Leaked U.K. Attendance Numbers Show Mass Defections and Declining Attendance Prior to Pandemic

[Fair Dinkum]

1 hour ago, Duncan said:

These numbers are based off of one stake only? why broaden that out for the entire country? 

There are a total of 45 Stakes in the U.K. and 3 in Ireland.  The numbers are for the Full Annual Church attendance per stake

Edited August 23, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Fair Dinkum said:

click on the hyper link in the OP

It's not there. "This break my heart. "

[bOObOO]

5 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Once the engine of church growth, the pre-pandemic church in the U.K. is now seeing mass defections and declining member attendance. Seen Here nearly every ward and branch is in decline.  The numbers are for entire Stakes. Over all church attendance even before the pandemic is sitting at just 14%*. 14% attendance for the U.K. , that's incredible.  Entire wards are struggling to even get 50 members to attend per month.  Repeat WARDS not branches, branches are even worse.

Is this a canary in the coal mine moment for the church.  If the church can't survive in England, Scotland and Wales how can it ever expect to survive in other 1st world countries.  Evidently the internet is taking a massive toll on the church and the leadership seem to have been caught flat footed with little to nothing to answer with but to pray, pay and obey.

The most devastating pre-pandemic statistic is that most of this exit has been within the last 3 year before the pandemic,  13.17% decline alone.  So the rush to the exit doors is accelerating not waning and there does not seem to be any sign of this exit slowing down.

This break my heart.  I have family in England and they have shared with me their personal stories of the depth of the sacrifices they have made to the church. Many now see their efforts for naught as entire multi generational families have left and have no desire to ever return.

A neighbor confided with me recently on his return from serving a mission in the U.K., he and his wife's entire 18 month mission did not involve any proselyting, instead they spent their entire mission in an attempt to reactivate lapsed members.  He shared this shocking anecdote from a GA who, I will keep unnamed. The GA said, "Worldwide pre-pandemic Church attendance is hovering around 25%  The brethren are worried".   This would make the real church numbers of those who self Identify as Mormon at around 4 Million not the claimed 16 million.

The only bright spot is Africa where the church continues to see strong growth.

*NOTE: The church claims nearly 188,000 members in the U.K. so with only 27,000 attending that equates to 14% attendance.

Not as many and not as active, huh. Oh well.  Their choice to be however they want to be.  

[Fair Dinkum]

2 hours ago, CV75 said:

Can you provide the link? Thank you,

Click Here

[bOObOO]

2 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Click Here

Maybe a lot of them moved from each area to some other place.  Not necessarily a bad thing.  America could benefit from some British humor.

[Duncan]

as I say it could be move outs, I doubt it's just one source

[halconero]

Pretty sharp decline post-Brexit. Holds very steady before that.

While I don't doubt some members are leaving, I have to wonder how much of this is due to out-migration of both foreign nationals living in the UK/Ireland.

[bluebell]

3 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

It's only gotten worse

I'm sure.

He still goes a couple times a year for his business (or did, pre-covid) and he said similar things.

[CV75]

33 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Click Here

Wow. I was expecting a formal website. Who created this document, and who is taking responsibility for distributing it?

[poptart]

5 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

 

 

 

Would it help if I colored the line a scarier red?

Can you make it fuchsia, it would be prettier.

Should be noted the Anglicans are doing badly too, think there are more Catholics over there now. 

This happened somewhat recently tho.

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2020-03/england-dowry-mary-dedication-richard-walsingham.html

Salve Regina....

[Calm]

13 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

I do know the name of the individual who leaked these numbers. 

So you personally know this individual has a calling that gives him access to these numbers?  You can personally confirm he has such a calling or you only trust him when he says he has access?  I just want to be clear what your knowledge about him is.  Since there are many people whose names I know online that I would have no clue about their calling or where they even lived after years of interacting with them while there are others who have over the years consistently posted more personal info so that I could report that barring trolling, they live in a certain place and held certain callings, it would be useful to know what category your knowledge of this person falls into. 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, CV75 said:

Wow. I was expecting a formal website. Who created this document, and who is taking responsibility for distributing it?

Yeah, it is kind of ridiculous to act as if this is something significant, but to have absolutely no context provided.

Would any critic accept a spreadsheet showing positive growth or high numbers presented in such a fashion as actual evidence?  I would hope not. 

[Calm]

Fair Dinkum, can we at least know how you became aware of the alleged leak?

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Yeah, it is kind of ridiculous to act as if this is something significant, but to have absolutely no context provided.

Would any critic accept a spreadsheet showing positive growth or high numbers presented in such a fashion as actual evidence?  I would hope not. 

Those who leak information have a responsibility to do it responsibly.  One of the ways that they do that is by providing provenance (plus a bunch of other stuff as well).  If there is no provenance then a leak has no value.

Here's a good article on the subject.

[JustAnAustralian]

4 hours ago, CV75 said:

Who created this document, and who is taking responsibility for distributing it?

If you download the excel file you can see that the last person to edit it was "Chris Mace", who seems to have regularly commented on church finances in the UK.

Edited August 24, 2021 by JustAnAustralian

[Fair Dinkum]

4 minutes ago, JustAnAustralian said:

If you download the excel file you can see that the last person to edit it was "Chris Mace", who seems to have regularly commented on church finances in the UK.

Well I didn’t want to out him but if it’s that obvious then yes I can confirm your sleuthing. 

[Calm]

41 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Well I didn’t want to out him but if it’s that obvious then yes I can confirm your sleuthing. 

Do you know him personally or just the name?

[Fair Dinkum]

Just now, Calm said:

Do you know him personally or just the name?

FB Friends

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

FB Friends

Thanks. 

[carbon dioxide]

12 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Once the engine of church growth, the pre-pandemic church in the U.K. is now seeing mass defections and declining member attendance. Seen Here nearly every ward and branch is in decline.  The numbers are for entire Stakes. Over all church attendance even before the pandemic is sitting at just 14%*. 14% attendance for the U.K. , that's incredible.  Entire wards are struggling to even get 50 members to attend per month.  Repeat WARDS not branches, branches are even worse.

Is this a canary in the coal mine moment for the church.  If the church can't survive in England, Scotland and Wales how can it ever expect to survive in other 1st world countries.  Evidently the internet is taking a massive toll on the church and the leadership seem to have been caught flat footed with little to nothing to answer with but to pray, pay and obey.

The most devastating pre-pandemic statistic is that most of this exit has been within the last 3 year before the pandemic,  13.17% decline alone.  So the rush to the exit doors is accelerating not waning and there does not seem to be any sign of this exit slowing down.

This break my heart.  I have family in England and they have shared with me their personal stories of the depth of the sacrifices they have made to the church. Many now see their efforts for naught as entire multi generational families have left and have no desire to ever return.

A neighbor confided with me recently on his return from serving a mission in the U.K., he and his wife's entire 18 month mission did not involve any proselyting, instead they spent their entire mission in an attempt to reactivate lapsed members.  He shared this shocking anecdote from a GA who, I will keep unnamed. The GA said, "Worldwide pre-pandemic Church attendance is hovering around 25%  The brethren are worried".   This would make the real church numbers of those who self Identify as Mormon at around 4 Million not the claimed 16 million.

The only bright spot is Africa where the church continues to see strong growth.

*NOTE: The church claims nearly 188,000 members in the U.K. so with only 27,000 attending that equates to 14% attendance.

Not worried about any of it.  Everything seems to be on schedule.   As we inch towards the Second Coming, the world will continue to get worse and worse.   Wars, natural disasters, pandemics and plagues will continue on their upward trend.  The scriptures tell us eventually the world will reject the missionaries as a whole.  The Lord will call them home and the Lord will preach a new sermon to the secular world.  A sermon of destruction not seen in world history and those first world countries you speak of will be no better off than everyone else.   People have used terms like "right side of history" in promoting new secular ideas.  The truth is the only people who actually are the right side of history are the ones that remain.  The one that is allowed to continue.  The only ones on the right side of history is the ones who take part of the first resurrection.  Those who are not a part of that group are on the wrong side of history.   People can leave the church for whatever reason they want.  From the trends and the storms we can see coming, I think its evident that whatever benefit they receive will be short lived.  I am confident that many will return in time..  They will have to if for no other reason if they want to continue living on this earth. 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by carbon dioxide

[2BizE]

I have done some reading and mostly listening about this leaked attendance records.  Peter Bleakley has spoken about it frequently.  He was a faithful member wanting the church to improve and was recently excommunicated for begging the church to improve its curriculum and processes….which the church has not and it shows as church growth rate continues to decline.  
In the last world wide tour, President Nelson focused on asking the members to pay tithing. Maybe a different message is needed rather than constantly asking for money the church certainly doesn’t need to cover the expenses of the first presidency. 
A few years prior to the pandemic, I was following the shrinking of the church in Europe.  Wards and stakes were closing rapidly.  It was predicted that about 900 units were to be closed in Europe, but it ended up being closer to 500.  I believe this attendance data.  These data paint a clear picture of the symptoms the church is experiencing across Europe.

[Hamba Tuhan]

5 hours ago, 2BizE said:

In the last world wide tour, President Nelson focused on asking the members to pay tithing. Maybe a different message is needed rather than constantly asking for money the church certainly doesn’t need to cover the expenses of the first presidency. 

There is no other way to engender certain knowledge of God other than by asking people to put themselves in situations where they will fail if God is not real, i.e. sacrifice of some kind.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan

[Duncan]

according to what i've seen, since, 2018, there was 1 new stake created in Europe-in Finland but 8 stakes and districts closed, most in eastern Europe, 3 districts were closed to create the new stake in Finland. There was 35 new Stakes and Districts created in 2020,all over the world. Oddly a district was created in 2020 in Finland but dissolved in 2021 to create the new Stake there. There was a new District created in Russia and Romania, which is good. Armenia seems to be struggling.

[InCognitus]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

Those who leak information have a responsibility to do it responsibly.  One of the ways that they do that is by providing provenance (plus a bunch of other stuff as well).  If there is no provenance then a leak has no value.

Indeed.  One of the ways that Mark Hofmann was able to produce the illusion of provenance was by stirring up rumor to as many people as he could spread it.  That way the "source" didn't always seem to come from him, because so many different people were his pawns and were talking about it.  The internet has a way of doing the same thing these days, without Hofmann's help.

[Hamba Tuhan]

One of the things that always makes me chuckle is critics pretending that average attendance figures = activity rates = believing members.

The last time I served in a bishopric (2013), I kept a sacrament meeting attendance roll each week from the stand for an entire quarter. The highest weekly attendance during that time was 27 per cent. At the same time, nearly 60 per cent of all those on our ward's membership list had attended at least once during those three months. This is so because, as everyone knows, it is not the exact same people in the pews each week.

Beyond that, we have members in our ward/stake who haven't set foot in a church building in years but who still very much identify as 'faithful', believing members. One of them, in my current ward, regularly writes encouraging posts on the stake's Facebook page. I don't get it, but it is a very real phenomenon. We also have people who attend regularly, including a former branch president, who no longer believe any Church doctrines. 

This of course does not suggest that a sustained decline in attendance does not mean something. It certainly does. What exactly it means is something the leadership of each stake should be very carefully analysing and addressing.

For example, when analysing attendance figures in our stake council last month, we took into consideration that 96 active members have moved from the stake since the pandemic began.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan