Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
)
Date: February 17, 2011 02:48PM
Just the numbers, for people who hate reading footnotes:
Number of stakes 1999: 2542. 2009: 2865. Annual growth 1.2%
Number of districts 1999: 636. 2009: 616. Annual growth -0.33%
Missions 1999: 333. 2009: 344 Annual growth 0.3%.
Number of wards/branches 1999: 25,793. 2009: 28,424 Annual growth 0.98%
Total "official" membership 1999: 10,752,986. 2009: 13,824,854. Annual growth 2.5%.
Measuring the growth of the LDS Church is a bit like checking your weight. Your weight may well vary several percent over the course of a single day, depending on weather, temperature, activity, how much you eat/drink, hormones.
Predicting your weight a year from now based on two measurements 12 hours apart is completely useless. Same thing with wards. Ward membership sloshes up and down, and even year to year, it is difficult to get a sense of how much LDS Inc has really grown/shrunk. Some wards grow, some shrink, new ones are created, some are consolidated.
LDS Inc's figures for total membership are totally bogus. My rule of thumb is to divide by 3, and use that as the real membership number. The result may be a little high or low, but it is a damn sight better than the 14 million figure used by LDS Inc.
The number of stakes, wards, etc that LDS Inc reports does have some grounding in reality. All the stakes are named in the LDS Almanac, and their existence can be independently verified. A stake or a ward is a pretty crude measure of size of LDS membership. The number of members in a stake is a pretty elastic number.
There is, however, a minimum number of members needed to constitute a stake, and when a stake gets large enough, LDS Inc has traditionally been eager to split the stake. So, while number if stakes and wards is not a perfect measure of active membership, it's not awful, especially if you take a big enough time window, to filter out the short range spikes up and down.
So, given that intro, here's a comparison of the major church indices over a ten year period.
The percentage given for each category is the *growth per year*, calculated as an annually compounding growth rate from 1999 to 2009 (the last year we have data for)
Number of stakes 1999: 2542. 2009: 2865. Annual growth 1.2% This is less than the birth rate, and also less than the convert rate. Either births or converts alone should result in more growth.
Number of districts 1999: 636. 2009: 616. Annual growth -0.33% Districts are created when new missionary areas are opened up. There is strong pressure to convert districts to stakes, so some of the stake growth was districts being promoted to stakes. The number of new districts created didn't keep pace, or some districts are disbanded altogether over the 10 years.
Missions 1999: 333. 2009: 344 Annual growth 0.3%. This is essentially unchanged over a 10 year period, and several missions were disbanded/consolidated in 2010, so growth may be 0 for the ten years ending in 2010. We will know in April when the new numbers come out.
Number of wards/branches 1999: 25,793. 2009: 28,424 Annual growth 0.98% I consider this the best growth indicator.
Total "official" membership 1999: 10,752,986. 2009: 13,824,854. Annual growth 2.5%. Ironically, I consider this statistic the least reliable growth indicator. The reported "total membership" the way LDS Inc figures it, is a worthless number.
OK, so the number of congregations has been climbing at under 1% a year for the last decade. I think 1% per year is a ceiling on how fast LDS Inc is growing.
I am convinced that most of that growth is really new wards created in new subdivisions, populated by members moving out of the other 99% of existing wards. It is just moving existing members around, not real new growth. If I am right, the existing wards are getting about 1% (on average) smaller each year. This can go on for a number of years, but eventually (5, 10, 15 years) some of the wards will shrink enough that they are too small to function.
Keep in mind that a lot of new subdivisions were built in the last decade. That would be a lot of new wards created solely for move-in members. It is entirely possible that LDS Inc is experiencing slightly negative real growth right now, and has been for several years.
LDS Inc does have the average attendance at every congregation, and does know precisely how much of their overall congregation growth is really skimmed off other wards, and how much is real, organic growth. There is not a snowball's chance that they are going to let that information out. I take that to mean the result is not one that makes them happy.
In April, we will get the 2010 figures (such as they are) in Gen Conference.
The Canadian Census, going on right now, does have a religious affiliation question. Those results will be released next year. We will then be able to compare the number of self-reported Mormons in Canada in 2011 versus 2001. ALberta, in particular, has a relatively large community of multi-generational Mormon families, so I will be particularly interested in seeing how many Albertans are still willing to claim that they are Mormon, after 10 years of exposure to information made available on the internet.
Should be fun!
Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2011 07:10PM by Brother Of Jerry.