Church Measures and treands

[bluebell]

1 minute ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree that it may not be working, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a huge part of the original intent. I agree with Stem that the primary reason for changing the ages was for YSA retention. So perhaps that effort illustrates a failure.

President Monson mentioned that the change had already happen in foreign areas.  Do we have any information on whether or not they did it in other countries because of YSA retention?

[stemelbow]

5 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I've not calculated that but it's easy to figure out in a spreadsheet. My data's in an Excel spreadsheet at T&S. You just take the prior year and the current year and get the difference. That's the growth in absolute numbers. Then you subtract baptisms of members or record and converts and see what's left. I don't have time to do it now but it's a trivial calculation.

I did that.  That's what my chart titled Death, Excommunicated, Names Removed is. 

5 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Be aware that will include those who were converted and fell away. (The incentives to get their names off the records are actually pretty high compared to when I was a kid) It fluctuates a fair bit. It has been up the past few years except for 2012. I think it's around 65,000 or thereabouts. Slightly down from prior years. While that includes people who leave who were born in the church as well as converts, it comes out to around ¼ of converts. That may sound high but a retention of around 75% is remarkably good honestly. It lines up more or less to what surveys give as long term retention as well. (A little higher)

I might do a post on that later in the week.

It's been over 100,000 for the past few years.  Its between 1/3 and 1/2 of converts.  Here's the table if you don't like the chart:

Year	Converts	Total Mem	DENr
1997	317,798	10,070,524	17064
1998	299,134	10,354,241	92246
1999	306,171	10,752,986	-8456
2000	273,973	11,068,861	39548
2001	292,612	11,394,522	36473
2002	283,138	11,721,548	37244
2003	242,923	11,985,254	78674
2004	241,239	12,275,822	49541
2005	243,108	12,560,869	51211
2006	272,845	12,868,606	59114
2007	279,218	13,193,999	47523
2008	265,593	13,508,509	74585
2009	280,106	13,824,854	83483
2010	272,814	14,131,467	86729
2011	281,312	14,441,346	91350
2012	272,330	14,782,473	53476
2013	282,945	15,082,028	98876
2014	296,803	15,372,337	122903
2015	257,402	15,634,199	110,090
2016	240,131	15,882,417	101,159

 

[rockpond]

28 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I guess it depends upon what you mean by significant. It arguably had no change for a while or even a negative change. Then by 2006 you have rates jumping up to between 5 and 5.3 until 2011. That's roughly a 10-15% improvement ignoring other effects. So I wouldn't say it didn't change. A 10% change is a pretty significant impact IMO.

I didn't look at that, but you're right it's worth looking at. I just assumed that wasn't a relationship. But given converts in absolute terms was relatively flat for a while it's not surprising. We've not had geometric growth for quite some time. At least since the late 70's. 

I don't consider it significant because it is within the natural variability of the converts per missionary figures.  And, the "increase" you are citing between 2006 and 2011 is just a return to the levels we had in the late 90's.  That makes it tough to attribute to the "raising the bar" initiative.  Especially since the trend of converts per member didn't have any kind of similar uptick.

[rongo]

9 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree that it may not be working, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a huge part of the original intent. I agree with Stem that the primary reason for changing the ages was for YSA retention. So perhaps that effort illustrates a failure.

Oh, I agree. And for some youth, early missions is very important. I have a graduating senior in my ward right now whom I want to get on his mission ASAP (he turns 18 in July). His family cannot afford a mission at all, and preparing for our February audit, I needed to clear up a $10,000 surplus in the ward mission account. In calling Salt Lake, it is not an error and is at our disposal (two missionaries prior to my call as bishop came home after a few months, but both had pre-paid quite a bit, and it's still there). This means that this boy is cleared for take-off! When I told him mother, she burst into tears (his father is opposed to his mission, but not having to pay for most of it will go far towards making it okay with him). I didn't tell her the entire thing is taken care of; I told her that there are enough donations from members to where he will be able to go. Could the family try to pay whatever it can --- $50 or $100 a month, or whatever? And if it won't be able to on a given month, it is taken care of. That way, the family is still contributing and sacrificing a little. 

This boy is a good kid, but if he doesn't go right out of high school, he won't go, and it will have ripple-effect repercussions for his and his family's future life. 

My son will likely go to a year of school before his mission. We're looking for our best offer as far as full-ride scholarships. We would love him to go to BYU, but are pretty sure that even better offers will come from elsewhere. But, my son is going to go on a mission, whether he leaves right after his 18th birthday (right after graduation), or after he has a year of school under his belt.

My parents were both in the mission office in Warsaw and recently came home. They said that it is a night-and-day difference between the 18 year old missionaries and those who waited a year or more. They say that the older missionaries do much better, in their experience. 

[stemelbow]

I'd also like to point out to anyone interested.  See the Children of Record chart. 

In 2008 there was a high, as a percentage of a whole ( I had a child born and blessed that year), but it has fairly steadily declined since the year.  This past year was a pretty low percentage (only 2001 in the past 20 has been as low).  I'm starting to wonder if this measure, going forward, will be a good indicator of retention world wide.  Could it be that we're losing young families at a faster rate than before? 

[rongo]

4 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I'd also like to point out to anyone interested.  See the Children of Record chart. 

In 2008 there was a high, as a percentage of a whole ( I had a child born and blessed that year), but it has fairly steadily declined since the year.  This past year was a pretty low percentage (only 2001 in the past 20 has been as low).  I'm starting to wonder if this measure, going forward, will be a good indicator of retention world wide.  Could it be that we're losing young families at a faster rate than before? 

Or falling birth rate over the last ten years.

[HappyJackWagon]

5 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I'd also like to point out to anyone interested.  See the Children of Record chart. 

In 2008 there was a high, as a percentage of a whole ( I had a child born and blessed that year), but it has fairly steadily declined since the year.  This past year was a pretty low percentage (only 2001 in the past 20 has been as low).  I'm starting to wonder if this measure, going forward, will be a good indicator of retention world wide.  Could it be that we're losing young families at a faster rate than before? 

Interesting possibility. Of course it will take number for coming years to determine if this is a trend or an outlier.

 

[HappyJackWagon]

1 minute ago, rongo said:

Or falling birth rate over the last ten years.

That's true, but hasn't the birthrate been decreasing for decades while the church's children of record statistic continually increases?

[rockpond]

8 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I'd also like to point out to anyone interested.  See the Children of Record chart. 

In 2008 there was a high, as a percentage of a whole ( I had a child born and blessed that year), but it has fairly steadily declined since the year.  This past year was a pretty low percentage (only 2001 in the past 20 has been as low).  I'm starting to wonder if this measure, going forward, will be a good indicator of retention world wide.  Could it be that we're losing young families at a faster rate than before? 

I think the new CoR is an indicator of retention of young families, retention of young single adults, and birth rate.  Obviously confounded but interesting to consider.

[rongo]

Just now, HappyJackWagon said:

That's true, but hasn't the birthrate been decreasing for decades while the church's children of record statistic continually increases?

All I know is that, according to Elder Oaks from 2009 (Phoenix area bishops and stake presidents meeting), LDS families where either parent served a mission have an average of 3.7 children. LDS families where neither parent served a mission have an average of 1.2 children (below the U.S. birthrate). His point then was that not serving a mission appears to influence many other facets of Church strength. 

Since it is actually less-stringent to serve a mission now, and there is a lot of institutional peer pressure to serve missions, I'm not sure if the mere fact of serving a mission today would have as strong of an effect on birthrate any more. And, maybe that was an example of correlation not proving causation, anyway . . .  

[clarkgoble]

49 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I did that.  That's what my chart titled Death, Excommunicated, Names Removed is. 

It's been over 100,000 for the past few years.  Its between 1/3 and 1/2 of converts.  Here's the table if you don't like the chart:

Whoops. Completely right. That'll teach me to do a quick calculation when the pollen is this high. Allergy kingdom. I forgot to include the baptisms of children which threw my numbers. I'll hold off saying much until my allergies aren't killing my thinking.

Edited April 3, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Calm]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

President Monson mentioned that the change had already happen in foreign areas.  Do we have any information on whether or not they did it in other countries because of YSA retention?

It was done in at least some of the countries because of requirements for military service and schooling (some countries as I understand it take a break in schooling as opting out completely and getting back in is hard, if not impossible).

[Calm]

"Are we dying at a faster rate"

Probably not, but being able to find out whether someone inactive has died is much easier these days, so we likely have less names being kept on the books until they time out (105 years from birth iirc).

---

I don't think it would be a bad idea to raise the age again for males, but allow for exceptions to be made for those who can demonstrate a need and readiness.  I hope if the age is raised that they leave the women's alone.  Having two parents that have gone on missions is a good thing these days, young women need examples of a variety of meaningful roles in the Church and I suspect children will see greater family bonds to the Church if both parents are sharing mission stories.  The sharing of mission stories themselves will likely go up just because back and forth comparison tends to increase discussion 'on my mission this happened; well, on my mission this happened...'.  Plus with the ongoing delay of marriage, more women will likely continue to go, but then being older when they get back be the ones less likely to get married (I believe it is still pretty consistent that men marry women younger than they are, which means men will be waiting until 25 or older to get married to return missionaries or marrying non missionaries; looking at stats, two years difference is consistent even at older ages) when there is a greater benefit for having two missionary parents.

[rockpond]

15 minutes ago, Calm said:

It was done in at least some of the countries because of requirements for military service and schooling (some countries as I understand it take a break in schooling as opting out completely and getting back in is hard, if not impossible).

My parents were serving a mission in England when the age change was announced.  They said it really helped the British youth serve missions with the timing of their educational requirements there.

I feel like there were a number of good reasons to allow youth to begin missions earlier.  Retention being the major one here in the US.

[rongo]

21 minutes ago, Calm said:

It was done in at least some of the countries because of requirements for military service and schooling (some countries as I understand it take a break in schooling as opting out completely and getting back in is hard, if not impossible).

One of my companions was 26 and had his degree in economics already. He kept getting contacted by the German military about his Wehrpflicht (mandatory military or hospital service [conscientious objector] ). "We know where you are, and we know how much longer you have. And you aren't getting out of this."  

[Robert F. Smith]

14 hours ago, stemelbow said:

.................................................................

Thanks. 

Church Charts 2016_1.pdf

Interesting trend lines, and I like the way you have smoothed them.  However, could we please have longer trend lines, going back long before 1997?  I think that might help our sense of perspective, and perhaps allay the tendency to linear thinking.

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

.....................................

............................. Plus with the ongoing delay of marriage, more women will likely continue to go, but then being older when they get back be the ones less likely to get married (I believe it is still pretty consistent that men marry women younger than they are, which means men will be waiting until 25 or older to get married to return missionaries or marrying non missionaries; looking at stats, two years difference is consistent even at older ages) when there is a greater benefit for having two missionary parents.

This is a sad tendency, if true.  My observation is that female returned missionaries make the best wives.  They are tough and resilient, unlikely to whine when the going gets rough.  Men don't need women who complain and are unable to pull their own weight.  However, the same applies to the men.

[Calm]

It is possible that LDS men are looking for returned missionaries as wives.  I have no clue about that.  Taking Utah as an estimate of LDS behaviour, average age for men to get married is around 26 and 24 for women (which is one year higher than the stat I found earlier that was older).  If it shifts back to where women are leaving on missions just as most of the guys are getting home, will that mean that female return missionaries are going to be waiting the same amount of time and thus have two years added to their age of when they are ready to say I do?  If men wait for 6 years on average after getting home and women 3 nowadays, then that has men getting married at 27if age goes back up, which means their wives are 25, but RMs will be 26...obviously since RM data may be very different from state data, this is guessing, but I think given the consistent two year younger age for women at marriage being so consistent over time and area, there should be caution not to set up RM females with an age handicap.

The older age for women never made much sense for maturity reasons since women mature faster than men.  It made sense to discourage women from going on missions.  It makes no sense now that there appears no problem with women going on missions besides tradition in my view save to make typical male missionaries less appealing to the female missionaries due to being younger and women generally dating same age or older and marrying two years older on average.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Calm

[Stargazer]

18 hours ago, stemelbow said:

I forgot an important measure.  See new attached. 

Converts per missionary is been on the decline as well.  It seems our missionary program is less effective than it used to be.  TIme to change things up? 

 

Convert Per missionary 2016.pdf

Maybe we should start sending heads of families out, like we used to.  You up for that?

[why me]

18 hours ago, stemelbow said:

I guess so.  Or we aren't able to adapt to the evolving world fast enough.  it might be that some day we'll make some drastic changes, kind of like the priesthood ban lifting and see some major growth like we did in the 70s, 80s and 90s.  I think the issue here is more about the Church not being able to keep up with the world at large, as if tradition and culture is weighing us down. 

There is certainly a clash of cultrues involved throughout europe and US. The lds church is holding firm on its tradional social issues. And this has an effect. Not to mention its stance on porn, chasity, tithing etc. All this is clashing with western culture at the moment.

[why me]

18 hours ago, stemelbow said:

I forgot an important measure.  See new attached. 

Converts per missionary is been on the decline as well.  It seems our missionary program is less effective than it used to be.  TIme to change things up? 

 

Convert Per missionary 2016.pdf

This is true. But the influence of the internet has had an impact with all the negative and critical information about the lds church. Anyone searching the internet would certainly get a shake up.

[churchistrue]

This topic is interesting to me, just because I like to play with data in Excel.  Here are some charts I put up.  http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/lds-membership-statistics-report-2017/

A few interesting things about this year to me.

1. The converts being down and lowest since 1987.  That seems like a big deal.  Especially lower number of converts per missionary.

2. The total resignations appear to be down from the last two years, but there's so much noise in that "plug" category, I'm not sure it's identifiable as a real trend.

3. The chart I did on tithing compared to total members is interesting, showing the heavy financial burden of the international church.

 

 
 

[stemelbow]

38 minutes ago, churchistrue said:

This topic is interesting to me, just because I like to play with data in Excel.  Here are some charts I put up.  http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/lds-membership-statistics-report-2017/

A few interesting things about this year to me.

1. The converts being down and lowest since 1987.  That seems like a big deal.  Especially lower number of converts per missionary.

2. The total resignations appear to be down from the last two years, but there's so much noise in that "plug" category, I'm not sure it's identifiable as a real trend.

3. The chart I did on tithing compared to total members is interesting, showing the heavy financial burden of the international church.

 

 
 

Thanks.  There are some interesting stories in those charts for sure.  The resignation one was interesting.  I note the "heavily estimated and smoothed" condition of it, but what could it be that has 2014 so astronomically high compared to surrounding years?  That's over one hundred percent more than this past year.  2015 was high too.  I question it mostly because the difference between 2014 and 16 in Death, Ex'd, and names removed was only 20,000.  It'd be odd if that whole difference was people resigning.  It could have been a high year for deaths as well.  The other end of this is, perhaps ordain women and gay objections to the Church's stances has more of an impact then we've been told. 

Your activity estimates are interesting too.  Thanks for your effort. 

[churchistrue]

39 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

Thanks.  There are some interesting stories in those charts for sure.  The resignation one was interesting.  I note the "heavily estimated and smoothed" condition of it, but what could it be that has 2014 so astronomically high compared to surrounding years?  That's over one hundred percent more than this past year.  2015 was high too.  I question it mostly because the difference between 2014 and 16 in Death, Ex'd, and names removed was only 20,000.  It'd be odd if that whole difference was people resigning.  It could have been a high year for deaths as well.  The other end of this is, perhaps ordain women and gay objections to the Church's stances has more of an impact then we've been told. 

Your activity estimates are interesting too.  Thanks for your effort. 

I really have little confidence in that resignations number.  Something is definitely happening in the data, as I explain in the text above that chart.  It also fits the narrative that Exmos are claiming that there are a ton of resignations recently.  I think a big factor in that "plug" category is unbaptized children of record that turn age 9.  I think deaths are increasing, as the active member base in the US gradually ages, ie if child rate goes down, death rate naturally goes up because you have a smaller number of babies in the denominator.  But bigger than that is the unbaptized inactive kids.  For example, a young family in Chile is baptized in 2012.  They have two kids age 4 and 2.  In 2011, the parents count as baptisms, ie +2 in converts.  The children count as children of record, ie +2 in children of record.  For total of +4 in church membership.  Then over the next five years, the family goes in active, moves, moves again, and become lost in the system.  The parents stay on the books until they turn age 110.  But in 2016, the oldest child turns 9 and comes off the books.  This appears as -1 in total numbers.  And +1 in the "plug" category.  I believe that is a significant aspect of the plug that is growing more than deaths.  I modeled this pretty aggressively, and my resignation numbers came in at 22K, 41K,34K,20K.  The Exmo's don't like it because they want to believe that number is up around 100K.  I don't think that's possible.  But the real number for average of those four years is probably low of 20K and high of 50K.  It's also very possible there could be some various adjustments the church is making, which completely throws all this out the window.  ie who knows.  Maybe they're cleaning up one big country at a time, and each year they do a one time true up for that country, and that's what's causing that big number.

 

[rockpond]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Interesting trend lines, and I like the way you have smoothed them.  However, could we please have longer trend lines, going back long before 1997?  I think that might help our sense of perspective, and perhaps allay the tendency to linear thinking.

I can't get the image of my graph to embed.  Here's a link.

The graph is the church growth rate going back to 1974.  I can't explain the 1989-1990 spike.  The new CoR + convert figures by the church do not add up to the total membership number.  There were some inexplicable issues with the data reported in gen con through the 90's.

If there is another one that you'd like to see with data going back to the 1970's, let me know.

Edited April 4, 2017 by rockpond