LDS Church Growth Slowest Since 1857

The growth rate of membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been steadily declining for about 20 years, around the explosion of the popularity of the internet. But this year - I'm assuming COVID's played a big part - the decline in growth has been steep.

- Lowest growth rate since 1857. A 0.6% growth rate hasn't been seen since the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

- Lowest growth rate compared to world population increase since 1857. First time the church's growth rate did not out-pace the world population growth.

- Lowest total convert baptisms since 1973. Convert baptisms were a little more than half of what they were in 2019.

- Lowest total membership increase since 1973.

- Lowest child of record since 1993. A little more than half of the child of record count from 2012.

It's also the second year in a row the numbers add up to only 0.56% who died or had their names removed. The Church never releases these numbers. I calculate it from all the other numbers they provide. If you go off the death rate of the world and assumed the same death rate within the church, the dead would be around 130,000 alone, and who knows how many actually have their names removed each year?

==First Presidency==

(1)  1984-(SWK)-Russell M. Nelson - 9/9/1924 - 96

(2)  1984-(SWK)-Dallin H. Oaks - 8/12/1932 - 88

(5)  1995-(GBH)-Henry B. Eyring - 5/31/1933 - 87

==Quorum of the Twelve Apostles==

(3)  1985-(SWK)-M. Russell Ballard - 10/8/1928 - 92

(4)  1994-(HWH)-Jeffrey R. Holland - 12/3/1940 - 80

(6)  2004-(GBH)-Dieter F. Uchtdorf - 11/6/1940 - 80

(7)  2004-(GBH)-David A. Bednar - 6/15/1952 - 68

(8)  2007-(GBH)-Quentin L. Cook - 9/8/1940 - 80

(9)  2008-(TSM)-D. Todd Christofferson - 1/24/1945 - 76

(10) 2009-(TSM)-Neil L. Andersen - 8/9/1951 - 69

(11) 2015-(TSM)-Ronald A. Rasband - 2/6/1951 - 70

(12) 2015-(TSM)-Gary E. Stevenson - 8/5/1955 - 65

(13) 2015-(TSM)-Dale G. Renlund - 11/1/1952 - 68

(14) 2018-(RMN)-Gerrit W. Gong - 12/23/1953 - 67

(15) 2018-(RMN)-Ulisses Soares - 10/2/1958 - 62

LDS Church Growth 2015

Interesting results from the statistical report of the church. The total growth was 1.7%, the lowest rate since 1937. The total membership increase (261,862) is the smallest since 1987. It's also the first time that church has seen back-to-back years of less than 2% growth since 1946-47.

With what limited stats they read over the pulpit, one has to extract information from what they provide. For instance, I take the total membership announced, factor in the children of record and converts added, and from there can conclude how many leave the records each year, but it's unknown how many leave by request (excommunication/resignation) or death.

The problem is that the numbers reported don't add up. In 1999, the numbers would indicate that not only did no one die or resign from the church, but an additional 8000 members magically appeared.

Be that as it may, this is the second year in a row that the church lost over 100,000 members. This is less than 1% of the church population, and if we assume that one member dies for every two children of record that come each year, this would put the resignation number around 50,000. Even then 2012 had an unusually low turnover number.

The church hasn't seen any population growth from the sudden surge of missionaries after the age limits were changed. This is the third year in a row that the converts per missionary ratio is under 4.

The total church membership is growing. The ward count goes up, so there's no measured increase in inactivity either. The church is still on pace to cross the 16 million mark in worldwide membership in 2017. Another way to look at it would be that church membership has doubled since 1990, tripled since 1983.

I also found this site helpful in analyzing the numbers.

LDS Church Growth 2014

In Elder Quentin L. Cook 's talk "The Lord Is My Light," he spoke of the strength we can receive from the Christ-centered unity of our wards and branches. He also included this statement: "Some have asserted that more members are leaving the Church today and that there is more doubt and unbelief than in the past. This is simply not true. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has never been stronger."

I normally love looking at the stats of the church, but I found this statement a little curious considering the numbers that we have. Going strictly off of the statistics reported by the church, 2014 is the first year the church didn't see at least 2% growth since 1947. The church's membership as December 31, 2014, is 15,372,337, which is a 1.92% increase from last year. Any growth is good, but why the slow-down, especially with such an increase in full-time missionaries?

The numbers we are given are total membership, children of record, and converts baptized. From that, I calculated from the previous year's total membership what the number would be for deceased members/those with their names removed. Now it could be that we had an unusual amount of deaths in the church last year, but 122,903 is a large number. It represented .815% of the church's population from 2013, and that's the highest percentage in at least ten years. In fact, 2012 only saw 53,476 (.370%) that would land in the dead/names removed category.

Looking a little further back, I found the church put out some stats that just don't add up.

1997
Members - 10,070,524
Children - 75,214
Converts - 317,798

1998
Members - 10,354,241
Children - 76,829
Converts - 299,134

1999
Members - 10,752,986
Children - 84,118
Converts - 306,171

The numbers from 1997 to 1998 would suggest that 92,246 members either died or had their names removed, large number for the time. But the numbers from 1998 suggest that not only did no one die or have their names removed, but an extra 8,456 members just appear on the roles. I don't know how they were calculating their numbers then, but I don't see how total membership could have climbed almost 400,000 members in one year. I'm wondering if they had a paperwork mishap between those two years. (*glares at Church Auditing Department of 1998*)

Another curiosity is the jump in children of record from 2007 to 2008. I'd love to see if anyone's done analysis on why there was such a marked jump that year, and how it's been able to stay steady since then.

Since the church lowered the age of requirement for full-time missionaries, the number of total missionaries has spiked. The church hasn't yet figured out what to do with all those missionaries, since there haven't been more than 300,000 converts in a year since 1999.

Rate of missionaries to converts
2009 - 5.41
2010 - 5.22
2011 - 5.08
2012 - 4.62
2013 - 3.41
2014 - 3.49

Current trends show that the LDS Church will pass 16 million members sometime in 2017. There's been an emphasis over the past decade or so of making sure that converts are truly converted and that retention rates can improve. Gone are the days where there would be high baptism numbers but most of those baptized would immediately leave the church. This will ultimately make for a stronger base of membership, but I wonder what the church's plans to prevent another year where they fall below 2%.

Growth Rates of the LDS Church

I was looking at the membership stats of the church, wondering what the number might be when they announce it in this April's General Conference. The trend would suggest the number's going to be somewhere between 15,350,00-15,400,000. Then I started thinking about the percentages and here's some things I found interesting.

First, the membership number of the church is about double what it was in 1990.

Second, the growth rate of the church has fluxuated over the years. It started with 6 members in 1830 and grew to 17,881 by 1838. But after the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society and many members of leadership left, including four of the Apostles and all three of the Three Witnesses. The church dropped for a bit but recovered and grew back up.

Another spot where there was actually a decline in church membership was the 1850's, when it went from 68,429 in 1854 to 55,236 in 1857, but that was the last year church membership was lower than the year before.

The rest of the 1800's saw slow growth, when the U.S. government was hounding the church and Wilford Woodruff finally had to give the Manifesto, ending polygamy. Even with some members spinning off from there to start their own polygamous sects, the main LDS church kept increasing its numbers.

The first half of the 20th century saw growth rates anywhere between 1%-5%, but it was when David O. McKay became prophet/president that the church saw at least 3% growth every year. 1961-1963 had over 7% per year. There was a good period in the late 1970's, and the mid to late 1980's were strong periods of growth for the church. 1989 had 8.74% growth, the best single year since Brigham Young's days.

1992-1999 saw growth rates between 2.8% to 3.88%. 1999 was the last year the church had at least 3%. 2000 to present day has been in the 2's. 2013 had 2.03% growth, and when you get down to those decimals, that would make 2013 the slowest year since 1947.

Now 2013 saw an increase of 299,972 members, so could it be the size of the numbers just makes the percentages smaller?

The growth of the church is still outpacing the population of the Earth, but to put it in perspective, 21 out of every 10,000 people on Earth are LDS.

Even if the church is growing at 2% a year, the world population is growing at 1.1% per year and is slowing down, ever so slightly. In fact, somewhere around 2110 is when it's expected for the world to not see an increase in its population, and by then, there'll be over 10.8 billion people on Earth. And LDS church membership, barring some major scandal or Second Coming, should be over 40 million.