Church Membership Numbers Question.

[Fence Sitter]

So, in the latest figures release by the church for 2024, the church increased its membership by 254,387 members yet it also claimed 308,682 convert baptisms. How is it that with 308,000 convert baptisms they only increase the overall membership numbers by 254,000 members? And, if convert baptisms does not include baptisms for children of record, a whole lot more members are missing and unaccounted for. Are they really having 50-100 K members resign officially in a year? Because we know that as long as you don't formally resign, they keep counting you as a "member".

See here for breakdown of membership numbers released by the church.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

These numbers don’t make sense. I’m hoping a statistician can help explain.

The annual death rate per million is around 9,850. If the church has 17 million people, then 167,400 people in the church should die each year.

So with approximately 90,000 children of record baptisms and 308,000 convert baptisms and subtracting a normal death rate of 167,000 you get a number of around 232,000. And if you assume a conservative number of resignation and excommunications of 45,000, you should have a number of around 188,000.

I’m not sure where the church gets an increase of 254,000 members.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

When using church-reported numbers in calculations and projections, you need to keep in mind that their numbers are, shall we say, dubious. Compare church-reported membership numbers in any country, such as Mexico that keeps track of citizens' religious preferences, and the disparity is blatant. It serves as an indictment of the dishonesty of TSCC.

[Fence Sitter]

Birth rates should be around twice what death rates are so that makes the numbers even harder to understand. With 17 mil members, there should be around 300K new babies for the year, yet they are only reporting 90k new children of record. What that probably means is that only about 1 out of 3 babies born to those the church counts as a member actually take the time to add the child to church records. Which, in turn, is a reflection of how many people actually consider themselves members along with their new kids.

Maybe the problem is that it is easier for the church to track deaths than births as it applies to membership. Clearly when someone dies, they are no longer able to be counted as a member but maybe the church is not automatically counting children born to members as a child of record until the parent elects to have it blessed or otherwise entered into the records? This would account for the only 90K new children of record number and, factoring in the deaths, it might explain the difference between new converts and total membership numbers. If that is true, then another measure of people who actually consider themselves Mormon would be the percentage of members who take the time to make sure their children are counted as members too. In this case it looks like less than 30% of claimed members really consider themselves members.

[I Have Questions]

The difficulty in analysing the numbers is they assume 100% activity. Which of course isn’t the case. So people who are listed as a member will die and nobody will inform the Church - the Church assumes inactive members die at age 110. And inactive parents who are listed as members, will have babies and not think to register them as a child of record.

[Fence Sitter]

Here is a Trib article explaining the membership numbers.

LDS Church reports adding the most converts in nearly three decades, so why are there nagging ‘concerns’?

These should be more than "nagging concerns."

They baptize 300 k converts and, assuming normal birthrates, 300K more children are born to people they are counting as members, subtract normal death rates of 150k and you should have had an increase of 450K new "members. Instead, they report 250k new members, which means at least 200k children were born to members who didn't really consider themselves members.

17.5 million members is about as accurate as Trump's estimates of his property values for bank loans.