2018 statistics relewsed

[Kishkumen]

Sorry no link , I'm on my phone.

Statistics 2018 released, the work is progressing - not really. Overall decline from last years performance.

No unhallowed hand can st--- wait, yes it can.

[AllieOop]

Sorry no link , I'm on my phone.

Statistics 2018 released, the work is progressing - not really. Overall decline from last years performance.

No unhallowed hand can st--- wait, yes it can.

I posted this on another thread (probably the wrong one ), but here's a post from another online forum with some info:

The 2018 statistical report is available here: https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/ ... cal-report

A few comments in looking at these numbers and the overall trends...

Increase in the number of stakes -- there has historically been a lot of variability here but our ten year average was a 1.34% increase per year. 2018 rate is down a bit from that at 0.92% growth.

Number of members per stake/district is up by about 200 from a decade ago but flat over the past few years.

Very little increase in the number of wards/branches... up just 0.10% from last year (ten year average was 0.9%).

Number of members per ward/branch is at a high for as far back as I can get numbers (1974) = 534 members per ward/branch.

New members for 2018 is at a 40 year low as we went under 200,000. Growth rate also continues its decline. At 1.21% for 2018 that is half of what it was a decade ago.

New children of record also continues its downward trend in both raw numbers and as a percentage of overall membership.

However, the number of new converts was up by just over 600 new converts for 2018. As a percentage of membership, converts have been flat over the past few years which is why the decrease in new children of record tends to drive the declining growth rate in the church.

Number of full time missionaries continues to its post-surge decline (as we've all seen) but church service missionaries have been on the rise for as long as they have been reporting that number (since 2010 by my records). We're almost at 38,000.

[Just This Guy]

I'm surprised they actually release the numbers. They were hiding them for a year or two there.

[oliblish]

I'm surprised they actually release the numbers. They were hiding them for a year or two there.

Two years ago they announced numbers in conference like has been done for a number of decades.
Last year they announced that they will no longer be giving out numbers at conference but you can look them up on the website.
Today they said nothing but the numbers were available again on the web.
Who knows if they will continue to make all of these statistics open to the public in future years...

I feel the most important number is the number of units. It only went up 30 for 2018. That is less than 0.1% growth for >30,000 units. But last year saw a loss of more than 100 units in Mexico. That was a one time hit so the numbers should be much higher for 2019.

Also I feel that changes are being made to make it possible to staff ward and branches with fewer active members and priesthood (2 hour church and combining MP quorums.) I expect we will continue to see more changes like this. The effect should be fewer units shutting down as activity rates fall.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Hagoth]

Another interesting statistic I saw on Reddit: record high resignations in a year at over 140,000 (although I didn't check a source on that). That's pretty impressive considering that most of us just creep away slowly and don't bother with the paperwork.

[Mankhoj]

I saw that too (need to verify the source though). Interesting if we can watch resignation numbers trend over time moving forward.

[jfro18]

Another interesting statistic I saw on Reddit: record high resignations in a year at over 140,000 (although I didn't check a source on that). That's pretty impressive considering that most of us just creep away slowly and don't bother with the paperwork.

It's somewhat misleading -- it's that 140,000 have come off the records which could be via death as well.

But still - that seems like a significant drop-off although the church will never release the actual numbers.

I do love the missionary #s... I noted on Twitter:

2015: Mormon apostle Jeffrey Holland (who is a sustained prophet, seer, and revelator) predicts 100,000 LDS missionaries by 2019.

2019: The LDS church announces just 65,137 full time missionaries, down from 85,147 in 2014.

[wtfluff]

Here's my favorite statistical analysis from Reddit:

Last year there were 42 new stakes.

Last year there were 30 new wards.

So about .7 wards per stake?

In addition, there were roughly 200,000 new members.

That means the church assigned about 9,000 new members to each new stake.

Or put another way, we assigned about 6,500 members to each new ward.

[oliblish]

It's somewhat misleading -- it's that 140,000 have come off the records which could be via death as well.

Yes, the 140000 comes from this:

new children of record: 102102
convert baptisms: 234332 (by the way, this is the lowest since 1986 when there were 31803 missionaries)
total new members: 102102+234332=336434

Member count 2017: 16118169
Member count 2018: 16313735
Increase in membership: 195566 (This is the lowest number I found checking back to 1980)
% increase year over year: 1.21% (lowest in many decades. Last year was 1.48% which was the lowest since the 1930's if I remember correctly)

deaths/excommunications/resignations:
336434-195566=140868

To put this in perspective here are the decreases in the last few years:
2018: 140868
2017: 104748
2016: 106463
2015: 110090
2014: 122903
2013: 98876
2012: 53476
2011: 91350

So this number is up fairly significantly. It is the largest I found going back to 1980. The first time it went over 100,000 was in 2014.

[2bizE]

Jeffery R. Holland: See folks, there are more than 100,000 missionaries.

[AllieOop]

Another interesting statistic I saw on Reddit: record high resignations in a year at over 140,000 (although I didn't check a source on that).

Here’s this:
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/04 ... s-million/

Amid the 2018 statistic report announced Saturday by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a startling finding: the largest number of membership records ever removed in a single year — 140,868.

[sunstoned]

Sorry no link , I'm on my phone.

Statistics 2018 released, the work is progressing - not really. Overall decline from last years performance.

No unhallowed hand can st--- wait, yes it can.

I posted this on another thread (probably the wrong one ), but here's a post from another online forum with some info:

The 2018 statistical report is available here: https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/ ... cal-report

A few comments in looking at these numbers and the overall trends...

Increase in the number of stakes -- there has historically been a lot of variability here but our ten year average was a 1.34% increase per year. 2018 rate is down a bit from that at 0.92% growth.

Number of members per stake/district is up by about 200 from a decade ago but flat over the past few years.

Very little increase in the number of wards/branches... up just 0.10% from last year (ten year average was 0.9%).

Number of members per ward/branch is at a high for as far back as I can get numbers (1974) = 534 members per ward/branch.

New members for 2018 is at a 40 year low as we went under 200,000. Growth rate also continues its decline. At 1.21% for 2018 that is half of what it was a decade ago.

New children of record also continues its downward trend in both raw numbers and as a percentage of overall membership.

However, the number of new converts was up by just over 600 new converts for 2018. As a percentage of membership, converts have been flat over the past few years which is why the decrease in new children of record tends to drive the declining growth rate in the church.

Number of full time missionaries continues to its post-surge decline (as we've all seen) but church service missionaries have been on the rise for as long as they have been reporting that number (since 2010 by my records). We're almost at 38,000.

This is a far cry from Holland's "growing by 10 stakes a week" rant.

[Hagoth]

Amid the 2018 statistic report announced Saturday by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a startling finding: the largest number of membership records ever removed in a single year — 140,868.

[/quote]
Thanks Allie. The headline of the article is "LDS Church tops 16.3 million members, but number reflects lowest net increase in 40 years." So, the last lower point was when I was on my mission. I guess I was doing my part.

[no1saint]

828,774 removed from Church records in 8 years. That’s haemorrhaging members. I am terrible with maths, but I checked the death rate average per 1,000 of the USA and it is 8.5.

Can someone work out the maths? lol

[Kishkumen]

828,774 removed from Church records in 8 years. That’s haemorrhaging members. I am terrible with maths, but I checked the death rate average per 1,000 of the USA and it is 8.5.

Can someone work out the maths? lol

A quick Google search indicates the global and USA death rate is close to 8 per 1000 annually. That's .8%
Note, it may go up or down slightly, but 8 is a nice clean number that's very close to reality.

Sooooo. With 16M members, they lose about 128,000 +/- annually to death. Over 8 years, that's 1,024,000. For the sake of easy math, well round that down to 1M even.

Based on the unverifiable statistic that 828K members have resigned, that's a little bit less than the losses from death. Based on what little we know, LD$ doesn't expunge a unlocated member from it's roles until that person is over 100 yrs old. This would severely skew the 8/1000 death rate and provide more members on the books than reality.

So let's assume a 33% approx. activity rate and say there are 5M Mormons, not 16M. Using active members as bench mark, LD$ would know if a member dies (that stuff is very important to them, genealogy, etc). That means they are losing 40,000 per year to death and have lost 320,000 over the last 8 years.

In 8 years, 828K resignations compared to 320K known deaths of active members is rather significant.

The reality is membership is actually declining. A 1% increase is false. If they were actually use butts in the seats to determine membership numbers instead of misleading claims, we would see the decline annually.

Since only 1/3 new members remain active for over a year, a 1.4% baptism growth rate is really only about .45% actual growth. And they're losing .8% to death. Once you add resignations on top of deaths, - well it's even uglier.

Rest assured, there are fewer Mormons every day.

[no1saint]

Hence the abrupt u-turn on the so called prophesy regarding children of LGBTQI members. Their own internal projections would show a very bleak picture. Hence why they are sinking billions into real estate to future proof their finances and pouring resources into projects like Temple View NZ to sustain multigenerational centres abroad.

[nibbler]

Maybe this is splitting hairs, but in Holland's defense he could have been talking about the combined proselyting and service mission total.

Proselyting: 65,137
Service: 37,963

Total: 103,100

I have no idea what counts as a service mission. I see proselyting missionaries all over my stake. I don't know whether I've seen a service missionary... unless it's the local couple they call into the family history center or they people they call to head addiction recovery. I think they get little name tags.

[Just This Guy]

I have no idea what counts as a service mission. I see proselyting missionaries all over my stake. I don't know whether I've seen a service missionary... unless it's the local couple they call into the family history center or they people they call to head addiction recovery. I think they get little name tags.

I can confirm that ARP missionaries do get tags. DW and I have a set of them from when we were called.

[nibbler]

Based on that, my guess is that the bulk of the 30K service missions are the couple that stays local to staff come calling. Not people that serve somewhere else that focus on stuff like what Mormon Helping Hands would do.

[oliblish]

I have no idea what counts as a service mission.

I believe many of the service missionaries are basically church employees that don't get paid.