One of my countdown timers will soon expire

[SteveO]

8 minutes ago, Atheist Mormon said:

It is the case SteveO, you just don't want to acknowledge. I mean who would want to accept Jesus or God in their lives when they have been inert all their lives long, not only that,  thousands years long......Just No-Show......

Very cynical and depressing outlook.  But whatever makes you happy in life.  Don't wish to derail the thread too much further.

[Atheist Mormon]

2 hours ago, SteveO said:

Very cynical and depressing outlook.  But whatever makes you happy in life.  Don't wish to derail the thread too much further.

Not at all......I find nothing of this reality depressing. I apologize if this looks to you as derailing. Most of learning experiences are depressing. Especially those that stay inert and never answer because they are inanimate objects of imaginations. 

[Scott Lloyd]

6 hours ago, Rain said:

My son's friend was called to the Sofia Bulgaria mission. Because of a number of things happening he has now served in 3 missions and several countries.  His dad came from Lebanon and knows Arabic.

I'm not sure which country or mission the friend was in at the time,  but he was at some point teaching a man who knew Arabic. The missionary was trying to learn it,  but things were slow going.  Anyway, with permission, he has taught this man at least once, sitting in the room with a computer and this man with his dad skyping them and translating for them.

My son in Sweden has taught a number of Persian immigrants and refugees and in the process has picked up some of the language.

[Scott Lloyd]

6 hours ago, Atheist Mormon said:

Church is not going down with a Bang, it is going down with a whimper.........I don't know which one is worse......

You're delusional.

[Scott Lloyd]

13 hours ago, cinepro said:

Just so everyone is clear, Mike never said the number would go "back down to about 58,500".  That is entirely Scott's creation. When Scott requested a number, Mike specifically said "I don't know how far it would fall." 

You're not saying anything here I didn't already say in my opening post.

I quoted him directly and then explained why I thought his statement would not be meaningful unless he meant to convey that he thought the number would go back down to what it was in 2012, when the age changes were announced. The number was already falling from the peak of the surge; that was foregone. That's what happens when there's a surge; it is followed by a subsiding of the surge. Everyone already knew the number would drop back down until a sustainable level was reached. What was in question was whether the number would fall back down to what it had been before the changes were announced.
In an effort to give some meaning to MIke's prediction, I assumed what he meant was that in two or three years, any gains would be erased and the number would be back down to the pre-surge level. When I asked him to clarify, he was vague and evasive. In the past two years, he has had ample opportunity to clarify his meaning. He has even been on this board a time or two since that thread. In one instance it was to deride me for starting a time clock on his prediction. Yet he didn't undertake, on that occasion, to contradict my assumption about what he meant by his initial statement. I think that, in its way, is telling.

Quote

 

Scott should be embarrassed for bringing this back up as if Mike made the prediction.

 

No, I'm not embarrassed about that, nor do I have reason to be.
 

Quote

 

As Peppermint Patty pointed out, it is impossible to compare the pre-age-change numbers with the post-age-change without separating the numbers of Elders and Sister missionaries. 

 

No it's not. Nobody has specified gender. Women were welcome to serve as missionaries long before the changes, as they were welcome afterward.

Quote

While the shift in age for the Elders was no doubt incrementally helpful, the change for the sisters was monumental.  That is a graph that would no doubt be extremely illuminating about the long-term effects of the change.

Assuming arguendo that your supposition is correct that an overwhelming portion of the increase in missionaries constitutes female missionaries (a thing I don't concede), why is that an issue? Apparently you place lesser value on female missionaries than on male ones, an attitude that strikes me as sexist and one that I reject out of hand. Everything I experienced as a missionary in my young adulthood, and everything i have observed since then feeds my impression that sister missionaries are at least as valuable, capable and serviceable in the work as are the elders.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Atheist Mormon]

16 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

You're delusional.

Of course I am.....

I wished for a Range Rover I had it...Later I wanted it to trade for a Ford F150 truck I did....Then I wanted an spacious townhouse in a large city, I had it....Then I wanted it a place in Park City with a SUV, I had it.....I wanted to fly Europe anytime I wanted...next thing I know I could.... None of these things came with prayers, The delusions are associated with supernatural..What I have is real...... 

People are not going to buy what they cannot get what they pay for..... Everything I acquired I worked for it...None of it came with wishful thinking or prayers.

I hope I didn't hurt your feelings.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Atheist Mormon

[Scott Lloyd]

11 hours ago, JAHS said:

Actually that number is at year end of 2015 as stated in the May 2016 conference report
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2016/05/saturday-afternoon-session/statistical-report-2015?lang=eng

 

The two reports (the one you cite here and the "Mormon Newsroom" page I linked to) are not altogether consistent. What threw me off is the "Mormon Newsroom" page gives an up-to-date number of currently operating temples at 155; your source gives it as 149, the number of temples at the end of 2015. Since then, the Provo City Center Temple, the 150th operating temple, has been dedicated, as have subsequent temples. Because the figure on temples was up to date, I assumed -- incorrectly, as it turns out -- that the other figures on the Mormon Newsroom web page were up to date as well.

What appears to have happened is that Church Public Affairs has updated the number of temples but is still using figures that are more than a year old for the other things that are reported on that web page. Maybe they are updating it piecemeal.

I'll have to try to find out from another source how many missionaries there are right now. I'm quite confident, though, that it has not descended to anywhere near what it was in October 2012. In fact, in a regional conference later in 2016, a General Authority gave a more recent figure for number of missionaries serving, and it was still in the mid 70,000 range. If, as is indicated on the Mormon Newsroom page, seasonal fluctuations are expected from now on, the number is as apt to go up as it is to go down.

Quote

We will need to wait until April Conference to get the 2016 numbers.

I'm hoping we won't have to wait that long. Mormon Newsroom had 2015 figures very early in 2016 and months before those figures were announced at April general conference.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

46 minutes ago, Atheist Mormon said:

Of course I am.....

I wished for a Range Rover I had it...Later I wanted it to trade for a Ford F150 truck I did....Then I wanted an spacious townhouse in a large city, I had it....Then I wanted it a place in Park City with a SUV, I had it.....I wanted to fly Europe anytime I wanted...next thing I know I could.... None of these things came with prayers, The delusions are associated with supernatural..What I have is real...... 

People are not going to buy what they cannot get what they pay for..... Everything I acquired I worked for it...None of it came with wishful thinking or prayers.

I hope I didn't hurt your feelings.

You are blathering. And derailing the thread.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

22 hours ago, Peppermint Patty said:

Also, I've heard although I don't know how to verify that the majority of the increase in numbers is from Sister Missionaries.  I would love to see if anyone has the information about how many Sisters are currently serving.

I've certainly seen a cultural shift in the last few years about encouraging Sisters to serve. My daughter is getting that "encouragement" right now. When I was growing up, nobody once asked me if I was ever going to serve a mission. It's completely different now with our young women.

 

If there has been such a "cultural shift," I believe it is due, more than anything else, to the fact that the change in age eligibility has now made it more convenient than ever for young women to serve missions since they don't have to wait as long to do it. A corollary to that factor is that, since they can now serve missions earlier in life, more of them are apt to do so before marriage precludes that possibility. Also, more of them are apt to consider it, since they can now go on missions at age 19 and, when they return home, still have many years left to be within a prime age range for marriage.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[JAHS]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Also, more of them are apt to consider it, since they can now go on missions at age 18...

19, but that doesn't change your point.

 

[stemelbow]

21 hours ago, cinepro said:

I'm just eyeballing it, but what's interesting is that if you continue the graph from the growth rate in the 1990s, before the dip in 2001, it looks like it would grow to around 75,000.

 

 

http://roundelmike.com/2015/04/lds-mormon-church-statistics-2015/

 

If you go by percentages we're far below the level we should see that we saw in the 90s--that is as a percentage verses the worldwide membership, we had more missionaries back then then we do now.  So we have a ways to go to get back to our 90s hey day.  If you factor in by percentage how many are young women going?  Well, we have far fewer young men going on missions by percent then we did back then. 

Edited January 9, 2017 by stemelbow

[stemelbow]

15 hours ago, cinepro said:

Just so everyone is clear, Mike never said the number would go "back down to about 58,500".  That is entirely Scott's creation. 

When Scott requested a number, Mike specifically said "I don't know how far it would fall."  Scott should be embarrassed for bringing this back up as if Mike made the prediction.

 

As Peppermint Patty pointed out, it is impossible to compare the pre-age-change numbers with the post-age-change without separating the numbers of Elders and Sister missionaries.  While the shift in age for the Elders was no doubt incrementally helpful, the change for the sisters was monumental.  That is a graph that would no doubt be extremely illuminating about the long-term effects of the change.

No doubt in terms of Scott's clocks, if this is the first one:

Scott:  0

Mike: 1

I honestly didn't think Scott would have brought this back up seeing as we went back over this some time this past year.  Ah well.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/67003-missionary-number-has-declined/#comment-1209590103

The number seems to have declined since that time too:

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/68085-update-on-missionaries/#comment-1209660284

Consider (if you're as geeky as me about this stuff):

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The year I came home from my mission (1997) it was reported we had 56,531 missionaries.  Which was .56% of the Church.  Today we have under 72,000 (put it at 71,990 for evaluation purposes).  Which puts us at .47% of the Church.  So before the raising the bar we had more missionaries per member than we have today.  We also had more than twice the growth rate back then.  As it was we had more missionaries for the Church in '97 then we did in 2014 when the surge was at its peak (1997=.56% of the Church were missionaries; 2014=.55% of the Church were missionaries).  It was also said yesterday, by Elder Hallstrom that the percent of young women serving missions has doubled since 2012 (when we were down to 58,000 missionaries).  If the percent of young women serving missions had remained constant or somewhat constant from 1997 to 2012, then what we may have is far less young men serving missions now, percentage-wise in particular.   

For instance, if 7% of the missionaries were young women in 1997 or 2012, that'd mean 14% of the missionaries are young women today.  14% of the 71,990 is 10,078.  7% of the 58,000 is 4,060.  Or if we consider 1997, 3,957.  Let's do this, then.  non young women serving in 1997 could have been 52,574 (.52% of Church population)  Today non young women missionaries might be 61,912 (.39% of the Church population).  The Raising the Bar campaign likely is the biggest factor here, as it is many LDS young males are being excluded from missionary service because of it.  That was 2001, as I see it.  So in 2003, the first year that saw a pretty significant decline in missionaries, considering the same scenario as above, we'd see .43% of the Church as non young women serving missions.  Elder Hallstrom did not report what the percentage is today, only that it is twice as much as it ever has been.  And sadly, in my searches I'm not finding anything reporting the number of young women missionaries.  Side note:  He also indicated young men serving missions is a priesthood obligation, and there's no such obligation for young women. 

 

[stemelbow]

I'm curious how much lower we will see it drop.  From the reported number in April's conference to Elder Hallstrom's claim of less than 72,000 in September we had a 3 percent drop in missionaries serving.  If in the time from September to the end of the year we had another 3 percent drop we might be down below 70,000 at this point.  But we won't know that until April's numbers come out unless someone early reports or lets it slip. 

 

Scott's claim on this:

Quote

The number was at about 58,000 when the age changes were announced in 2012. The change in age started a surge that topped out at nearly 90,000 and began to diminish as the surge worked through the pipeline. Sources tell me it has bottomed out at 75,000 -- still well above the 58,000 of 20012 -- and is now rising again. One online observer (quoted in a SL Trib blog post) predicted that if past growth opatterns hold true, the number will be back up in the eighthy-thousands within the next year or two. 

  Scott should have put a clock on his source (or rather sources). 

That was 1 year ago and did doesn't look like we were rising again, at that point, but declining.  Also, you will note, we should see the number go over 80,000 again within a year or two.  That was nearly 1 year ago.  So I guess we'll see. 

Edited January 9, 2017 by stemelbow

[stemelbow]

I hate to beat this dead horse but I'll try and put this simply.

At the time of Mike's post, the number of missionaries reported at the end of 2014 was:  85,147

Officially our latest reported number was: 74,079 (that was from one year ago)

But unofficially Elder Hallstrom reported under 72,000 in September.

So within two or three years from the time Mike said what he said, the number had dropped.  He was unequivocally correct.  Is he a prophet?  no.  He used common sense.  I don't think he meant what he said to be anything other than a conclusion based on common sense anyway.  BTW I don't even know Mike aside from seeing him pop up on different online locations.  I just thought we should settle this. 

Edited January 9, 2017 by stemelbow

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, JAHS said:

19, but that doesn't change your point.

 

Yes. I fully intended to say 19, and I'm puzzled as to why it came out 18.

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

If you go by percentages we're far below the level we should see that we saw in the 90s--that is as a percentage verses the worldwide membership, we had more missionaries back then then we do now.  So we have a ways to go to get back to our 90s hey day.  If you factor in by percentage how many are young women going?  Well, we have far fewer young men going on missions by percent then we did back then. 

Why do you undervalue young women as a percentage of the whole? That strikes me as sexist.

 

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

I hate to beat this dead horse but I'll try and put this simply.

At the time of Mike's post, the number of missionaries reported at the end of 2014 was:  85,147

Officially our latest reported number was: 74,079 (that was from one year ago)

But unofficially Elder Hallstrom reported under 72,000 in September.

So within two or three years from the time Mike said what he said, the number had dropped.  He was unequivocally correct.  Is he a prophet?  no.  He used common sense.  I don't think he meant what he said to be anything other than a conclusion based on common sense anyway.  BTW I don't even know Mike aside from seeing him pop up on different online locations.  I just thought we should settle this. 

MIke said it would fall. When I asked him what he meant by that, if he meant that the gains that came after the age changes were announced would be erased within two or three years,  he was non-committal. When I said that in the absence of clarification from him I was going to assume that's what he meant, he did not bother to contradict me. That seems telling.

It would have been quite unremarkable to say that the numbers would be less than they were at the time he made the prediction, because the surge was in the process of subsiding, and it was already expected to subside further before reaching a sustainable level. Are you saying Mike doesn't know the meaning of "surge"?

The Church has been saying for over a year now that we can expect seasonal fluctuations, so a variance by a couple thousand or so is not remarkable. The next reported number may well be back up to 74,000 or more. But even if it's still at 72,000, that's quite a bit more than the 58,500 of October 2012.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[stemelbow]

11 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Why do you undervalue young women as a percentage of the whole? That strikes me as sexist.

 

What?  I do not.  Not even a little. 

[stemelbow]

4 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

MIke said it would fall. When I asked him what he meant by that, if he meant that the gains that came after the age changes were announced would be erased within two or three years,  he was non-committal. When I said that in the absence of clarification from him I was going to assume that's what he meant, he did not bother to contradict me. That seems telling.

It would have been quite unremarkable to say that the numbers would be less than they were at the time he made the prediction, because the surge was in the process of subsiding, and it was already expected to subside further before reaching a sustainable level. Are you saying Mike doesn't know the meaning of "surge"?

The Church has been saying for over a year now that we can expect seasonal fluctuations, so a variance by a couple thousand or so is not remarkable. The next reported number may well be back up to 74,000 or more.

I don't get what you want to come of this, Scott.  Mike suggested it would fall from the number of missionaries that were out 2 years ago. It has.  He was correct in any way you can measure it.  Are you trying to say he was wrong? 

It's as black and white as it can get, Scott.  Two years ago he said the number would fall.  It did. 

If we had 74,000 or more at the end of 2016 I'd be as happy as anyone.  I'm curious what sources suggested the bottoming out would be at 75,000?  We were lower than that at the end of 2015 and as Elder Hallstrom suggested under 72,000 in September.  Your sources were wrong, of course.  Just curious if they were credible sources and if so, what went wrong? 

 

[Scott Lloyd]

27 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

What?  I do not.  Not even a little. 

Well, you seem to be making an issue out of your supposition that the increase in missionaries mostly consists of women. I say, so what if it does? Young women are just as capable, valuable and serviceable in the work as young men. Your making an issue out of it seems to imply you do not agree.

[Scott Lloyd]

43 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I don't get what you want to come of this, Scott. 

I've already laid out what I want to come of it. I don't see a need to pursue it further beyond what I have stated in the OP.

If Mike meant that he thought that within two or three years, all the gains that came in missionary numbers after 2012 would be erased (and I have no good reason to think he meant otherwise) it has turned out he is wrong, as there are many thousands more today than there were in 2012. That's the long and short of what I am saying.

Why would he have suggested the Church would have to do other things to sustain the growth, such as redefining missionary work to incorporate more Church service missions, or serving from home via the Internet, unless he was predicting the net gains that came from the age changes would not be sustained?

 

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Gray]

51 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

MIke said it would fall. When I asked him what he meant by that, if he meant that the gains that came after the age changes were announced would be erased within two or three years,  he was non-committal. When I said that in the absence of clarification from him I was going to assume that's what he meant, he did not bother to contradict me. That seems telling.

 

What it tells me is that Mike didn't care enough about it to follow up with you, but you really want him to have made a certain prediction, so much so that you're making it for him in his absence. There are many anti-Mormons who take this same approach with the words of church leaders. 

[Scott Lloyd]

7 minutes ago, Gray said:

What it tells me is that Mike didn't care enough about it to follow up with you, but you really want him to have made a certain prediction, so much so that you're making it for him in his absence. There are many anti-Mormons who take this same approach with the words of church leaders. 

But Mike did follow-up -- to deride me for starting the countdown clock. If I were making an erroneous assumption about his meaning, he could easily have clarified it then. He didn't. Or he could have come back on the board at any time over the past two years to give the clarification.

Are you saying he cared enough to come back on the board to deride me but he didn't care enough to ensure his meaning was clear to me and to others here?

 

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[JulieM]

6 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

But Mike did follow-up -- to deride me for starting the countdown clock. If I were making an erroneous assumption about his meaning, he could easily have clarified it then. He didn't. Or he could have come back on the board at any time over the past two years to give the clarification.

Are you saying he cared enough to come back on the board to deride me but he didn't care enough to ensure his meaning was clear to me and to others here?

 

You are simply making a fool of yourself. Scott, for even bringing this up again or pursuing it.

And, you did not respond to my CFR.  Am I then to assume you have no reference where Mike made the exact prediction you are attributing to him?

[Scott Lloyd]

4 minutes ago, JulieM said:

You are simply making a fool of yourself. Scott, for even bringing this up again or pursuing it.

And, you did not respond to my CFR.  Am I then to assume you have no reference where Mike made the exact prediction you are attributing to him?

I won't be responding to your posts here.

When there is a pile-on with people asking the same questions, I tend to select one or more representatives to respond to and ignore the rest -- particularly the more abusive ones.