The Church is growing so fast...

[stemelbow]

Growing up (late 80s early 90s) it was really common to exclaim the Church is the fastest growing religion in the world.  Then as the years went on we started to learn that wasn't true.  So it started to dissipate.  By now it's never said, at least not from what I hear.  But not too many Sunday's ago a member of our ward said, "we have over 15 million members strong".  I thought in my head, well that's a pretty loose interpretation of the word strong, but whatever he's on a roll I ain't stopping him now.

I read this post recently and found the variation of self-identified LDS interesting.  I remember from years ago (2000) when the Mexican and Brazilian censuses revealed that the Church has far fewer people claiming the religion then what we report as membership:  http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=591&cat_id=35

Anyway,

Quote

            Australia (2016): 60,864 (41%)

• Canada (2011): 105,365 (57%)
• Finland (2009): 3,239 (71%)
• New Zealand (2013): 40,728 (36%)
• Philippines (2015): 196,303 (27%)
• Scotland (2011): 4,651 (17%)

 

The year, of course, in parentheses.  The number of members claiming the religion based on censuses.  and the percentage in parentheses is the percent of members reported on rolls that are claiming the religion.  Finland stuck out because of the high percentage but also because I have friends of there.  They told me people are leaving in droves in Finland, essentially.  So I was surprised to see such a high percentage--of course this is from 2009 and friends have reported to me for more recent years.   

What gets me is it's so country specific.  When I saw the same info for Mexico and Brazil I figured it was regional issue.  But it seems more country specific.  I'm curious if anyone knows about the Church in any of these countries and your take. 

Thank you.

[ksfisher]

36 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

Growing up (late 80s early 90s) it was really common to exclaim the Church is the fastest growing religion in the world.  Then as the years went on we started to learn that wasn't true.  So it started to dissipate.  By now it's never said, at least not from what I hear.  But not too many Sunday's ago a member of our ward said, "we have over 15 million members strong".  I thought in my head, well that's a pretty loose interpretation of the word strong, but whatever he's on a roll I ain't stopping him now.

I read this post recently and found the variation of self-identified LDS interesting.  I remember from years ago (2000) when the Mexican and Brazilian censuses revealed that the Church has far fewer people claiming the religion then what we report as membership:  http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=591&cat_id=35

Anyway,

 

The year, of course, in parentheses.  The number of members claiming the religion based on censuses.  and the percentage in parentheses is the percent of members reported on rolls that are claiming the religion.  Finland stuck out because of the high percentage but also because I have friends of there.  They told me people are leaving in droves in Finland, essentially.  So I was surprised to see such a high percentage--of course this is from 2009 and friends have reported to me for more recent years.   

What gets me is it's so country specific.  When I saw the same info for Mexico and Brazil I figured it was regional issue.  But it seems more country specific.  I'm curious if anyone knows about the Church in any of these countries and your take. 

Thank you.

It would be interesting to see how the census question was worded in each country.  Part of the variation could be explained by that.

[ksfisher]

38 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

  Finland stuck out because of the high percentage but also because I have friends of there.  They told me people are leaving in droves in Finland, essentially.  So I was surprised to see such a high percentage--of course this is from 2009 and friends have reported to me for more recent years.   
 

Is there a state church in Finland?  I served in Sweden were part of your taxes went to support the state church.  I vaguely remember that identifying as a member of another church would make you exempt from this tax. 

[Johnnie Cake]

Isn't it an established fact that the real active church membership is 35% of that claimed 15,000,000?  If you do a measurement off of number of stakes and wards...this seems about right...bout 5,000,000 active members.  

Edited August 18, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[stemelbow]

Sure.  I think it is possible that the way the surveys were worded, might have something to do with it. 

As per Finland.  I just looked this up on Wikipedia:

Quote

There are presently two national churches (as opposed to state churches): the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, which is the primary state religion and has a membership of about three quarters of the population, and the Finnish Orthodox Church, to which about one percent of the population belongs.^[

I don't know how that works out compared to Sweden though.  You might have a better feel for that. 

[stemelbow]

Just now, Johnnie Cake said:

Isn't it an established fact that the real active church membership is 35% of that claimed 15,000,000?  If you do a meadurement off of number of stakes and wards...this seems about right...bout 5,000,000 active members.  

Sure.  I enjoyed Matt's take in the links, in that it seems there is some discrepancy when trying to tie an activity rate straight across to these numbers of self-proclaiming.  I suppose there remains some of those less active Mormons who might actually still claim to be Mormon. 

[thesometimesaint]

We never claimed to be the fastest going church,  but we have been one of the fastest growing ones. What the heck is wrong with  you. Every post of yours is designed to belittle the Church. If you so hate the Church why are you still a member? The Church is perfect,  then Christ let us all in.

[Johnnie Cake]

1 minute ago, thesometimesaint said:

We never claimed to be the fastest going church,  but we have been one of the fastest growing ones. What the heck is wrong with  you. Every post of yours is designed to belittle the Church. If you so hate the Church why are you still a member? The Church is perfect,  then Christ let us all in.

How does asking this question of the distorted active membership size of the church = hating the church?  That seems like quite the stretch. When can telling the truth hurt the church?  Surely you're not suggesting they want to hide the truth are you?

[thesometimesaint]

6 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Isn't it an established fact that the real active church membership is 35% of that claimed 15,000,000?  If you do a measurement off of number of stakes and wards...this seems about right...bout 5,000,000 active members.  

We keep better records than most churches. If you don't attend for more than a few meetings at other churches no one will even notice.

[Johnnie Cake]

1 minute ago, thesometimesaint said:

We keep better records than most churches. If you don't attend for more than a few meetings at other churches no one will even notice.

True...but the 15 million claim doesn't reflect actual members attending does it...

 

[Ginger Snaps]

19 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

Is there a state church in Finland?  I served in Sweden were part of your taxes went to support the state church.  I vaguely remember that identifying as a member of another church would make you exempt from this tax. 

Yes, the Lutheran church. 

[stemelbow]

5 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

We keep better records than most churches. If you don't attend for more than a few meetings at other churches no one will even notice.

So you are telling me if you happen to go to a church regularly and then stop going a few times in a row, no one will notice in most Churches?  I tend to think you aren't representing things correctly--probably due to ignorance. 

[thesometimesaint]

9 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

True...but the 15 million claim doesn't reflect actual members attending does it...

 

Activity rates are an irrelevant distraction. To give a personal example. I have health issues that prevent me from attending more than ccasionally.  My Bishop and Stake President know of my condition and they consider me fully active.

Edited August 18, 2017 by thesometimesaint

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

What gets me is it's so country specific.  When I saw the same info for Mexico and Brazil I figured it was regional issue.  But it seems more country specific.  I'm curious if anyone knows about the Church in any of these countries and your take. 

Some of the variation may be due to the polls but part may very well be due to both emigration as well as not being aggressive in taking names off of the records. In the US there's a reasonable incentive to get people off the rolls who don't want anything to do with the church. I wouldn't be surprised to find out this isn't true in all countries. 

Of the numbers the only ones that surprised me were Scotland and New Zealand since they seem like the types of areas where you'd think the incentives would be similar to say Canada and the US.

Something that may be relevant is the ages. I know that when one looks at say ARIS data or Pew data you're looking at figures for those 18 or over. Yet Church numbers are for those 8 or older. So inherently Church numbers will be higher due to children. I've discussed before trying to make the figures more comparable with US data. It's also not quite clear how they are normalizing the data. i.e. in a census not everyone is captured. So you then have to make estimates about who was missed. So, for instance, if the census is done and I'm out of the country my data doesn't appear in the dataset. There are lots of questions I have before I'd use this data without qualification. In the comments someone notes that StatsCanada takes that into consideration and uses techniques to expand the figures to the whole population. (I'd assume assuming a reasonable distribution given how good StatsCanada typically is in such matters)

Looking through the comments it seems like the Scottish data is misleading due to the way it incentivized putting Christian rather than a particular sect.

 

Edited August 18, 2017 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

44 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

We never claimed to be the fastest going church,  but we have been one of the fastest growing ones. What the heck is wrong with  you. Every post of yours is designed to belittle the Church. If you so hate the Church why are you still a member? The Church is perfect,  then Christ let us all in.

Intrinsic to statistics is that very small churches experiencing rapid growth will always be fastest. As you get larger that becomes more and more difficult.

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Growing up (late 80s early 90s) it was really common to exclaim the Church is the fastest growing religion in the world.  Then as the years went on we started to learn that wasn't true.  So it started to dissipate.  By now it's never said, at least not from what I hear.  But not too many Sunday's ago a member of our ward said, "we have over 15 million members strong".  I thought in my head, well that's a pretty loose interpretation of the word strong, but whatever he's on a roll I ain't stopping him now.

I read this post recently and found the variation of self-identified LDS interesting.  I remember from years ago (2000) when the Mexican and Brazilian censuses revealed that the Church has far fewer people claiming the religion then what we report as membership:  http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=591&cat_id=35

..............  

The year, of course, in parentheses.  The number of members claiming the religion based on censuses.  and the percentage in parentheses is the percent of members reported on rolls that are claiming the religion.  Finland stuck out because of the high percentage but also because I have friends of there.  They told me people are leaving in droves in Finland, essentially.  So I was surprised to see such a high percentage--of course this is from 2009 and friends have reported to me for more recent years.   

What gets me is it's so country specific.  When I saw the same info for Mexico and Brazil I figured it was regional issue.  But it seems more country specific.  I'm curious if anyone knows about the Church in any of these countries and your take. ................................

First off, the anecdotal comments by friends has no standing in this sort of research, so should be immediately disregarded.  Second, we frequently discuss such figures on this board in a very serious and professional way, and graph it over time.  That is the only way to get an accurate sense of perspective.  Finally, all churches and other religions count membership of record, as well as attendance -- as we do for all educational institutions.  In many cases, one person might have membership in several different religious groups.

So, when you were growing up, you heard yokels declare this or that "fact," which was not a fact, but hyperbole.  However, LDS Church growth has been excellent over time, even when  many other religions have been losing members.  One needs a healthy sense of perspective when discussing such matters.

[flameburns623]

3 hours ago, stemelbow said:

So you are telling me if you happen to go to a church regularly and then stop going a few times in a row, no one will notice in most Churches?  I tend to think you aren't representing things correctly--probably due to ignorance. 

In the RCC, attendance woild certainly go unnoticed. Your anonymity in that denomination is legendary. Some other established mainline Protestant churches are similar in this respect. 

In smaller, Evangelical Protestant sects the situations vary: while there are no systems of home teachers, there are sometimes weekly or monthly bible studies, discipleship meetings, or similar small-group systems in place which allow enough personal interaction that the drifting away of faithful members is noticeable. 

And members of a board of elders may be tasked with staying in touch with members. 

In general, though, a person is most noticed during the first few months that they are perceived as 'visitors'. It is during that phase that churches seek to 'sell' themselves to prospects. There may be considerable follow-up to encourage such to keep attending.

When the newness wears off, no one is paying attention any longer, and people can drift away readily.  Only those with vital roles in the congregation are visible by their prolonged absence. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Growing up (late 80s early 90s) it was really common to exclaim the Church is the fastest growing religion in the world.  Then as the years went on we started to learn that wasn't true.  So it started to dissipate.  By now it's never said, at least not from what I hear.  But not too many Sunday's ago a member of our ward said, "we have over 15 million members strong".  I thought in my head, well that's a pretty loose interpretation of the word strong, but whatever he's on a roll I ain't stopping him now.

I read this post recently and found the variation of self-identified LDS interesting.  I remember from years ago (2000) when the Mexican and Brazilian censuses revealed that the Church has far fewer people claiming the religion then what we report as membership:  http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=591&cat_id=35

You know I "love Stem" as you used to sign your posts on the other website, where you used to make a defense of and for the Church. But I need to point out some issues with this thread. I joined the Church in 1979, and it was a membership of around four million, and the Church has more than tripled in size since. It was growing much more quickly, in the 80's and 90's, this is true. But your thread title seemed to suggest you were pointing out Church growth (but only growth of others years), and in the thread to show it's decline. Feels a little like a "bait and switch". Also trying to point out that 15,000,000 is not really 15,000,000. The way the Church counts members is the same as any other Church does, not just weekly attendance. It is not deception, or an effor to deceive, it is record keeping. Each baptized member who may attend or not attend each week is still entitled to feel the Spirit of God, and reach his or her God given potential to become the future leaders of Wards, Stakes, or any other calling. In my 38 years I have witnessed it time and again, once from a man who for a decades stopped attending Church, who when I visited from a very old roster, threw me out of his home. Others under the same circumstances, who returned after difficulties in their lives not know where else to turn.

Those who may not be "strong" as you put it, are not any less members, not any less important in the eyes of God, or the Church. They are the "one" that each Sacrament meeting, Stake Conference and General Conference we are told to leave the "99" and go find, the "1" (too be redundant). They are counted because it is their right to be counted, and not dismissed the way anti-Mormons love to do with our numbers, but never their own. These tactics are not worthy of The Church, nor of it's members, but of the naysayers. While other Wards may be declining, our Ward is growing, there is scarily room for the "Gospel Essentials" class in our Ward. Far to often those who in any endeavor, but especially when it comes to their Faith, or any Church find themselves looking so closely for flaws or warts, lose site of any beauty. I would hate to think that anyone I know well, even those casually, which includes those in "cyber space" have lost site of what is beautiful. This Sunday I have the responsibility to teach the 16th lesson in Preisthood, on "The Power of The Book of Mormon". Now, I could point to things I have read on the lost 117 pages, and the many doubts of others, or how some are dismayed at how the translation process is depicted in Church art, or similar language and exact language that have cost many their belief that it is from God. But my responsibility is to teach the lesson, the teaching of the Book of Mormon and to bear my testimony of it. Because this Sunday to the active, inactive and investigator (whomever is under the sound of my voice) is to tell the truth, and the truth is, I believe! So, I will not be selling doubt or trying to plant the "seed of doubt", because this Sunday, my soul is NOT for sale. I hope Stem, this message is not misunderstood, because like I said, "Love Stem".  

[MiserereNobis]

4 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

If you don't attend for more than a few meetings at other churches no one will even notice.

This is absolutely not true of the 3 parishes I've attended.

ETA: if you're involved in the parish. If you just pop in for Mass and that's it, then yeah, no one really knows who you are so...

Edited August 19, 2017 by MiserereNobis

[hope_for_things]

5 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

We never claimed to be the fastest going church,  but we have been one of the fastest growing ones. What the heck is wrong with  you. Every post of yours is designed to belittle the Church. If you so hate the Church why are you still a member? The Church is perfect,  then Christ let us all in.

I've heard the claim of fastest growing or one of the fastest growing many many times throughout my growing up years, it was essentially a given.  I'm from generation x.  I don't hear this talked about as much anymore. 

[hope_for_things]

This video was shared in my ward Sunday school just a couple years ago as part of the lesson.  

 

[Storm Rider]

5 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Isn't it an established fact that the real active church membership is 35% of that claimed 15,000,000?  If you do a measurement off of number of stakes and wards...this seems about right...bout 5,000,000 active members.  

Actually, Johnnie, it is worse than that. There are no members of the church anywhere in the world.  That evil organization only builds buildings, but no one goes.  Keep your head above the tripe people say about Mormons and temples - there are none in the world.  There now, aren't we happier. 

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

This video was shared in my ward Sunday school just a couple years ago as part of the lesson.  

 

And it is accurate. Not seeing a problem in rejoicing in growth whether it is the fastest or not and whether it is at as fast a rate as in some past period.

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I've heard the claim of fastest growing or one of the fastest growing many many times throughout my growing up years, it was essentially a given.  I'm from generation x.  I don't hear this talked about as much anymore. 

I heard it too and we were growing at a pretty impressive rate at the time. We have plateaued a bit since then. Maybe it is a long term plateau or maybe there are bigger surges ahead. I am okay either way.

[The Nehor]

9 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

How does asking this question of the distorted active membership size of the church = hating the church?  That seems like quite the stretch. When can telling the truth hurt the church?  Surely you're not suggesting they want to hide the truth are you?

No, you hate the church because you always say something negative about it. People who like things or are indifferent about them say either nothing about it or mix negative or positive. You hate or dislike it.

Disingenuously acting offended because someone says that is a cute rhetorical trick but fools no one.

9 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

True...but the 15 million claim doesn't reflect actual members attending does it...

And if that number was claimed to be regularly attending members that would be the sinister deception you seem to want everyone to believe it is.

It is not like one can be active in a ward for any length of time and not realize there is a large volume of less active members. We do give everyone home and visiting teaching assignments. Your attempt to manufacture deception and then act indignant about is transparently malevolent.