By Sandra Tanner
At the April LDS Conference it was reported that church membership now stood at 16,565,036, up from the 2018 count of 16,313,735. There were 94,266 new children of record listed and convert baptism was listed as 248,835.1
According to the Salt Lake Tribune for April 4, 2020:
The latest statistical report, released Saturday, put total membership above 16.5 million at the end of 2019, up by more than 251,000 from the previous year.
That’s a 1.54% increase, according to independent demographer Matt Martinich, and represents the “first year since 2012 in which the rate of membership growth has accelerated instead of decelerated.” The church grew by 1.2% in 2018.
Convert baptisms last year also mushroomed, to 248,835, up more than 6% from 234,332 in 2018.
So 2019 “is the first year since 2014,” Martinich writes on his blog at ldschurch.growth.blogspot.com, “that the annual number of convert baptisms has increased by a sizable amount compared to the prior year.”2
Footnotes:
- “2019 Statistical Report for April 2020 Conference.” ↩︎
- “LDS Church membership tops 16.5 million as convert baptisms rise by 6%,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 4, 2020. ↩︎
Originally appeared in:
Sandra Tanner, “LDS Church Growth in 2019,” Salt Lake City Messenger, no. 134, June 2020, 16.