This archive Sunday post was written by Winterbuzz, and originally appeared on fMh on May 2, 2011. Read the original post and comments here.

In the wise words of TV’s greatest master teacher and philosopher, Dr. Phil:

“You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.”

So I was happy to see reported in the SL Tribune that the recent reasons for eliminating Students Wards and shifting to Young Single Adult congregations as well as a few other recent changes in LDS Mission, etc. were a result of the LDS Church’s response to losing members, mostly in the 18-30 age group. (Although this loss is happening to all religions, the LDS church continues to suffer from this same decline and our leaders are finally starting to acknowledge this).

Other trends include:

(Most info taken from Ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com and Cumorah.com):

-The drop-out rate/retention rate among RMs is disturbingly high.

– This year, the church experienced it’s first Stake Shutdown, or First Stake Consolidation In Australia

-The number of actual convert baptisms has decreased almost steadily since the 80′s. This is based on the annual statistical report delivered in Gen. Conference.

-Most of the growth of “The Church” continues to be natural growth, through births rather than conversions. However, baptisms of children-of-record are declining too.

-Growth of Mormonism in the North America and Europe is virtually flat and is actually declining in some countries (prompting the shift from European missions to South American ones.)

– With the exception of new “minority” wards being created in some inner cities, Mormonism is dying off in urban centers, even in SLC.

– Most conversions to Mormonism are in the Third World, and the drop-out rate in those countries is very high. Surveys done in Mexico, Chile, and Brazil indicate that less than 20% of the “members” claimed by “The Church” self-identify as Mormons.

Us LDS folk frequently appeal to our religion’s growth rate as an evidence of our gospel’s truthfulness so it’s no surprise that we’re a little shy to brag about our membership tank.

Mormon author David G. Stewart, Jr. writes:

“The rapid growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been a frequent and recurring theme in the secular media. The claim that the Church of Jesus Christ is the ‘world’s fastest growing church’ has been repeated in the Los Angeles Times, Salt Lake Tribune, Guardian, and other media outlets, while sources claiming that the LDS Church is the ‘fastest growing in the United States’ are too numerous to chronicle. Sociologist Rodney Stark’s 1984 projection has been widely cited: ‘A 50 percent per decade growth rate, which is actually lower than the rate each decade since World War II, will result in over 265 million members of the Church by 2080.’ In Mormons in America, Claudia and Richard Bushman claimed, ‘Mormonism, one of the world’s fastest-growing Christian religions, doubles its membership every 15 years.’ “Latter-day Saint media have also lauded rapid church growth. The LDS Church News has described international LDS growth with a litany of superlatives, including ‘astronomic,’ ‘dynamic,’ ‘miraculous,’ and ‘spectacular.’ The claim that the LDS Church is the ‘fastest growing church in the United States’ has been repeated in the Ensign and LDS Church News. In a recent General Conference, the Church of Jesus Christ was described not only as being prolific, but also as retaining and keeping active ‘a higher percentage of our members’ than any other major church of which the speaker was aware. “A closer examination of growth and retention data demonstrates that LDS growth trends have been widely overstated. Annual LDS growth has progressively declined from over 5 percent in the late 1980s to less than 3 percent from 2000 to 2005. Since 1990, LDS missionaries have been challenged to double the number of baptisms, but instead the number of baptisms per missionary has halved. During this same period, other international missionary-oriented faiths have reported accelerating growth, including the Seventh-Day Adventists, Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, and Evangelical (5.6 percent annual growth) and Pentecostal churches (7.3 percent annual growth). For 2004, 241,239 LDS convert baptisms were reported, the lowest number of converts since 1987. The number of convert baptisms increased to 272,845 in 2006, but both missionary productivity and the total number of baptisms remained well below the levels of the early 1990s. Even more cause for concern is the fact that little of the growth that occurs is real: while nearly 80 percent of LDS convert baptisms occur outside of the United States, barely one in four international converts becomes an active or participating member of the Church. Natural LDS growth has also fallen as the LDS birth rate has progressively declined. LDS church membership has continued to increase, but the rate of growth has slowed considerably.”

I could go on and on about numbers and graphs and charts for membership growth and decline. I’ve seen Mormon youtube propaganda touting our church’s enormous success at bringing sheep to the fold. Even our manuals still brag about our great latter-day expansion, calling it a challenge to keep up with such ‘tremendous growth.”

On the flip side, there are loads of stats from a variety of sources (anti-mo, to distinguished news outlets) that paint a bleak picture of church activity.

Either way, the bottom line is this- the church may be growing here and there, but it isn’t growing as much as everyone in it would like, and the leaders are starting to notice. And worse, church members are not being retained like they should be. (I read some estimates that anywhere from 2-5 million of the 14-ish million were actually active members but couldn’t seem to find anything conclusive. Anyone have numbers on this?)

The Trib Article quotes Elder Ballard as trying to tempt young saints with promise of power and leadership as incentive to stay in the church.

“We want you to see yourselves as bishops, Relief Society presidents. … [even] seated on the stand as an apostle,” Ballard told the single Mormons between ages 18 and 30, gathered in the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City. “We need you to be prepared.”

I’m not sure this is the right approach. Changing and integrating wards is a step, but I think the church has much larger issues to deal with if they want to retain members, especially the rising generation.

Instead of blasting off my opinions, I’d love to hear yours.

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In your responses, I’d love to see two things (and maybe it might even help out the spying eye of lurking GA who might get some good ideas? Yeah, probably not.):

1. First, what immediate changes would you like to see that would benefit your life and make church going easier for you?

2. What do you think the church needs to do as a whole in order to stop this trend of decline?