LDS Patriot

6 responses so far ↓

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  Gnosis // December 13, 2006 at 1:02 pm

  Please take the time and do it. I want those friendly, fussy facts to share with others.
  The slowdown is a sigh of the closing of the times of the gentiles. We should show our fellows how and why this is a natural fulfillment of prophecy.

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  P.E. Griswold // December 30, 2006 at 7:26 pm

  LDS Patriot

  One can’t be blamed for seeking and learning the truth; and the tact and sincerity with which you choose to bring it into the light. Please do release it, not so that we can use it for gain with our peers, but so that we can learn from it and try to help inspire change with the results…

  In the book, “Drawing on the Powers of Heaven,” by Hugh Von Grant…he makes the point that membership growth in any given area is based upon the faith of the members in that area…I do have some agreement with Gnosis on bringing this aspect into the light…as to being part of the cause of slowed membership…

  Sincerely

  P.E.Griswold

  Upmost respect for not bursting the bubble in front of the Elders Quorum…Kudos and much respect.

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  rcronk // January 5, 2007 at 11:55 am

  So, are the numbers released each general conference the same as the ones being spoken of in this book or are they just more detailed or what?

  Wouldn’t it be easy enough to just take the membership total of each April general conference and put that on a graph and see the growth rate? (I did that below.) Then it would be official numbers from general conferences themselves and there would be no contention about whether this third-party book is “official” or not.

  One other point deals with converts vs. children born into the church. The Catholic church has so many members that it would seem if they had no converts at all, they’d still be growing faster than anyone else. Perhaps the high numbers people are thinking of are convert numbers only? I don’t have the data in front of me so I’m not sure. LDS families might not be havign as many children too - I guess it would be good to separate the converts from the births.

  Here’s some data from the past 20 years of April conferences:

  Year——-Members——-Change——%Change
  1980——4,638,000
  1981——4,936,000—–298,000—–6.0%
  1982——5,165,000—–229,000—–4.4%
  1983——5,400,000—–235,000—–4.4%
  1984——5,650,000—–250,000—–4.4%
  1985——5,920,000—–270,000—–4.6%
  1986——6,170,000—–250,000—–4.1%
  1987——6,440,000—–270,000—–4.2%
  1988——6,720,000—–280,000—–4.2%
  1989——7,300,000—–580,000—–7.9%
  1990——7,760,000—–460,000—–5.9%
  1991——8,120,000—–360,000—–4.4%
  1992——8,406,895—–286,895—–3.4%
  1993——8,696,224—–289,329—–3.3%
  1994——9,024,569—–328,345—–3.6%
  1995——9,340,898—–316,329—–3.4%
  1996——9,694,549—–353,651—–3.6%
  1997—–10,070,524—–375,975—–3.7%
  1998—–10,354,241—–283,717—–2.7%
  1999—–10,752,986—–398,745—–3.7%
  2000—–11,068,861—–315,875—–2.9%
  2001—–11,394,522—–325,661—–2.9%
  2002—–11,721,548—–327,026—–2.8%
  2003—–11,985,254—–263,706—–2.2%
  2004—–12,275,822—–290,568—–2.4%
  2005—–12,560,869—–285,047—–2.3%

  I graphed that and added a trend line going forward to 2080 and in 2080, if the growth rate remained the same, it would be about 38 million members. The growth rate over the past 25 years is very near linear even though it seems like there were some spurts in the earlier years if you look at the percentage growth. However, if you look at the number of new members each year, that’s essentially linear over the whole 25 years. The peaks in 1981, 1989 and 1990 don’t seem to be a part of the overall trend.

  It also looks like prior to 1992, they were rounding the numbers and so the numbers to the nearest 10,000 so they may not be as accurate as the more recent years. And these numbers were gathered from individual stakes, etc. so there’s probably a percentage of error in them.

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  rcronk // January 5, 2007 at 3:50 pm

  P.S. I took another look at those numbers and looked at the split between LDS children baptized vs. new converts and found that LDS families have been having fewer and fewer children being baptized (born?) per capita. The number of convert baptisms has been fairly level but since the membership numbers have gone up, the percentage of new converts has gone down a bit.

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  R. Jones // February 16, 2007 at 12:52 pm

  I did the same analysis using decade information from LDS.org. I normalized the data based in the population at the beginning of each decade. Since 1980 the normalized growth rate is plunging. Based on linear extrapoloation of my curves I would predict that the growth rate will approach the birthrate by 2015 (0.7% yearly). That’s probably a little too pessimistic as linear extrapolation is simplistic. It is the recent trend. But considering apostacy and virtual apostacy, I believe it may be conservative. I don’t believe the church reports those numbers. I’ve included my numbers again based on decades for comparison with Rcronk.

  year pop Normalized Growth
  rate
  1830 6 280.9833
  1840 16,865 0.207376
  1850 51,839 0.01783
  1860 61,082 0.047556
  1870 90,130 0.048261
  1880 133,628 0.040886
  1890 188,263 0.050728
  1900 283,765 0.040425
  1910 398,478 0.031999
  1920 525,987 0.027383
  1930 670,017 0.028753
  1940 862,664 0.028824
  1950 1,111,314 0.052358
  1960 1,693,180 0.073095
  1970 2,930,810 0.058312
  1980 4,639,822 0.067274
  1990 7,761,207 0.042618
  2000 11068861 0.026959
  2005 12560869

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  Your Health Resource // May 17, 2007 at 6:29 pm

  Great site and interesting commentary

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