Church membership numbers not good.

[Fence Sitter]

The statistical report for 2021 is out and membership numbers continue to look dismal.
2021 stats
Here are the numbers from the year before.
2020 stats


Overall membership in 2021 was 16,805,400
Overall membership in 2020 was 16,663,663
A net increase of 141,437

New converts in 2021 = 168,283

Membership increase didn't even cover the number of new converts.
World population growth is about 1% which would also be more than the increase in membership growth.

The church isn't losing them by the thousands, or tens of thousands. Existing members are formally leaving the church by the hundreds of thousands. How else does one explain these numbers?

[Chap]

We've had similar discussions on this board before, and the message is the same. If you look at the statistics, then given the fact that those who self-identify as Mormons tend to marry and have kids rather more than other social groups, membership should be rising much faster than it is. Quite apart from independent adults who decide to leave the church after becoming full members, it is clear that a lot of children of Mormons simply leave all that behind them when they leave home. Mormons should be growing as a proportion of the US population, but they are not.

It really is not a big surprise, is it?

[Shulem]

Between 2020 and 2021 The Church:

+ 35 Stakes
- 17 Districts

18 increase

Gained 179 wards/branches

The Church has been growing at unprecedented numbers in Africa, especially Nigeria. How many of the new converts are base ball baptisms from Dark Africa? Nobody can say. The Church has a history of baptizing for numbers (South America) and I suspect the same is the case in Dark Africa. Baptize, baptize, baptize, and out the door they go within the first year.

The growth rate for the Church is well under 1% and shows signs of maintaining low growth rates. Who wants to joint the Mormon Church? Who wants to give 10% of their hard earned income to a Church that hordes money to the tune of 100 billion?

I suspect that tens of thousands resign their membership every year. The more the merrier! It would be wonderful if we could see several million members trimmed from the Church rolls within the coming years as it massively declines in membership and Mormon Africa implodes on itself when they eventually reject the authority of the American based Church and apostatize in mass.

Woo hoo! Screw the Church, baby.

[Dr Moore]

The headline numbers show implied (deaths + resignations) growing much faster than total membership. That's a multi year trend.

But the most negative data is not shared with the public. I believe the most negative data that the church could share would be total annual active members. Adjacent to that data, total annual tithing receipts.

From what I have heard, those two figures were already trending with a weaker slope than total membership, but that two events have sent those statistics into a Nelsonesque death-spiral. First, the "$100 billion" reveal in the Letter to an IRS Director. Second, long-term cessation of in-person church during Covid-19.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Excluding last year’s numbers, the Church grew at the slowest percentage (.8%) rate since 1857:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chu ... ip_history

[drumdude]

Im quite surprised witnesses didn’t have the intended effect of stemming the tide of Mormons leaving the church.


Don’t they know how credible the Book of Mormon witnesses were? What’s wrong with them???

[Rollo Redux]

I find these numbers very interesting. The number of new members (converts and newborns) totaled 257,352, but Church membership grew ONLY by 141,437. What happened to the other 115,915? I’m sure a significant portion was deaths (it was a covid year), but I would also wager that nearly 100K of that number were resignations. That’s a huge drain I can only presume will increase in the future. Bad numbers, indeed.

[Fence Sitter]

Are children of record even counted in the membership numbers? If so things are even worse than I thought.

[Rollo Redux]

Are children of record even counted in the membership numbers? If so things are even worse than I thought.

Yes they are. Breakdown for 2021: 89,069 new children of record and 168,283 convert baptisms for total new members of 257,352. HOWEVER, the Church’s total member increase was just 141,437, which means approximately 115K previous members either died or quit in 2021.

[Moksha]

Although the statistic would never be furnished, I am curious as to how many new baptisms are active after 6 weeks, and would that depend on whether they are still on the soccer team?