Last year around this time I had one of my first posts here at T&S on an analysis of the number of converts per missionary. I thought, given the latest data from the Church, it would be worth revisiting the topic. I had noted a huge drop in missionary productivity first around 1989 after an unexpected leap. The next big drop was between 2011 and 2012 which was somewhat tied to some birth rate demographics but also the shifting of the age for missionaries to 18 years old. I won’t repeat everything I said there so I’d advise checking out the original if you are interested.

Year Convert Baptisms Missionaries Converts/Missionary 2009 280,106 51,736 5.41 2010 272,814 52,225 5.22 2011 281,312 55,410 5.08 2012 272,330 58,990 4.62 2013 282,945 83,035 3.41 2014 296,803 85,147 3.49 2015 257,402 74,079 3.47 2016 240,131 70,946 3.38

While the latest data isn’t great, it’s not quite as bad as I feared it might be. We’re just below where we were in 2013 but weren’t able to keep up with the efficiency we had the prior two years. Certainly nothing was a return to the years before the age change of missionaries let alone where we were in the 90’s.

As others have noted the age change for missionaries may well be primarily about helping the missionaries themselves. I’ve not seen any statistics on how many people fall away from Church between the time they graduate high school and the time they could go on a mission. The theory is that there were enough that this might change the retention rate for young men in particular. I’ll confess I’m skeptical. I’d bet few of those that fell away were apt to go on a mission at 18 given the chance. However if the policy stays in place for a few more years it’d suggest it is having an effect on retention of youth even if it is hurting missionary work.

The one worry is the absolute number of converts. Other than a large dip in the early naughts, the number of converts has remained reasonably consistent since the late 90’s. That means we’ve not experienced geometric growth for quite some time. However the past two years has seen consecutive drops in absolute numbers of converts. While others might disagree I tend to see that as tied to the age change. We were able to keep it from happening initially just because of the large number of missionaries (partially due to demographics and partially due to the age change). Now that the absolute numbers of missionaries has dropped we’re more easily seeing the effect.

Addition:

Since I’d just intended discussing the recent data I didn’t put up all the data that was in the original post. I probably should have done that to avoid confusion. Most of this data was discussed extensively there. I’d strongly encourage reading through the discussion in the comments as well. The figures I put up above are largely just the data since the trend started. But to understand what changed you really need to look at a longer period. I’ll here include data since around 1995. That’s a somewhat arbitrary date. Partially because it’s when I graduated but partially because that’s also when the various interesting demographic trends in America started with the rise of the Nones. I have a spreadsheet with the data. The original post went back to 1972, but I don’t have all that data handy.

The first graph is just a scatter chart of missionaries versus converts so you can easily see the relationship.

The more useful graph is the full converts per missionary going back to 1995 which shows just how abrupt the change was. You see a decreasing rate in the late 90’s followed by stabilization and a slight rate of increase. Then the bottom falls out. This is even more apparent when you look at the longer timeline.

When you look at the absolute numbers of converts the trends are pretty apparent too. The first big drop is when worthiness and physical requirements were changed. That led to a big drop in the number of missionaries which corresponded to a big drop in converts. After the system adjusted things were stabilized until the recent change.

As I said a lot of this was discussed in the prior post.