Missionary numbers drop by 6,000 in December 2024!

[I Have Questions]

Here’s what was reported in the Church News on the 7th December…

The number of missionaries serving right now in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has reached a high mark of around 80,000.

The number of (full time) missionaries reported at conference as of year end 2024 was 74,127. So 6,000 more missionaries ended their missions, than started them. Assuming the Church News was “misreporting”.

I note that the number of missionaries noted at conference (74,127) represents less than 0.5% of the claimed membership number (17,509,781). “ According to data from 2020, the global population aged 0-14 years accounted for approximately 25.48% of the total population.” (Chat GPT response). If the population of that age range were evenly split it would equate to around 1.82% of the world’s population for each age. By now two of those ages have reached at point where they could be serving a mission. All other things being equal we should expect the missionary number should equate to something like 3-3.5% of the membership (population).

Either the membership number is massively overinflated in terms of the people who are active in the church, or there’s a lot of 18 and 19 year olds shunning the “opportunity” to spend two years of their life promoting a hedge fund.

It’s worth noting Mormons tend to have more kids than the general population. So the missionary number proportion should be higher than the general 18/19 year old ratios. I think 74,127 missionaries from a population of 17,509,781 is an abysmally low proportion.

[I Have Questions]

Interesting, Ronny Rasband repeats the untruth at Conference…

We see the Lord hastening His work in missions. In 2024, 80,000 missionaries were serving in 450 missions.

His reference for that number is the Mary Richards article that I’ve quoted in the OP. Why? Does he not have access to actual statistics? Was the actual number withheld from him until the auditing report at Conference? Was it too late to amend his talk to the actual number? Why is an Apostle getting his data from a Church News reporter? And where did that Church News reporter get her numbers from? (She does not reference a source for her information.)

The actual number reported is 74,127

[bbbbbbb]

Here’swhat was reported in the Church News on the 7th December…

The number of missionaries serving right now in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has reached a high mark of around 80,000.

The number of (full time) missionaries reported at conference as of year end 2024 was 74,127. So 6,000 more missionaries ended their missions, than started them. Assuming the Church News was “misreporting”.

I note that the number of missionaries noted at conference (74,127) represents less than 0.5% of the claimed membership number (17,509,781). “ According to data from 2020, the global population aged 0-14 years accounted for approximately 25.48% of the total population.” (Chat GPT response). If the population of that age range were evenly split it would equate to around 1.82% of the world’s population for each age. By now two of those ages have reached at point where they could be serving a mission. All other things being equal we should expect the missionary number should equate to something like 3-3.5% of the membership (population).

Either the membership number is massively overinflated in terms of the people who are active in the church, or there’s a lot of 18 and 19 year olds shunning the “opportunity” to spend two years of their life promoting a hedge fund.

It’s worth noting Mormons tend to have more kids than the general population. So the missionary number proportion should be higher than the general 18/19 year old ratios. I think 74,127 missionaries from a population of 17,509,781 is an abysmally low proportion.

That is a very curious quandary, indeed. In my neck of the woods it has been decades since I have seen any Mormon missionaries out and about.

LDS statistics, like Roman Catholic statistics, are amazingly unreliable. Both churches count as members all individuals who have been baptized. however, the LDS do not include deceased baptized folks in their membership statistics, nor does the RCC, although the RCC does not routinely baptize dead folks.

For many decades the RCC did its best to convince its members that all was well, but, then their seminary enrollments plummeted and they were forced to close many seminaries for lack of seminarians. Then they were forced to close churches, not for lack of members, but for lack of priests.

A year ago I was in Virginia and drove through a suburb which had an LDS church building (the branding is quite obvious, architecturally) which had its signage removed and was obviously abandoned. My own personal observation is that things will start becoming much more obvious much more quickly, as with the RCC. It will become increasingly challenging for LDS PR folks to spin the narrative in a positive direction.

As they say, stay tuned.

[drumdude]

Either the membership number is massively overinflated in terms of the people who are active in the church

I think this has been very well established, and I haven’t seen any LDS apologists try to defend the inflated numbers. They all know the active membership is at least 2 or 3 times lower than reported.

[Moksha]

The actual number reported is 74,127

Knowing that larger-than-life numbers help cement the Mormon belief that it is "oh so true", sounds like they deliberately inflated the number.