With its missionary ranks shooting past pre-pandemic levels, the Utah-based faith will add the missions around the globe next July, including nine new ones in Africa, where the church is expanding rapidly; six in South America; and a dozen in North America.
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/11 ... mp-number/
So 75% of the mission splitting (these aren't new missions areas) is happening in the Americas and Africa.
All of the new missions are being created by splitting existing mission boundaries.
This link has a map showing where they are:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.or ... sus-christ
The tally of missionaries has topped 72,700 (including nearly 5,300 senior missionaries).
(Despite Peterson's and MG's refusal to answer the call) Given the recent announcement that home-based missionaries serving non full time proselytising missions would be reporting in to Missions, I'd like to see the number broken down by missionary type.
The church did not provide any numbers but said its projections show the missionary counts will continue to rise for the next decade.
“We’re as sure as we can be that this is going to continue,” Rasband said, “or we wouldn’t take the very big decision to create all these new missions.”
I guess they've learned a lesson from Holland's ridiculous forecast of 100,000 missionaries by 2019. Is the phrase "we're as sure as we can be" the kind of statement you'd expect from a Prophet, Seer and Revelator? Or does it sound like the statement of someone that only has access to the current reed of missionary applications being received?
The intention, according to Amy A. Wright, first counselor in the general presidency for the children’s Primary organization, is to “diminish the demand” on mission presidents by giving them each fewer missionaries to “lead and guide and teach.”
Why is the Primary President weighing in with a comment on a programme run entirely by men? Smoke and Mirrors.
In Utah, the plan is to have a pair of missionaries assigned to each stake (a cluster of congregations) in the Beehive State, up from one pair for every two or three stakes.
“So missionaries will be more helpful to local priesthood leaders,” Rasband said, “as they have the responsibility to share the gospel and do what they do stake by stake.”
In other wards, Stake Presidents will now have to find things for missionaries to do. No point in having more missionaries in areas where missionaries are already under utilised in terms of teaching opportunities.
More missionaries also have translated into more converts for the proselytizing faith of 17 million members.
“Our projections are that at the end of this year, we should be at or really, really close to what our convert baptisms were pre-pandemic,” Nash said. “That’s really good news. We’ve seen strong growth through this year. Our convert baptisms in North America are more now than they’ve been since 2015.”
Is there good evidence that more missionaries = more converts?
Convert baptisms worldwide swelled in 2022 by 26% to 212,172, up from 168,283 in 2021 as COVID-19 restrictions continued to ease. During the height of the pandemic, in 2020, however, that number plunged to 125,930.
Before reaching that coronavirus cliff, the church reported 248,835 convert baptisms in 2019, up more than 6% from 234,332 in 2018.
I'm unconvinced that's simply a consequence of the number of missionaries. If true, the trebling of Missionary pairs for Stakes in Utah should treble the amount of converts in Utah. But nobody really believes that will happen. I'd like to see those convert numbers by mission by number of missionaries - as I suspect it won't be relative.
