Excerpts from the published financial accounts for the Church in the UK for the 12 months ending 31st December 2012.

Church membership in the United Kingdom stood at 188,462 at 31 December 2012 (2011 188,029).
286 wards and 49 branches (335 congregations averaging 562 claimed members per congregation)

During 2012 there were 1,411 convert baptisms in the United Kingdom.

Incoming resources:
Voluntary Income
Donations £33,159,000 (2011 £33,652,000)
Donations from parent company £17,946,000 (2011 £4,813,000)
Donations from sister charity £0 (2011 £6,608,000)

Income from Temples £1,030,000 (2011 £1,020,000)

Total resources expended £44,202,000 (2011 £46,739,000)

Average Monthly Number of Paid Employee's
Teaching function - 25 (2011 - 25)
Office Administration - 159 (2011 - 168)
Building Cleaners - 50 (2011 - 69)

The number of employee's whose emoluments feel within the following bands:
£70,001 - £80,000 = 10 (2011 - 7)
£60,001 - £70,000 = 11 (2011 - 11)

*In case you missed it - 19 fewer cleaners, 3 more people earning over £70,000 a year*

Humanitarian Aid
Incoming resources - £372,000
Expenditure - £1,000 (Note: No, I haven't made a typo)
"These funds are donated by the members to help fund the programme of Humanitarian Aid approved by TCOJCOLDS. The balance of these funds at 31 December was transferred after the year end to the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric of TCOJCOLDS."

Missionary Support Fund
Incoming resources - £979,000
Expenditure - £6,294,000

Fast Offering Fund
Incoming ressources - £1,563,000
Expenditure - £1,775,000



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2013 07:02AM by Stumbling.

The Humanitarian Aid section showing expenditures makes me so angry.

Well, before you quickly rush to judgement.

It's worth stating that, just because LDS UK inc. didn't spend any money on humanitarian aid, doesn't mean that donations to LDS UK inc weren't spent on humanitarian aid. Just that it was sent to Salt Lake for the Presiding Bishopric to decide where it gets dispersed.

When the Church produces its 2012 Provident Fact sheet we will see what the Church spent globally in 2012 on humanitarian aid.
(1985 - 2011 this amounts to $1.4 billion in total of cash, materials and a value for time donations)

Even if what you say is correct, how can they just justify collecting £372K can only paying out £1K in the UK? A good portion of that money should have stayed at home, at least more than 0.3%

99% of that is value for time. My guess is very little cash was spent but we are going to take credit for the members "volunteer time".

I so wish this were required in the US. Nice presentation. Thanks

Even by their inflated way of counting members, their net growth in membership was essentially 0%. Most of their humanitarian aid was siphoned to SLC.

6 million pounds spent on missionary work, for 1,441 converts. The net growth in membership was 433, on a base of 188 thousand members. They should have had more than 433 births, so net growth from (converts - deaths - dropouts) was almost certainly less than zero. Not much to show for spending 6 million pounds on missionary work.

£6,000,000 is about US$9,360,000



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2013 08:09AM by Brother Of Jerry.

Agreed.

The only source of growth for the Church in the UK is to ensure young people marry and start producing Mormon babies as soon as possible. If this trend is replicated worldwide then it would explain Nelson's recent advice to ignore overpopulation speculation and get jiggy with it.

Conversions are not offsetting the death toll. So it's down to encouraging young couples into having more sex to produce more tithe payers. Female Mormons are used as nothing more than production facilities. And the figures show it.

I suppose we won't get to know how that Humanitarian Aid sent to Salt Lake gets spent due to lack of disclosure, so anyone can claim what the like in how it was spent. How much easier would it be if there was transparency, so no one needed to speculate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2013 09:39AM by victoria.

What is the income from temples? Do they make that much money from renting clothes or from the cafeteria?

There is no specific explanation in the financial statements. But I think we can reasonably deduce that it's income from clothing rentals and cafeteria sales. It may also include income from Visitor centre 'shops' where scriptures etc are sold, but I think those proceeds may go to Deseret Industries.

Given there's 2 Temples in the UK, that figure averages to around £10,000 per week per Temple.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2013 11:00AM by Stumbling.

Could also possibly be the Accommodation Centres at both UK temples.

Have you the link? Thanks.

In tithing income, that comes to 175 pounds per claimed member, or $278 USD. Extrapolate that out to 14,000,000 claimed members worldwide at $278 USD and you get $3.9 Billion dollars in tithing income. The church must be feeling the pinch.

Is the convert baptism figure (1411) a typo?!!!

1411 divided by six missions in the UK, divided by 12 months.......that's around 19 baptisms, per mission, per month lol

The London missions used to be good for 100+ baptisms per month, when friends served there in the 80s and 90s & that was 100 baptisms in each of the two London missions.


Birmingham
Leeds
London
London South
Manchester
Scotland/Ireland

I assume that the London missions still do most of the baptizing, so presumably some of the other missions in the UK must baptise practically no one at all ? I'd love to see a breakdown of baptisms mission by mission in the UK

When I was a missionary, we averaged about 100 baptisms/month in France out of about 150 missionaries. They tried to push us to 300 but we never got much above 100.

If they are averaging 19 in an entire mission, then France might also have lost 80% of its conversion rate.

they count baptisms for children of members who are inactive, the Missionaries are sent out to baptize part member families where kids have slipped through the cracks.

UK government stats are:

1. Population 63.7 million
2. Number of UK births: 807,776

Divide the top number by the bottom number, and then multiply by the claimed LDS membership number of 188,029, and it means there *should* have been 2,384 LDS births for that membership size.

You can connect the dots.

Nevin Pratt

But..But,,,But there must be something wrong here the picture these dots make is a big arrow pointing straight down.

Again the morginasitaion is telling us fairy tales dressed up as real stats. The real tell tale about the numbers of UK members being over 188,000 is the amount of tithing/donations. £33 million may sound quite impressive but if there really were 188,000 members, they would each be paying about £175 per year. Some of those 188,000 would be children, pensioners, stay at home moms who would all pay little or no tithing, but the total amount of tithing is way, way down for such a claimed membership tally.

The average wage in the UK is probably around £20k, giving you about £2000 tithing per year per person. So, for £33 million in tithing per year, paid by a full tithe payer on an average wage, that gives you only 16,500 tithe paying members. We could be generous and say that only a third of members pay a full tithe, that would still only give you about 50,000 members. The figure of over 188,000 is nonsensical.

Even if the church is true in it's claims of 188,000 members, it is stiil in trouble. The natural expected change in a group (excluding the converts) is calculated by using the death and birth rates for the popoulation. In this case it would give an expected INCREASE in church membership to 188582 members. The actual natural change in church membership (not that it is really believable) is 187051, when you take out new membership, a DECREASE!!

This could be explainable because the demographics of the church is different to the general population, so if the church has more old/non-reproductive than young/reproducing members, there will be an expected decline as the actual birth rate and death rate will be different from those used in the calculations.

Another facet to calling b******t on the membership total is the laughable figure of 562 members per congregation. As a young lad, the ward I was dragged to kicking and screaming by my old man would be pushed to get 50 or 60 in sacrament meeting per week. Anybody church member reading this report can just look around them on a Sunday and will know that there are not 500-600 people in that building.

This is not a thriving, expanding orginisation. At best it could argued that it is "treading water", but the more realistic picture is that of "slowly sinking".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2013 01:21AM by antipodeanheathen.

antipodeanheathen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Another facet to calling b******t on the
> membership total is the laughable figure of 562
> members per congregation. As a young lad, the ward
> I was dragged to kicking and screaming by my old
> man would be pushed to get 50 or 60 in sacrament
> meeting per week. Anybody church member reading
> this report can just look around them on a Sunday
> and will know that there are not 500-600 people in
> that building.
>
-----------------------------

Absolutely.

500-600 would be a decent stake conference attendance here in most parts of Great Britain. The suggestion that 500-600 turn up for sacrament meetings in the average ward is beyond laughable.

A little over a decade ago dh and I attended Sacrament Meeting in Scotland, in a little chapel across the street from the Inverness river (near Loch Ness). The ward boundaries were very large--35 or 40 miles to at least one of the towns in the boundaries. I think there were only about 35 or 40 people there, including the 2 of us.

The building was small, but on quite a bit of land and we were told that they could expand the building as the church grew there. We didn't go into any classrooms, so I don't know what they were like or how many there were, but the "chapel" was also the cultural hall, IIRC.

I don't know whether Scotland was similar to England, or how many people were actually in the ward, but it wouldn't have been a ward (as compared to a branch) if it didn't have a LOT more people than the number who showed up.

FWIW, while in England we attended church at York Cathedral. It was a large, old cathedral with not many more people in it than were in the ward in Scotland. The service was incredibly boring, which may be why hardly anyone was in attendance.

By contrast, at the end of the service we stepped outside, and across the street was a small chapel of what was probably an independent, evangelical church. It was bursting at the seams with people who seemed to be happy and excited about being there.

All over the UK were empty, abandoned and "for sale" churches. Christianity seemed to be on its last legs, with the small independent churches being the exception. I think even those won't last. The UK appeared to be thoroughly secularized and organized religion won't be making a comeback any time soon. So I guess it isn't surprising that the LDS church has declined right along with the other religious institutions in the UK. Other churches are probably more honest about it, though.

do you have a link to a source?

I too would appreciate a source. It'll be better for showing people than a forum thread.

Let's not forget the members who move in or out of the country.

If the rate of people leaving the country (for whatever reason) is high than this could account for some of the negative growth the church is seeing.

I assume the national growth rate in the UK would be about the same for church membership.

Does anyone know that figure?

All information can be found by googeling "Charities Commission UK". Then search for church. It will also link you into the two other church financial entities in the UK.

Don't get too excited - it really does show how dull the whole think is.

In answer to transient...

The UK population is increasing with net migration into the UK and births exceeding deaths.

The church in the UK is in decline, even using their own claimed membership numbers (which is a clear exaggeration of true membership). The proprtion of church members to UK population is inexorably becoming less and this is evident when more realistic numbers are crunched, rather than relying on numbers provided by the morginisation.

In addition, you can't necessarily assume that the population of the UK has the same structure as the population of the church members, which makes coming to accurate conclusins even harder.