The Church is slowly dying in Europe

[IHAQ]

The Church has enhanced its' "facts and statistics" reporting section of the Mormon Newsroom with some handy trend line graphs.
The Europe graph is enlightening as it shows congregation numbers have steadily and consistently declined over time since the mid 90's.Despite also showing a steady increase in membership numbers and, more inexplicably, a real increase in the number of temples in Europe over the same period.
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.or ... statistics

(hopefully someone more technically gifted than I will be kind enough to post the image)

Declining congregations is a clear indicator that, in real terms, the number of people showing up at Church each week is steadily dropping, despite adding new children of record and converts. It also means that the Church is using temples not to reward membership growth, but to try and drive membership growth. Or perhaps to add a little smoke and mirrors to the situation to make people think the Church is growing when in reality it is shrinking.

The number of temples in Europe has tripled, the number of Missions in Europe has halved and the number of congregations has dropped by 20%. That's a set of numbers that simply do not add up.

[Physics Guy]

Two-hour church is as much as most Europeans are willing to commit.

That's two hours per year.

[honorentheos]

Having served a mission in Switzerland and Germany in the 90s, the shrinking congregation numbers doesn't surprise me, at least there. I was assigned to an area that attended one of the two large Zurich wards. As missionaries, we were given a list of all of the members of the ward, active or otherwise, and would make visiting inactive members part of our weekly planned activities. Most inactive members were people who went back to the church they grew up in or had become apathetic to religion in general. A few had become new age types that felt organized religion was getting in the way of their spirituality. First time I got high was naïvely drinking their homemade herbal tea at one such house. Good times. Most didn't want to be visited again, either.

At the time, I believe that particular ward had somewhere around 600 or more members on the books. But weekly attendance was typically around 10% or less. Members who attended at least monthly couldn't have been more than 20% or so. It made little sense to us that there were two wards when a combined ward would have functioned better. Primary and youth classes were often combined due to the small number of kids or missing teachers. While more people might have held callings with two wards, it didn't translate into those members having much engagement when one prepped a lesson only to end up in the main Sunday School lesson room because no one was there for their class. So in a sense I could see the consolidation of units as actually improving activity among those who may want to be there but also need the meeting and their presence at the service to feel meaningful.

[dastardly stem]

I did some number crunching based for Europe.

I broke it down by country to see the member per congregation and stake (Portugal, UK and Belgium came on the high side of over 500 members per congregation). Then by country I decided to figure the expected number of members based on an avg of 175 members per ward and 75 per branch. Those may be high estimates per congregation but it was fun. Based on those estimates it appears there are approximately 176,000 members in Europe, at least who may be included as somewhat participating and believing. That's giving Europe around a 35% activity rate. Which is pretty good, and I imagine high (there are likely wards with smaller attendance then 175 and branches with smaller attendance than 75).

Anyway, thought I add my simple evaluation.

[dastardly stem]

Never tried to attach before. here we go....

The list is sorted by largest to smallest on the Members per congregation column

Capture.JPG

[Meadowchik]

Having served a mission in Switzerland and Germany in the 90s, the shrinking congregation numbers doesn't surprise me, at least there. I was assigned to an area that attended one of the two large Zurich wards. As missionaries, we were given a list of all of the members of the ward, active or otherwise, and would make visiting inactive members part of our weekly planned activities. Most inactive members were people who went back to the church they grew up in or had become apathetic to religion in general. A few had become new age types that felt organized religion was getting in the way of their spirituality. First time I got high was naïvely drinking their homemade herbal tea at one such house. Good times. Most didn't want to be visited again, either.

At the time, I believe that particular ward had somewhere around 600 or more members on the books. But weekly attendance was typically around 10% or less. Members who attended at least monthly couldn't have been more than 20% or so. It made little sense to us that there were two wards when a combined ward would have functioned better. Primary and youth classes were often combined due to the small number of kids or missing teachers. While more people might have held callings with two wards, it didn't translate into those members having much engagement when one prepped a lesson only to end up in the main Sunday School lesson room because no one was there for their class. So in a sense I could see the consolidation of units as actually improving activity among those who may want to be there but also need the meeting and their presence at the service to feel meaningful.

We attended the Dielsdorf branch (Zurich area) for three years. Very nice people, but very small attendance.

[Meadowchik]

I did some number crunching based for Europe.

I broke it down by country to see the member per congregation and stake (Portugal, UK and Belgium came on the high side of over 500 members per congregation). Then by country I decided to figure the expected number of members based on an avg of 175 members per ward and 75 per branch. Those may be high estimates per congregation but it was fun. Based on those estimates it appears there are approximately 176,000 members in Europe, at least who may be included as somewhat participating and believing. That's giving Europe around a 35% activity rate. Which is pretty good, and I imagine high (there are likely wards with smaller attendance then 175 and branches with smaller attendance than 75).

Anyway, thought I add my simple evaluation.

My anecdotes:

I've been a member of three wards in France, one in Switzerland, and one in the UK. I would say that in my experience the largest of the five units never surpassed 80 on regular Sundays.

[IHAQ]

I did some number crunching based for Europe.

I broke it down by country to see the member per congregation and stake (Portugal, UK and Belgium came on the high side of over 500 members per congregation). Then by country I decided to figure the expected number of members based on an avg of 175 members per ward and 75 per branch. Those may be high estimates per congregation but it was fun. Based on those estimates it appears there are approximately 176,000 members in Europe, at least who may be included as somewhat participating and believing. That's giving Europe around a 35% activity rate. Which is pretty good, and I imagine high (there are likely wards with smaller attendance then 175 and branches with smaller attendance than 75).

Anyway, thought I add my simple evaluation.

Thanks Stem. You may remember a leaked European Area report from a few years back that reported activity at 20% of the claimed membership. I don’t think activity rates have improved since then, I suspect they’ve gotten worse. So I think your 35% estimate is a little out.

[dastardly stem]

I did some number crunching based for Europe.

I broke it down by country to see the member per congregation and stake (Portugal, UK and Belgium came on the high side of over 500 members per congregation). Then by country I decided to figure the expected number of members based on an avg of 175 members per ward and 75 per branch. Those may be high estimates per congregation but it was fun. Based on those estimates it appears there are approximately 176,000 members in Europe, at least who may be included as somewhat participating and believing. That's giving Europe around a 35% activity rate. Which is pretty good, and I imagine high (there are likely wards with smaller attendance then 175 and branches with smaller attendance than 75).

Anyway, thought I add my simple evaluation.

Thanks Stem. You may remember a leaked European Area report from a few years back that reported activity at 20% of the claimed membership. I don’t think activity rates have improved since then, I suspect they’ve gotten worse. So I think your 35% estimate is a little out.

I do remember something like that. I agree, on Europe 35% is likely way high. But, it's an estimate. Trying to find some area of consistency. Perhaps there are some news items out there giving us more details on activity rates. I'll poke around.

[dastardly stem]

I did some number crunching based for Europe.

I broke it down by country to see the member per congregation and stake (Portugal, UK and Belgium came on the high side of over 500 members per congregation). Then by country I decided to figure the expected number of members based on an avg of 175 members per ward and 75 per branch. Those may be high estimates per congregation but it was fun. Based on those estimates it appears there are approximately 176,000 members in Europe, at least who may be included as somewhat participating and believing. That's giving Europe around a 35% activity rate. Which is pretty good, and I imagine high (there are likely wards with smaller attendance then 175 and branches with smaller attendance than 75).

Anyway, thought I add my simple evaluation.

My anecdotes:

I've been a member of three wards in France, one in Switzerland, and one in the UK. I would say that in my experience the largest of the five units never surpassed 80 on regular Sundays.

Thanks, Meadowchik. I'm guessing we're sitting high on this estimate...but it's something. I can certainly adjust if we can find something more concrete.