The Church is slowly dying in Europe

[pistolero]

These numbers put the activity rate of UK and Ireland closer to 5%. If these figures can be verified that'd be very telling.

How are you arriving at 5%? My quick calculation makes it closer to 14%

[IHAQ]

These numbers put the activity rate of UK and Ireland closer to 5%. If these figures can be verified that'd be very telling.

How are you arriving at 5%? My quick calculation makes it closer to 14%

14% seems consistent with the 20% seen in the leaked area report of a few years ago and my anecdotal reckoning that activity has gotten worse.

[dastardly stem]

These numbers put the activity rate of UK and Ireland closer to 5%. If these figures can be verified that'd be very telling.

How are you arriving at 5%? My quick calculation makes it closer to 14%

I must have done a quicker calculation. I look again and it appears it's closer to 13%. I get just under 25,000 sacrament attenders for the year on your table. There are about 192,000 members, as reported by the Church.

My mistake.

[Dwight]

I feel like I should have something to add here, but I don’t have much. I am in a ward 2.5 hours outside of Stockholm. I attended for four years and it’s been 10 years since I went. It was easier to be Mormon in Sweden than in Utah, but also easier to leave cause I was never around for any family things around the church.

The ward had a ceiling of 70 people show up on any give Sunday, and 50 was around the lower limit. I would guess if everyone came on the same Sunday it could go as high as 110, but that is with the people who came once a year. I have no idea what the membership list would be like, and with GDPR online list is completely opt-in.

Combining priesthood was a life line for the number of active priesthood holders. The elders quorum was basically the president, the missionaries and myself. Everyone else was a high priest from being in the bishopric or age (probably had been in the bishopric before). Generally it is five families carrying the bishopric and the ward. I think two hour church has made that a lot easier for them. It’s still all online church cause of COVID here and I have no idea how it will go when it is time to go back. Though it is multi-generational so probably strong family lock-in. Anecdotally many gen X and millennials seem to be waiting for grandparents or parents to die before resigning, and may be inactive, but may also make appearances, since in most places the units cover a big geographic area so you may be in the same ward/branch as family.

[DrW]

Thanks for the information, Dwight. What you describe is not unfamiliar. We experienced similar situations with a few families carrying the ward or branch in the UK and Germany. I've lived in small, undermanned, rural branches in the US and its just not the same.

In the UK, I don't recall that we even had as many as five families that I would say carried the ward. We were in the Ilford ward in Romford Stake near London. I recall only three or four families that were fully active and holding callings more than a teacher. We had a non-member pianist, who played like he was in a piano bar, and many callings that went unfilled. Few teenagers there were interested. There was one family that simply did not like Americans and said so now and then. The meeting house was quite a drive for us and had it not been for my wife and young child needing the community interaction, I would have not bothered attending.

As a young family not on a mission, we were sort of a curiosity in our Branch in Germany until a second American family moved in. It eventually became known that I held a professional position and that seemed to count for a lot in German society. My wife having been born there also helped and we were treated very well, even with my American accent. (I never practiced a Sacrament Meeting talk so hard in my life - before or since).

I suppose I felt that the Church was dying in Europe, even back then. It was so out of step with the traditions an culture in the UK, especially London. It seemed at odds with daily life. Looking back, I suppose I was sometimes embarrassed for being from the country that birthed the religious monstrosity. There was at least one family in the UK that felt the same way.