Church Gained 12 Wards and 3 Branches in 2022

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Over at the MAD Board, people are celebrating the 2022 membership growth of 197,061. https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/75 ... -for-2022/

In 2021, the church announced there were 31,315 Wards/Branches. https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/statistics/

In 2022, the church announced there were 31,330 Wards/Branches.
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.or ... conference

My question is why did the church only add 12 Wards and 3 Branches with 197,061 new members? Shouldn't the church have added at least 500 new Wards with 400 people each (500 x 400 = 200,000)?

Can someone with a background in statistics help me out here? The numbers aren't making sense to me. The church should have added around 500 new Wards, instead of 12.

ETA At the current growth rate, the church will reach 19 million members in 2060: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

[Fence Sitter]

The reason is due to inactivity. In all likelihood, just as many members went inactive as were baptized, so no new wards were needed.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

The reason is due to inactivity. In all likelihood, just as many members went inactive as were baptized, so no new wards were needed.

Thanks Fence Sitter. That's kind of what I thought. It's crazy to think that it takes 197,000 new converts to make just 12 Wards.

[Moksha]

Isn't the retention rate for new converts around 10%?

[master_dc]

It would be interesting to know the breakdown of total church membership by age. For Example, if the boomers are the largest generation of membership, the inactives will remain in the count for another 40ish years.

Another way to think about it, the church should disclose how many people were removed because they "aged out" (hit the magic number, 118 years old?)