Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

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_Physics Guy
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Re: Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

Post by _Physics Guy »

Total church membership numbers were always of dubious real meaning, and the fact that they've been growing linearly for so long only makes them less likely to represent anything real about membership. Their sustained linear growth may reveal things about how the church has been measuring its own growth, but I doubt very much that the reported numbers represent bums on seats.

Congregation numbers may well come closer to being bum-counts, but just how close are they? Are congregation numbers in places far from SLC likely to be fudged up to Gadianton's "meh" levels, by counting congregations that don't really have anyone there, as long as they're in places where no-one will check?
_cinepro
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Re: Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

Post by _cinepro »

Simon Southerton wrote:
Linear growth may be occurring in the total membership numbers but those numbers tell us little about the number of bums on seats each Sunday. The most useful metric we have for genuine growth is the number of units created each year. And for most countries in the Western world growth stalled in the late 90s. The US appears to have been one of the last Western countries to wake up to sham, with growth appearing to stall in the last couple of years.


That's an interesting chart, and it makes me wonder about other countries. For example, Germany currently reports 159 "congregations" here:

https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-an ... ry/germany

But in this article from 2000, they report 92 wards and 96 branches.

Would that be the same as 188 "congregations"?
_I have a question
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Re: Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

Post by _I have a question »

cinepro wrote:
Simon Southerton wrote:Linear growth may be occurring in the total membership numbers but those numbers tell us little about the number of bums on seats each Sunday. The most useful metric we have for genuine growth is the number of units created each year. And for most countries in the Western world growth stalled in the late 90s. The US appears to have been one of the last Western countries to wake up to sham, with growth appearing to stall in the last couple of years.

That's an interesting chart, and it makes me wonder about other countries. For example, Germany currently reports 159 "congregations" here:

https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-an ... ry/germany

But in this article from 2000, they report 92 wards and 96 branches.

Would that be the same as 188 "congregations"?

Yes. The Church has shrunk from 189 units (congregations) in 2000 to 166 at the end of 2015, and now 159 as of 2017.

http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target ... ind=Search
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
_esodije
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Re: Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

Post by _esodije »

I think it’s telling that the verse in Daniel Chapter 2, concerning the stone cut without hands that grows to fill the earth, is hardly ever quoted in General Conference these days.
_Dr Exiled
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Re: Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

Post by _Dr Exiled »

esodije wrote:I think it’s telling that the verse in Daniel Chapter 2, concerning the stone cut without hands that grows to fill the earth, is hardly ever quoted in General Conference these days.


I heard the stone was sent on a special mission to central america to look for the missing nephite/lamanite culture. So, there won't be any filling the earth for a while.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen 
_Fred_VII
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Re: Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

Post by _Fred_VII »

Any religion worth its salt will cover both bases.

  • There's the rock that is cut out of the mountain for when growth is gangbusters. You know your religion is the chosen religion because it's so popular.
  • There's the even the very elect will be deceived when people start to wonder, "If my religion is so awesome, why are there so few of us? Oh well, it's just proof that I'm super elect for sticking around."

Citing waxing or waning membership numbers really doesn't achieve what some may be after - validation that the church is true/false. Not that anyone here is after that.

I don't have the statistics and if I did I wouldn't be able to decipher them but during the April 2018 general conference my gut told me that they stopped reporting statistics now because they anticipated the statistics in the near future to paint an ominous and obvious picture for rank and file membership. Quietly move the statistics to a website the majority of members will never visit while the numbers are still kinda good in order to get out ahead of the day where Peter Preisthood wonders why they said there are only 15.9 million members this year when they said there were 16.1 million members a few years ago. By the time the negative numbers show up no one can say, "You only stopped talking about the statistics during general conference because they're negative." because by then they will have several years of favorable numbers under the new policy to point at. I'm not predicting negative growth or anything, it could take 20 years for that to happen if it happens at all. This was just my gut reaction.

It's difficult for me to be able to extract much from unit numbers. This is one area where the church can enact policy to make the numbers look however they would like them to look - within reason. Change or relax the US policy from a 300 member minimum in order to form a ward to 275 members and suddenly there are 100 new wards overnight.

It gets tricky. For instance, the year in Mexico where there was no change in the number of units. It's hard to know, but the church may feel inclined to strengthen wards by consolidation and pruning the tree every so often. The delta over one year doesn't say much, that year could have been a pruning year and things will go back to some normal afterwards. It will be interesting to see the unit deltas in coming years, at least it would indicate whether the year was a one-off or the start of a downward trend.

I had the displeasure of being a WML when the missionary surge was in full effect. I hesitate to read too much into the fact that the per-missionary convert ratio stayed steady or even slightly decreased during the surge. From what I saw there was a massive influx of missionaries but there wasn't an equal number of visas that other countries were doling out. That meant most of the surge remained in the USA, which already had many areas that were over-saturated with missionaries that had nothing to do. The missionaries were highly concentrated in places where the church wasn't growing to begin with.

Final point (I hope :wink: ). I think some of the success the church enjoyed in the past was due to the world's fascination with America. Mormonism is an American religion. It's 2018. America sucks in 2018. I wonder whether that factors into the missionary efforts of the church.
Last edited by Guest on Fri Sep 27, 2019 10:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
_Shulem
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Re: Church "Growth" Continues it's Nose Dive

Post by _Shulem »

Fred_VII wrote:Final point (I hope :wink: ). I think some of the success the church enjoyed in the past was due to the world's fascination with America. Mormonism is an American religion. It's 2018. America sucks in 2018. I wonder whether that factors into the missionary efforts of the church.

Mormonism is an American religion -- made in America, based in America, and run by Americans. These days America has lost its worldly glamor and influence. People abroad pretty much know that Mormonism is one of the stranger Christian sects. It's known for polygamy and strange customs. Most people aren't interested in joining a religion that tells them they can't have a cup off coffee in the morning or a glass of champagne to toast in the new year. When they find out they have to forfeit 10% of their income straight to Salt Lake City without any kind of statement on how their funds are used it's game over before the game even begins. I like to call it: DOA. That's pretty much what Mormonism is today, a dying religion which pretty much no one wants to join or be associated with.

The church is in decline. It's dying. It's losing members and gaining fewer than ever before. But perhaps most striking is it's losing an entire generation of younger people who have no interest in a church telling them how to dress or how much cell phone use is appropriate. Today's youth won't tolerate mind control or outright abuse.
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