Church membership numbers not good.

[MsJack]

Bill Reel has a couple of good posts on Facebook about missionary numbers. in my opinion he's correct. The number to watch out for is the number of full-time missionaries as this tells a story about membership and activity that is difficult to massage or manipulate. It's a good indicator of youth retention and enthusiasm as well.

Total Missionaries serving
1990 43,651
1991 43,395
1992 46,025
1993 48,708
1994 47,311
1995 48,631
1996 52,938
1997 56,531
1998 57,853
1999 58,593
2000 60,784
2001 60,850
2002 61,638
OCTOBER 2002 THE BAR OF STANDARDS WAS RAISED
2003 56,237
2004 51,067
2005 52,060
2006 53,164
2007 52,686
2008 52,494
2009 51,736
2010 52,225
2011 55,410
2012 58,990
AGE LOWERING POLICY CHANGE IN OCTOBER 2012
2013 83,035
2014 85,147
THE YEAR ELDER HOLLAND PREDICTED 100,000 MISSIONARIES
2015 74,079
2016 70,946
2017 67,049
2018 65,137
2019 67,021
2020 51,819
2021 54,539

My only quibble is that I'm willing to allow that the number may climb again as things return to "normal" post-COVID. There may even be some missionaries who skipped out during COVID who will serve missions now. We have yet to see.

[MG 2.0]

It’s become rather obvious to me that faith and testimony in the restoration are preferable to secular humanist belief.

It's not a matter of what you prefer.

It's a matter of whether the truth claims of the CoJCoLDS are, well, true or false.

Things are true or false regardless of what you 'prefer'.

Preferable:
1.Worthy to be chosen before something else
2.Better than some other option.
3.Having greater value.

It can be argued that the teachings of the CofJCofLDS can answer to the affirmative to all three vs. secular humanism.

I’ll stick with what I said, thanks.

You can obviously disagree and go your own way.

Regards,
MG

[dantana]

MG2.0,

What is the purpose of all the temples when names are being recycled due to lack of new genealogical records?

It seems to be the sole purpose of all these new temples is to convince members that the church isn’t suffering a decline.

Which also explains why there is a rush to announce then but no rush to actually build them.

The purpose of the new temples is $$$$.
Leadership has realized that more temples means more tithe payers.
Even the prospect of a accessible temple in the near future will drive up church revenues.
Smith would be so proud of how the scam he started has evolved into a great money making business.

And don't forget all of the righteous nepotism and holy skullduggery that goes with the lucrative temple building contracts

[Marcus]

Bill Reel has a couple of good posts on Facebook about missionary numbers. in my opinion he's correct. The number to watch out for is the number of full-time missionaries as this tells a story about membership and activity that is difficult to massage or manipulate. It's a good indicator of youth retention and enthusiasm as well.

Total Missionaries serving
1990 43,651
1991 43,395
1992 46,025
1993 48,708
1994 47,311
1995 48,631
1996 52,938
1997 56,531
1998 57,853
1999 58,593
2000 60,784
2001 60,850
2002 61,638
OCTOBER 2002 THE BAR OF STANDARDS WAS RAISED
2003 56,237
2004 51,067
2005 52,060
2006 53,164
2007 52,686
2008 52,494
2009 51,736
2010 52,225
2011 55,410
2012 58,990
AGE LOWERING POLICY CHANGE IN OCTOBER 2012
2013 83,035
2014 85,147
THE YEAR ELDER HOLLAND PREDICTED 100,000 MISSIONARIES
2015 74,079
2016 70,946
2017 67,049
2018 65,137
2019 67,021
2020 51,819
2021 54,539

My only quibble is that I'm willing to allow that the number may climb again as things return to "normal" post-COVID. There may even be some missionaries who skipped out during COVID who will serve missions now. We have yet to see.

It’s also an indicator of where conversion numbers come from. As PG pointed out, there were roughly 280,000 + or minus 45,000 convert baptisms every year for a solid 30 year period, about 1986-2015. It would be interesting to see where that consistency came from, especially when the missionary numbers, as listed above, were fluctuating so much.

[Chap]

It's not a matter of what you prefer.

It's a matter of whether the truth claims of the CoJCoLDS are, well, true or false.

Things are true or false regardless of what you 'prefer'.

Preferable:
1.Worthy to be chosen before something else
2.Better than some other option.
3.Having greater value.

Unfortunately, if something is not true it cannot be any of those things you list.

[MG 2.0]

Preferable:
1.Worthy to be chosen before something else
2.Better than some other option.
3.Having greater value.

Unfortunately, if something is not true it cannot be any of those things you list.

Actually, I would beg to differ. If you’ve been reading the posts by Free Ranger I think he explains things a LOT better than I can:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=155081&sid=cf5af30f ... b0752b87a9

If Mormonism IS true, that’s icing on the cake.

Regards,
MG

[Bond]

Bill Reel has a couple of good posts on Facebook about missionary numbers. in my opinion he's correct. The number to watch out for is the number of full-time missionaries as this tells a story about membership and activity that is difficult to massage or manipulate. It's a good indicator of youth retention and enthusiasm as well.

Total Missionaries serving
1990 43,651
1991 43,395
1992 46,025
1993 48,708
1994 47,311
1995 48,631
1996 52,938
1997 56,531
1998 57,853
1999 58,593
2000 60,784
2001 60,850
2002 61,638
OCTOBER 2002 THE BAR OF STANDARDS WAS RAISED
2003 56,237
2004 51,067
2005 52,060
2006 53,164
2007 52,686
2008 52,494
2009 51,736
2010 52,225
2011 55,410
2012 58,990
AGE LOWERING POLICY CHANGE IN OCTOBER 2012
2013 83,035
2014 85,147
THE YEAR ELDER HOLLAND PREDICTED 100,000 MISSIONARIES
2015 74,079
2016 70,946
2017 67,049
2018 65,137
2019 67,021
2020 51,819
2021 54,539

My only quibble is that I'm willing to allow that the number may climb again as things return to "normal" post-COVID. There may even be some missionaries who skipped out during COVID who will serve missions now. We have yet to see.

The raw missionary numbers should fall further off the cliff in 2026-27 or so as 18 year olds born (or should I say not born) after the 2008 Great Recession and subsequent birth rate declines that have continued to this day take affect.

https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/ ... =1&sreg=49

Utah birth rates per 1k women aged 15-44 fell ~25% between 2010 and 2020 (covid will probably have taken another bite out of the birth rate, just waiting on numbers to back that up). Idaho (and the rest of the US) had similar birth rate declines. Between 2007 and 2021 the United States had 700k fewer raw births (4.3 million to 3.6 million) which seems to be a demographic ship that won't be stopped at this point as it becomes a norm to have 1-2 children for all families. The only thing keeping American population growing is immigration. I guess foreign missionaries could pick up the slack but Utah and Idaho are the heart of the church and simply put people everywhere are having fewer babies for many reasons. I guess the LDS church can thank it's lucky stars that their members always live to be 110.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph ... %80%932021

[MG 2.0]

The purpose of the new temples is $$$$.
Leadership has realized that more temples means more tithe payers.
Even the prospect of a accessible temple in the near future will drive up church revenues.
Smith would be so proud of how the scam he started has evolved into a great money making business.

And don't forget all of the righteous nepotism and holy skullduggery that goes with the lucrative temple building contracts

Temples and other church buildings do not build themselves. In various areas of the world you will find that there are a whole lot of folks that are awarded contracts for building LDS church buildings, including temples.

No big surprise.

Yes, here in the states there are certain ‘go to’ developers/contractors that the church goes with for a multiplicity of reasons. I’m not sure why that should be a great surprise to anyone.

But again, I think the major statistical ‘big thing’ to be looking at is the number of temples that are announced, go through the development process, and then built. Those numbers continue to be amazingly high.

Hard to ignore.

Regards,
MG

[MsJack]

The raw missionary numbers should fall further off the cliff in 2026-27 or so as 18 year olds born (or should I say not born) after the 2008 Great Recession and subsequent birth rate declines that have continued to this day take affect.

https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/ ... =1&sreg=49

Utah birth rates per 1k women aged 15-44 fell ~25% between 2010 and 2020 (covid will probably have taken another bite out of the birth rate, just waiting on numbers to back that up). Idaho (and the rest of the US) had similar birth rate declines. Between 2007 and 2021 the United States had 700k fewer raw births (4.3 million to 3.6 million) which seems to be a demographic ship that won't be stopped at this point as it becomes a norm to have 1-2 children for all families. The only thing keeping American population growing is immigration. I guess foreign missionaries could pick up the slack but Utah and Idaho are the heart of the church and simply put people everywhere are having fewer babies for many reasons. I guess the LDS church can thank it's lucky stars that their members always live to be 110.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph ... %80%932021

Good point. I think this is correct.

[Marcus]

Unfortunately, if something is not true it cannot be any of those things you list.

Actually, I would beg to differ. If you’ve been reading the posts by Free Ranger I think he explains things a LOT better than I can:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=155081&sid=cf5af30f ... b0752b87a9

If Mormonism IS true, that’s icing on the cake.

Regards,
MG

Oh boy. This is mentalgymnast’s go to, the guy who posted this? From the link mg gives above:

…all this feminist feminine empowerment is BS; the problem is not "the patriarchy," and you're not really a "bad bitch"; and getting in touch with your inner "feminine warrior" and slaying alleged "toxic masculinity" is bulshit. In the real world women are biologically designed through millions of years of evolution and the self-help cult of feminizing Wokeism isn't going to change that….