But I have to disagree with you somewhat. Unit sizes vary a great deal. One ward could have 70 somewhat active members, while another may have 500. So it's hard to put too much emphasis on it. But I agree that it is a good part of the evaluation. Showing the number of units per country over the past 3 decades is cool. It'd be nice to see more countries as comparison, but alas. I can probably figure something out. I've tapped into some new figures I might be putting out soon.

[dastardly stem]

Growth in the US is now slowing and will probably go into decline in the next 5 years.


Screen Shot 2021-06-18 at 11.11.11 am.png

Again. Excellent visual. Thanks.

[sock puppet]

The graphs showing the numbers of missionaries settling back down to pre-2012 levels, their number shrinking as a percentage of the membership, the number of converts per missionary declining and the drop in the percentage of membership that are converts all coalesce to show that the Fuller Brush Salesmen program has become outdated and its utility, even as a hook of young members to be lifelong TBMs, more marginalized than even in it's hayday of the 70s-90s.

Live salespeople are becoming less and less useful. If I want something, I google it, if the specs check out, then I find the best price and order it--often on Amazon. I am no longer dazzled by the sturdiness of the Kirby vacuum that the salesmen demonstrates on my carpet. Sure, my stick vacuum will only last half as long, but I pay 1/8th the price and toss it when it malfunctions rather than have a new belt put on. Ronald Poelman saw the future, where even a church is just a transitory tool for someone looking for "god's word", and then moves on.

McDonald's is constantly reinventing itself and its menu, its total offering. I can't get a McRib sandwich all the time, they dangle it in front of me only every couple of years. But, it is instantly satisfying when I have one. For eternal life, I have to wait until this life is over. Only a small percentage of people will buy a retirement annuity rather than take one or two more vacations a year. That, however, is the shrinking audience for "eternal life." It's pretty tough today for a religion hawking the notion you can here in this life earn yourself a better spot in the eternity to follow. Religion has been trying to reinvent itself for thousands of years, claiming until recently a monopoly on information and philosophy.

What the LDS church is selling just isn't appealing in the 21st Century. It ought to dangle second anointings every other year like MickeyD's does the McRib. The LDS church ought to reinvent itself, make going to church on Sunday a bit raucus and fun instead of solemn and dreary.

[dastardly stem]

Ok.

I'm going to try and explain what I found. I was able to find the number of congregations for 2015 and number of members per country. I made an assumption that the split between ward and branch was the same ratio per country for that which is found from 2020. I also continued to assume ward membership averages 175 for the world and branch average 75. Those may be high or low. I don't quite know and haven't been able to get better information on that, but will happily fix what I have if something more concrete is found.

The change in membership over 5 years as reported by the Church is just over 1 million people. But the change in congregations doesn't seem to support that increase (as we all know most of those who join the Church leave within a year). The graph below shows that.

Below is a chart showing the expected membership increase (in burnt orange) contrasted with the reported membership increase (in blue) by continent. For instance the reported number of members increased in Europe by 18,516 over the five years, but it seems the estimated membership decreased by 10,283 over that span (with the assumptions previously mentioned). South America increased it's membership, officially, by 345,029. But the estimated increase was 7,547. And so on.

World Expected.JPG (24.84 KiB) Viewed 680 times

If we are able to verify and have confidence in the estimated increase, we end up with 204,879 members added to the Church (that's approximately, easy math, 40,000 per year). More than half of that increase happened in Africa (with 115,336 members estimated to be added to the Church over the 5 years).

[dastardly stem]

An added point of clarification.

The Church reported 16,663,663 members for 2020. The breakdown by country, as the Church reports is here appears to be for 2019 rather than 2020. Also to note, the numbers for 2015 appears to be for the reported end of year number for 2014. It is five years, but lets keep that in mind.

So for the number 16,565,036 (end of 2019) the expected membership comes out to 4,680,250. With that, it feels like its pretty safe to say, at this point, there are 4.6 million Mormons in the world (subject to change, pending additional insight and information).

Have a good Father's Day weekend.