By Sandra Tanner

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While there is a popular assumption among Mormons that their church is the fastest growing faith, it is simply a myth. The Salt Lake Tribune reported on the problems of church growth:

Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths — Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups — have grown much faster and in more places around the globe.

And most telling, the number of Latter-day Saints who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say. . . .

Take Brazil. In its 2000 Census, 199,645 residents identified themselves as LDS, while the church listed 743,182 on its rolls. . . .

“It is a matter of grave concern that the areas with the most rapid numerical membership increase, Latin America and the Philippines, are also the areas with extremely low convert retention,” says [David G.] Stewart, a California physician (“Keeping Members a Challenge for LDS Church,” by Peggy F. Stack, Salt Lake Tribune, July 26, 2005).

The percentage of Mormons in Utah is also falling. The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

Within the next three years, the Mormon share of Utah’s population is expected to hit its lowest level since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started keeping membership numbers. . . .

The often cited claim that Utah is 70 percent Mormon is not true — and hasn’t been true for more than a decade, according to the church numbers. While continuing to grow in actual members, the LDS share of the state population showed a slow but constant decline every year from 1989 to 2004.

According to the 2004 count, Utah is now 62.4 percent LDS with every county showing a decrease (“Mormon Portion of Utah Population Steadily Shrinking,” by Matt Canham, Salt Lake Tribune, July 24, 2005).

At the April 2006 Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church statistics for the year 2005 were announced:

While baptisms for 2005 were up by about 2,000 over 2004, it was still not as high as other years. Interestingly, the number of converts peaked in 1990 with 330,877 baptisms. This was accomplished with 43,651 full-time missionaries.

The 12.5 million member count includes more than baptized members. It also includes children who have been blessed as babies (whether baptized or not) and inactive members. Even if a person never attends again after being blessed as an infant he will be included in the count until he dies. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

Inactive Mormons who rarely, if ever, attend church are included in all membership numbers
(“Church Won’t Give up on ‘Lost Members’,” Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 17, 2005).

Such people will not be taken off the rolls

until the member would have reached the age of 110. . . . That means some of the people included in the worldwide tally of 12 million members are really dead, with life expectancy in the United States at about 78 years old . . . (Ibid., Oct. 17, 2005).

Thus we see that the 12.5 million number is quite exaggerated.

Finding Inactive Members

The church also asks members to volunteer as “member locaters.” The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

To do so, the LDS Church has set up three “member locater” offices in Salt Lake City, American Fork and St. George that search for lost Mormons in the United States and Canada. Analysts search for the names and numbers of relatives through church records or online public access databases, [LDS Church general authority Merrill] Bateman said.

Those leads are then passed on to volunteer missionaries, mostly elderly couples, who serve as member locaters (Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 17, 2005).

This explains why many inactive Mormons are surprised and upset when someone from the LDS Church seems to contact them out of the blue. Some inactive members don’t want to be bothered. Others have already joined another church and had assumed their LDS membership had been terminated long ago.

The LDS Church never releases the number of people who have resigned or been excommunicated.

Close-up of Chile Membership

The problems of church growth were further illuminated in an article in the Salt Lake Tribune discussing the LDS Church presence in Chile. Reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack explained the problems of divorce and remarriage in Chile. Many couples do not go through a formal marriage, thus making it easier to separate if the need arises. Those that have been married in the Catholic Church and decide to split up often do not go through the process of getting the marriage annulled. Ms. Stack reported:

In this environment, the LDS Church quietly baptized unmarried partners, especially those who had been together for a long while or who had children together. But it drew the line at having those marriages “sealed for time and all eternity” in a temple. . . .

The marriage dilemma is a headache for missionaries and sometimes causes would-be converts to lose interest. But it is only one of several reasons members and/or potential members fall away. . . .

In addition, members who want to go to the temple abstain from coffee, tobacco and alcohol, which can be tough in Chile, a major exporter of wine.

By far the greatest challenge, though, is tithing. . . . That keeps them out of the temple and away from full participation.

The importance of paying tithing became a kind of mantra during LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley’s visit repeated by everyone in leadership (“Building Faith,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 31, 2005).

The article goes on to state that although there are 535,000 people on the LDS membership rolls in Chile, only 120,000 identified themselves as Mormons in the 2002 Chilean census. An even greater disparity is seen when comparing the 535,000 number with the average of 57,000 people said to attend sacrament meetings.

If this same type of problem is present in other Latin American countries, the claim that there are 4.5 million members in those countries becomes very suspect.

For further discussion of the problems in past Mormon statistics, see: http://www.mormoninformation.com/stats.htm.

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