Linear growth in church membership

[JAHS]

Interesting table of membership church growth in the US from Cumorah.com. Anyone have an idea why the rate was so high in 1985?

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

We’d all like to see the hard data for sure. But the church isn’t open about activity rates and such, but we still have good data to make someobsevations.  A very general one is looking at s America vs north.  The north may have twice as many members on the church’s roles but it has three times the units.  On top of that the north is said to have as much as twice as many active members per unit.  If say the north has 40% activity the south has somewhere down around half that.  That is to say if the south has 4 million members a much smaller number of those actually see themselves as members.  Again general, on my phone and not very specific.  I’ll see what I can find when I have more time.  

When I say relatively few I mean compared to the number on the rolls.   It’s hard to conclude growth at all when taken into consideration.  Many on the rolls leave the faith without excluding their names. 

I think Somme of this is out there and I’ll see what I can find when time permits.  

Many lose interest.  I haven’t seen the rate of leavers among the youth in former years as much as in recent years,  but I just might have been a bit blind to it before

Here is what the Southern Baptist Convention saw for 2017:

Quote

The number of churches cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention grew for the 19th consecutive year, reaching 47,544. That’s a 16.3 percent increase in churches since 1997.

Membership fell for the 11th consecutive year, to 15 million. Since 2006, SBC congregations have lost about 1.3 million members.

Baptisms also declined, as they have for eight of the past 10 years. Congregations reported baptizing 254,122 people—26.5 percent fewer than in 2007. The ratio was one baptism for every 59 church members.  https://factsandtrends.net/2018/06/01/worship-attendance-rises-baptisms-decline-in-sbc/ .

Here are United Methodist Church 2016 figures:

Quote

The United Methodist Church’s global membership now exceeds 12.5 million........................

The total professing membership, ............., is 12,557,214. That’s up from the denomination’s estimated 12.4 million members in 2013 — the last time the secretary of the General Conference calculated delegations................................

U.S. membership dropped below 7 million in 2016 to about 6.95 million people. That marked a decrease of about 1.6 percent from 2015, roughly the same percentage decrease seen in the last two years.

U.S. average weekly attendance fell to just under 2.66 million — representing a 3.3 percent decline. All five U.S. jurisdictions reported decreases in both membership and worship attendance.  https://www.umnews.org/en/news/denominations-membership-tops-125-million .

 

 

Edited February 18, 2019 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I don’t understand the appeal of dystopian fantasies. 

Dystopia appeals to no one.  Blissful and innocent utopian pollyannas too often find themselves fronting for horrific dystopias.  The road to hell is lined with good intentions.

[bluebell]

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I don’t understand the appeal of dystopian fantasies. 

They help you realize that any day without a zombie apocalypse is a good day. 

[Navidad]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

I suppose my point was about membership statistics. I don't disagree otherwise.

It appears from the links provided that the year over year growth and totals of Church Membership include the under eight-year-olds who have not been baptized. They may have a different sub-category, but they are included in the reported membership totals. This is very important because it makes it impossible to do a comparison of membership figures with other non-infant baptizing groups who don't include anyone but baptized members in their totals. It appears at any one time this might add more than 800,000 to the LDS Church rolls. This may be one reason the figures for members in Mexico are so confusing. I am anxious to see the data from next year's census here to compare that to the Church's data for next year. It is of interest to me because I write a lot about religion in Mexico. 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Navidad said:

This is very important because it makes it impossible to do a comparison of membership figures with other non-infant baptizing groups who don't include anyone but baptized members in their totals.

If they report the children of record though (which iirc they do), shouldn't all one need to do is subtract that number?

Looks like they just report increase, so not a solution.

https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/2017-statistical-report-april-2018-general-conference

Edited February 18, 2019 by Calm

[churchistrue]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

If they report the children of record though (which iirc they do), shouldn't all one need to do is subtract that number?

The unbaptized 9 year olds are removed. So it's not that clean.

[Analytics]

3 hours ago, churchistrue said:

No. His claim is that the data is so linear it's suspicious that it's real data and not faked. That's nonsense. 

What's happening is that growth has slowed from something around 4.5% to something just under 2%. That's the trend. When growth rates are dropping, it can "appear" to be linear because you have a smaller number on a larger base each year. But within that trend, there's plenty of randomness. 

Whether it is suspicious or not is subjective. However, it is in fact quite linear. When I was in college in the late 1990's, I was in a statistics class studying time series. ARIMA analysis, and stuff like that. A friend of mine decided to apply the model to the growth of the church, and was surprised to find that according to that methodology, the church was growing linearly. 

Whether you say the growth has been linear or that the growth has been slowing from around 4.5% to 2% per year in a way that happens to result in growth that appears linear is a matter of semantics. But the clearest way to describe it is "linear growth". Yes, there is plenty of randomness from year to year. But that doesn't mean the growth isn't linear. If you put together a linear model, the error term (i.e. the year-to-year randomness around the linear trend) is about equal to zero, and very roughly has a normal distribution. If you look at PhysicsGuy's graph you see some autocorrelation, but not that much. That being the case, "linear growth" is an accurate description. 

Most things don't have a pattern nearly so linear. Look at the price of any stock over such a time period. Or the profits of any company. Or the gross revenue of any company. You'll never see anything like this. On the other hand, the population of the U.S. has been growing linearly longer than the church has. Perhaps a country with decreasing birthrates and a relatively constant immigration rate is the closest thing to how the Church changes over time?

[ttribe]

11 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Whether it is suspicious or not is subjective. However, it is in fact quite linear. When I was in college in the late 1990's, I was in a statistics class studying time series. ARIMA analysis, and stuff like that. A friend of mine decided to apply the model to the growth of the church, and was surprised to find that according to that methodology, the church was growing linearly. 

Whether you say the growth has been linear or that the growth has been slowing from around 4.5% to 2% per year in a way that happens to result in growth that appears linear is a matter of semantics. But the clearest way to describe it is "linear growth". Yes, there is plenty of randomness from year to year. But that doesn't mean the growth isn't linear. If you put together a linear model, the error term (i.e. the year-to-year randomness around the linear trend) is about equal to zero, and very roughly has a normal distribution. If you look at PhysicsGuy's graph you see some autocorrelation, but not that much. That being the case, "linear growth" is an accurate description. 

Most things don't have a pattern nearly so linear. Look at the price of any stock over such a time period. Or the profits of any company. Or the gross revenue of any company. You'll never see anything like this. On the other hand, the population of the U.S. has been growing linearly longer than the church has. Perhaps a country with decreasing birthrates and a relatively constant immigration rate is the closest thing to how the Church changes over time?

GE's profits were notorious for appearing to be on a linear growth pattern, for a time.   I don't believe it is that way any longer, though....

[churchistrue]

11 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Whether it is suspicious or not is subjective. However, it is in fact quite linear. When I was in college in the late 1990's, I was in a statistics class studying time series. ARIMA analysis, and stuff like that. A friend of mine decided to apply the model to the growth of the church, and was surprised to find that according to that methodology, the church was growing linearly. 

Whether you say the growth has been linear or that the growth has been slowing from around 4.5% to 2% per year in a way that happens to result in growth that appears linear is a matter of semantics. But the clearest way to describe it is "linear growth". Yes, there is plenty of randomness from year to year. But that doesn't mean the growth isn't linear. If you put together a linear model, the error term (i.e. the year-to-year randomness around the linear trend) is about equal to zero, and very roughly has a normal distribution. If you look at PhysicsGuy's graph you see some autocorrelation, but not that much. That being the case, "linear growth" is an accurate description. 

Most things don't have a pattern nearly so linear. Look at the price of any stock over such a time period. Or the profits of any company. Or the gross revenue of any company. You'll never see anything like this. On the other hand, the population of the U.S. has been growing linearly longer than the church has. Perhaps a country with decreasing birthrates and a relatively constant immigration rate is the closest thing to how the Church changes over time?

I disagree that the "linear" trend is as strong as you say it is. But whatever. I agree that there is somewhat of a long term linear trend over that 30 year time period Physicsguy isolates (however the past four years is definitely downward trend breaking up that linear theory). But I don't get what's noteworthy about it. That's typical of a maturing product where growth rate is decelerating. Look at slowing GDP or population of a developing nation reaching maturity, etc. You'll see similar trends.

[CAS]

7 hours ago, ALarson said:

That is not the truth.  Maybe some who leave fit into this category, but most I have known do not.  We are having local leaders and very strong, active members struggling with a faith crisis and trying to remain active....or going completely inactive.  It's not mainly the ones with "weak or not testimony".  That is not an accurate assessment at all, IMO.

 

That is also not true (in the past).  But they are definitely taking steps to make information regarding difficult issues (such as more details on how polygamy was lived in Nauvoo, polyandry, etc.) more available for members.  I applaud them doing that too.  But, most of the details are new to many members (strong, active members) and it's not from taking "things out of context", but just from learning the actual facts.

You have your opinion, I have mine. Saying that my statement is not true because you have a differing opinion is what is not true. I find your rhetoric unkind and lacking in leadership skill. My opinion is based on over 44 years, adult years-I was 19 when I joined, of watching people come into the church and go out of the church. If your opinion is more valid than that or if you have some facts to prove my statement untrue I welcome the info. Otherwise, as I said, you are not very kind and I suppose you wish to make me overreact, that is immature.

EVERY person that I have watched leave the church had issues before they left. Then something came along that they took hold of and used to justify their departure. EVERY one of them. I have never seen a person leave the church under conditions different than that (I am not talking about people who merely become inactive or less-active). The issue could have been that they based their testimony on someone else's testimony, or, they THOUGHT they felt something at different times, or they THOUGHT the church could be proven by logic and reason rather than by faith and interaction with the Almighty. ECETERA. EVERY person I have read about and studied in church history had a similar type of pre-existing issue or at least there is evidence that they did, on many occasions this is borne out in the D&C when a particular person is corrected and then later they apostatize. My opinion is thus based on fact and could very well be true that they had a weak testimony or no testimony of the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the legitimate church. Am I saying it is true in every case, no, I am saying that it is based on MY observation. I am certain that some of them go deeper and that they are actually evil and have chosen evil over good. But, I think that is actually quite rare. Now you can belabor this all you want and pick apart various points of what I state, but I am not trying to make a perfect statement, this is just my opinion please don't say that it is not true unless you can back that up with insurmountable facts that prove it never happens.

[ALarson]

2 hours ago, CAS said:

You have your opinion, I have mine. Saying that my statement is not true because you have a differing opinion is what is not true. I find your rhetoric unkind and lacking in leadership skill. My opinion is based on over 44 years, adult years-I was 19 when I joined, of watching people come into the church and go out of the church. If your opinion is more valid than that or if you have some facts to prove my statement untrue I welcome the info. Otherwise, as I said, you are not very kind and I suppose you wish to make me overreact, that is immature.

EVERY person that I have watched leave the church had issues before they left. Then something came along that they took hold of and used to justify their departure. EVERY one of them. I have never seen a person leave the church under conditions different than that (I am not talking about people who merely become inactive or less-active). The issue could have been that they based their testimony on someone else's testimony, or, they THOUGHT they felt something at different times, or they THOUGHT the church could be proven by logic and reason rather than by faith and interaction with the Almighty. ECETERA. EVERY person I have read about and studied in church history had a similar type of pre-existing issue or at least there is evidence that they did, on many occasions this is borne out in the D&C when a particular person is corrected and then later they apostatize.

LOL  Wow....sounds like you've got this all figured out.  Maybe you should tell the leaders that you can help them because you know why every single person leaves.

2 hours ago, CAS said:

please don't say that it is not true unless you can back that up with insurmountable facts that prove it never happens

Guess you missed the part in my post where I stated that "maybe some who leave fit into this category", so no, I didn't claim that "it never happens".

What I am seeing in my ward (as a member of the Bishopric who sees it first hand with many members) is not what you have described.  And, in discussing this frequently with my Stake President (who is also a close friend), he isn't seeing what you claim either.  

Quote

I find your rhetoric unkind and lacking in leadership skill.

My "rhetoric" is unkind?  

Now that's funny.   I'm not the one being insulting to those who are struggling or going through a faith crisis.  Maybe you should look closer at what you are claiming about them:  "people with weak or no testimony have disaffected due to poor interpretation of info on the internet".

Let's pick the topic of polyandry.  Tell me how members who learn about Joseph and other past leaders practicing it have a "poor interpretation" of them marrying women who already had a legal husband (some who were good members of the church)?

How about the deceit that was involved for Joseph to live polygamy and marry girls and women without Emma's knowledge?  How do you interpret that to be faith promoting?

These are two of the most difficult details that members are learning about and struggling with.  How have they poorly interpreted them?

Edited February 19, 2019 by ALarson

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, ALarson said:

LOL  Wow....sounds like you've got this all figured out.  Maybe you should tell the leaders that you can help them because you know why every single person leaves.

Guess you missed the part in my post where I stated that "maybe some who leave fit into this category", so no, I didn't claim that "it never happens".

What I am seeing in my ward (as a member of the Bishopric who sees it first hand with many members) is not what you have described.  And, in discussing this frequently with my Stake President (who is also a close friend), he isn't seeing what you claim either.  

My "rhetoric" is unkind?  

Now that's funny.   I'm not the one being insulting to those who are struggling or going through a faith crisis.  Maybe you should look closer at what you are claiming about them:  "people with weak or no testimony have disaffected due to poor interpretation of info on the internet".

Let's pick the topic of polyandry.  Tell me how members who learn about Joseph and other past leaders practicing it have a "poor interpretation" of them marrying women who already had a legal husband (some who were good members of the church)?

How about the deceit that was involved for Joseph to live polygamy and marry girls and women without Emma's knowledge?  How do you interpret that to be faith promoting?

These are two of the most difficult details that members are learning about and struggling with.  How have they poorly interpreted them?

Can't wait to here how CAS answers.

[ALarson]

20 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Can't wait to here how CAS answers.

Well, gone are the days when one can claim that members are only reading about these details from anti-Mormon websites, etc.  I have met with and worked with many members who first learned about them from reading the church essays.  So, does CAS believe members are misinterpreting the essays? 

[JulieM]

14 hours ago, CAS said:

EVERY person that I have watched leave the church had issues before they left.

If you mean issues with information they recently learned (ie. church history or past teachings or current policies), I agree.

But all who leave didn’t have weak or no testimony prior to that.  I know of some who had extreme strong testimonies that were changed or destroyed after years of struggling to hold on and remain active (I know of some going through this right now who are strong leaders and members).

[Gray]

14 hours ago, CAS said:

You have your opinion, I have mine. Saying that my statement is not true because you have a differing opinion is what is not true. I find your rhetoric unkind and lacking in leadership skill. My opinion is based on over 44 years, adult years-I was 19 when I joined, of watching people come into the church and go out of the church. If your opinion is more valid than that or if you have some facts to prove my statement untrue I welcome the info. Otherwise, as I said, you are not very kind and I suppose you wish to make me overreact, that is immature.

EVERY person that I have watched leave the church had issues before they left. Then something came along that they took hold of and used to justify their departure. EVERY one of them. I have never seen a person leave the church under conditions different than that (I am not talking about people who merely become inactive or less-active). The issue could have been that they based their testimony on someone else's testimony, or, they THOUGHT they felt something at different times, or they THOUGHT the church could be proven by logic and reason rather than by faith and interaction with the Almighty. ECETERA. EVERY person I have read about and studied in church history had a similar type of pre-existing issue or at least there is evidence that they did, on many occasions this is borne out in the D&C when a particular person is corrected and then later they apostatize. My opinion is thus based on fact and could very well be true that they had a weak testimony or no testimony of the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the legitimate church. Am I saying it is true in every case, no, I am saying that it is based on MY observation. I am certain that some of them go deeper and that they are actually evil and have chosen evil over good. But, I think that is actually quite rare. Now you can belabor this all you want and pick apart various points of what I state, but I am not trying to make a perfect statement, this is just my opinion please don't say that it is not true unless you can back that up with insurmountable facts that prove it never happens.

We have several Catholic converts in our ward, I always wonder what their former fellow parishioners say about them after they leave.

Edited February 19, 2019 by Gray

[ALarson]

Just now, Gray said:

We have several Catholic converts in our ward, I always wonder what their fellow parishioners say about them after they leave.

Probably that they were weak and left to sin 😉

[Analytics]

15 hours ago, churchistrue said:

I disagree that the "linear" trend is as strong as you say it is. But whatever. I agree that there is somewhat of a long term linear trend over that 30 year time period Physicsguy isolates (however the past four years is definitely downward trend breaking up that linear theory). But I don't get what's noteworthy about it. That's typical of a maturing product where growth rate is decelerating. Look at slowing GDP or population of a developing nation reaching maturity, etc. You'll see similar trends.

Sort of. One of your examples is GDP. Here is a graph that shows the year-over-year increase in GDP from 1991 to 2017:

The absolute growth is between a negative $260 billion to a positive $820 billion, with an average of about $50 billion. You might argue that this is generally linear, but there is some noise, which can be measured by the coefficient of variance, which is 45%.

In contrast, here is the year over year growth of the church over that same time period. It grew between 238k and 399k every year, with an average of $309k. The coefficient of variance is only 11%, indicating that this is much more smooth. 

Linear growth this consistent and this smooth is not common. Maybe the populations of some countries are like this. Maybe certain utilities in certain municipalities have growth patterns like this. But such cases are rare.

Edited February 19, 2019 by Analytics
Graph didn't work

[Physics Guy]

15 hours ago, Analytics said:

[T]he population of the U.S. has been growing linearly longer than the church has. Perhaps a country with decreasing birthrates and a relatively constant immigration rate is the closest thing to how the Church changes over time?

Interesting. I didn't know that about the US population, but it's true. The growth hasn't been a perfectly straight line over the past century-plus, but it has had several very straight sections that each lasted decades, and even overall it has been pretty close to straight. It definitely hasn't been exponential.

That's kind of weird, too; but one thing makes it easier to understand. Throughout the whole past century the US has had enough immigration to outweigh childbirth and mortality as population factors. Unlike birth and death, immigration rates are subject to deliberate regulation. So the United States has been able to set its population growth to be whatever Americans collectively wanted it to be, just by controlling immigration. It's not obvious to me why Americans would prefer steady linear growth of their population, rather than any other pattern, but apparently linear growth is what they have consistently chosen.

Probably not too many American voters or regulators over the past century have sat down and consciously articulated that what they wanted from immigration was sustained linear growth of the total population. Somehow effectively, though, that collective intention has ended up being expressed, presumably as the stable compromise between Statue-of-Liberty idealism, demand for cheap labor, and fear of foreigners. Why does that stable compromise turn out to be linear growth? I don't know. It's an interesting question.

Perhaps the explanation for linear church membership growth has been similar: at some perhaps collectively unconscious level,  the church has wanted linear rather than exponential growth. Besides the question of why the church would want that, however, in this case there remains the question of how it could maintain linear growth, assuming it wanted that. What would be the tool, analogous to immigration policy, that would let the church tune its growth rate?

The only thing that springs to mind is the standard of belief and understanding which is demanded before baptizing new converts. Perhaps the church has chosen to get more committed members in steady numbers, rather than trying to accelerate sheer numerical growth.

[CAS]

2 hours ago, Gray said:

We have several Catholic converts in our ward, I always wonder what their former fellow parishioners say about them after they leave.

That would be interesting to know.

[CAS]

2 hours ago, JulieM said:

If you mean issues with information they recently learned (ie. church history or past teachings or current policies), I agree.

But all who leave didn’t have weak or no testimony prior to that.  I know of some who had extreme strong testimonies that were changed or destroyed after years of struggling to hold on and remain active (I know of some going through this right now who are strong leaders and members).

No, it can't be put in a nutshell, but mainly issues with obedience.

[CAS]

14 hours ago, ALarson said:

LOL  Wow....sounds like you've got this all figured out.  Maybe you should tell the leaders that you can help them because you know why every single person leaves.

Guess you missed the part in my post where I stated that "maybe some who leave fit into this category", so no, I didn't claim that "it never happens".

What I am seeing in my ward (as a member of the Bishopric who sees it first hand with many members) is not what you have described.  And, in discussing this frequently with my Stake President (who is also a close friend), he isn't seeing what you claim either.  

My "rhetoric" is unkind?  

Now that's funny.   I'm not the one being insulting to those who are struggling or going through a faith crisis.  Maybe you should look closer at what you are claiming about them:  "people with weak or no testimony have disaffected due to poor interpretation of info on the internet".

Let's pick the topic of polyandry.  Tell me how members who learn about Joseph and other past leaders practicing it have a "poor interpretation" of them marrying women who already had a legal husband (some who were good members of the church)?

How about the deceit that was involved for Joseph to live polygamy and marry girls and women without Emma's knowledge?  How do you interpret that to be faith promoting?

These are two of the most difficult details that members are learning about and struggling with.  How have they poorly interpreted them?

Your reply is somewhat interesting. Do you feel stagnant?

[JulieM]

7 minutes ago, CAS said:

No, it can't be put in a nutshell, but mainly issues with obedience.

That has not at all been my experience and I’ve known many go through a faith crisis (and a few who left but not over obedience).  I know several who are struggling now but not with disobedience.

Im interested in seeing your response about polygamy and polyandry.  How are members misinterpreting what they are reading (including info in the essays)?  How about you put your theory into providing some examples of relating to what some members are actually experiencing?

 

Edited February 19, 2019 by JulieM

[ALarson]

12 minutes ago, CAS said:

Your reply is somewhat interesting. Do you feel stagnant?

Not at all (kind of an odd response).

How about you respond to my questions?  I'd be interested to see some specific thoughts from you regarding what you believe members are misinterpreting on those topics.

[ttribe]

50 minutes ago, CAS said:

No, it can't be put in a nutshell, but mainly issues with obedience.

This is such a tired and harmful myth.