in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

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_Ray A

Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _Ray A »

Here's an interesting report from Mormonwiki:

"Sociologist Armand Mauss estimates that 50 percent of LDS converts within the United States stop attending within a year of conversion, and 75 percent of foreign converts fail to attend after a year."[2]


"A closer examination of growth and retention data demonstrates that LDS growth trends have been widely overstated. Annual LDS growth has progressively declined from over 5 percent in the late 1980s to less than 3 percent from 2000 to 2005. Since 1990, LDS missionaries have been challenged to double the number of baptisms, but instead the number of baptisms per missionary has halved.


"While LDS activity rates in the United States are among the highest of any country in the world, less than half of members on the rolls are active. The Encyclopedia of Mormonism reports: 'Canada, the South Pacific, and the United States average between 40 percent and 50 percent [attendance at sacrament meeting].' (Source: Encyclopedia of Mormonism, edited by Daniel H. Ludlow, 1992, 4:1527.)

"Marginal retention of new converts, and especially potential priesthood holders, remains a serious challenge:

"'For the U.S. as a whole, only 59% of baptized males ever receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. In the South Pacific, the figure drops to 35%; in Great Britain, 29%. In Mexico (with almost 850,000 members) the figure is 19%; and in Japan, only 17% of the male members ever make it past the Aaronic Priesthood.' (source: Lowell C. Bennion and Lawrence Young, Dialogue, Spring 1996, p.19.) " [4]


"Many other religions are growing faster than Mormonism, and it is unclear how Mormonism would have a competitive advantage over those religions. Despite increasing the member base and missionary force by 50% over the last decade, the church has been unsuccessful at increasing the number of baptisms by even 1%. When we look at the actual growth rate of the church from 1983 to 2000 there is strong statistical evidence that the slowing growth is due to an underlying trend rather than random fluctuations." -Roger Loomis


"As LDS author and retired CES Director Grant Palmer pointed out in his podcast interview with church member and MormonStories.org founder, John Dehlin [10], the church is 'hemorrhaging' members. Why? As Palmer said, Latter-Day Saints are going on the Internet and discovering, much to their shock, that what the church taught them about Joseph Smith, early church history, and other aspects of Mormonism is far from the truth. According to Palmer's source in Church HQ, about 100,000 members are resigning each year, and Greg Dodge, the man responsible for processing resignations and excommunications has had to double his staff from five people to ten! Two of the 100,000 (approx.) for 2006 include Jerrell Chesney and his wife, president and matron of the Oklahoma City Temple. The Chesneys joined the church in 1970 and served in various church callings over the years. Reportedly, they feel that the church betrayed their faith and abused their trust; many good people with years of experience in the church have felt the same way." (Emphasis added)


"[Rick] Phillips uses recent census data from Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Mexico, and New Zealand to attempt an answer to this question. According to the data, the number of self-professed Mormons is between 23-58 percent of the number claimed by the church. (Australia 47.5%, Austria 57.1%, Canada 58.4% (lower outside Alberta), Chile 27.3%, Mexico 23.2%.)"
_John Larsen
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Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _John Larsen »

I think most people kind of fade away quietly. Some faster than others. I think less than 1% of those who "quit" the Church actually resign. Probably in the order of less than 5,000 a year--tops.
_antishock8
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Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _antishock8 »

I just recently helped a co-worker of mine leave the Mormon church. He was a temple-married, tithe paying robot. He just submitted his resignation letter, in fact. So... I would say that I've seen ONE leave the Mormon church personally.
You can’t trust adults to tell you the truth.

Scream the lie, whisper the retraction.- The Left
_Mercury
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Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _Mercury »

Scottie wrote:
I still think the church needs to take inoculation seriously.


What would you suggest? It looks like the fingers in the ears combined with saying "lalalalalala" is not working.

Within my lifetime I can see a growing isolationist/survivalist mentality to crop up in a culture already known for taking drastic steps to control its devotees.
And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time
And lost in space...and meaning
_Sethbag
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Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _Sethbag »

I was going to reply that I hardly know anyone personally who has faded away or resigned, because I don't know many of the guys in my ward (my belief was already gone by the time I joined this current ward, and I stopped attending priesthood meeting going on two years ago now). The more I think of it though, there are several boys I knew growing up who I know have either left the church or stopped believing it ages ago

And in fact, of the ten kids in my wife's family, two of the boys have stopped believing in the church, with one maintaining some semblance of activity for his Molly Mormon wife's sake, and the other having completely left altogether. I think he's darkened the doorway of an LDS chapel maybe once or twice in ten years. And the wife of another of my brother-in-law's has stopped believing as well. So, of the 18 children and spouses from my wife's family (10 kids, 8 of whom are married), four of us no longer believe. I don't think any of us have formally resigned. Also, more than one of my mother-in-law's siblings have also left the church. A good estimate of the apostasy rate within my highly TBM in-law family would be at least 20%.

That reminds me that two of my dad's siblings also left the church (out of 4, so 50%). One of my mom's siblings was excommunicated and I don't believe has ever returned to belief (1 out of 6, or 17%).

Oh well. I started out thinking I didn't know too many people who have left, but in fact, I actually do. Oh snap!
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
_Ray A

Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _Ray A »

John Larsen wrote:I think most people kind of fade away quietly. Some faster than others. I think less than 1% of those who "quit" the Church actually resign. Probably in the order of less than 5,000 a year--tops.


That figure doesn't seem realistic. With 2,790 stakes (2007 figure) that would be about two people resigning per year in each stake, worldwide.

The 100,000 figure is based on about 36 members per stake resigning per year. That's probably not accurate either, but I'd go with the higher figure as being more realistic. If cinepro's stake president is correct:

Before Prop 8, he would get about 1 letter of resignation a month. In the weeks after, he was getting about 4 a week.


Twelve per year would add up to more than 33,000 resignations worldwide. With the four per week figure, that would add up to about 133,000 resignations per year, though this is exaggerated by Prop 8.
_cinepro
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Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _cinepro »

Mercury wrote:
Scottie wrote:
I still think the church needs to take inoculation seriously.


What would you suggest? It looks like the fingers in the ears combined with saying "lalalalalala" is not working.



Frankly, I think the church's strategy of tailoring the "history" in the Sunday School lessons is a mistake. I can see the wisdom in teaching what is most applicable for "our day", but on the other hand, it might not be a bad idea to actually spend at least part of a lesson and discuss the Church's past practice of polygamy.

If people were hearing about stuff for the first time in Sunday School instead of on some dubious website, it might help. Maybe I could suggest to my bishop that I be called as the "Ward Inoculation Expert".
Last edited by Guest on Wed Jan 14, 2009 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
_Sethbag
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Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _Sethbag »

Also, Cinepro lives in California - I doubt very many stakes outside of California, or perhaps Arizona or other states that just had high church involvement in anti-gay marriage initiatives, would have seen this kind of response to them.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
_Ray A

Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _Ray A »

This is from Richard Packham, and I don't know how accurate it is:

Update, June 20, 2001

Through connections at the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City, we have learned that the office which handles the requests for the removal of members' names from the church membership records (i.e., resignations by members), is growing. This office is supervised by Brother Greg Dodge. Our source (who for obvious reasons must remain anonymous, since he is an employee of the church), provided the following summary of the number of such requests processed in recent years:

1995:.......... 35,420
1996:.......... 50,177
1997:.......... 55,200
1998:.......... 78,750
1999:.......... 81,200
2000:.......... 87,500

Our informant also said that the number of staff handling these requests has had to be increased from five to seven, and will likely soon increase to ten.


But in another update:

In John L. Smith's latest Newsletter (Nov-Dec 2003), he published the following statistics about the number of Mormons who are requesting name removal. He said his source was "someone inside the church." For the years 1995 through 2000 they are identical to the numbers that were reported above, also from an anonymous source.

For what they are worth, here they are:

1995:.......... 35,420
1996:.......... 50,177
1997:.......... 55,200
1998:.......... 78,750
1999:.......... 81,200
2000:.......... 87,500
2001:.........101,454
2002:.........105,763

If these numbers are reliable.....
_John Larsen
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Re: in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

Post by _John Larsen »

Scottie wrote:I still think the church needs to take inoculation seriously. I don't care when or where they teach the troublesome history, but the problem is only going to get worse.

Inoculate against what? Its own history? I hear people say this quite a bit and I don't get it. Many of us left because of things we learned about the Church's past. I find the idea that if they just teach more accurate history they will save more members quite strange.

Inoculation only works with a weak or dead strain of the disease. But this strain is alive and well.
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