So, the missionary department fed a story to the Deseret News about the missionary "surge". Oh boy, 85,000 missionaries, on the way to a peak of 88K! Faith promoted! WOOOOO! The church is true! Yeah, keep on believing!

Then it admits this situation is only temporary, that it will settle back to the "high 70,000s. But wait, brothers and sisters, that's way more than the 58,000 missionaries we had before dropping the age requirement. Okay, the church is still true! The work has been hastened! WOOOO!!

Then, down in the thirteenth paragraph, after an announcement that missionaries are going to need to buy iPan Minis, after the readers have turned off the arithmetic part of their brain (or had their attention yanked over into the part of the brain that's freaked out over an additional $400 expense), the article slips in the fact that baptisms have increased 15%. Can I get a WOOOO!?

Um, a 50% increase in missionaries for only a 15% increase in baptisms? Even with the addition of modern computing technology by nearly half the missionary force? Um, not good, brethren. Diminishing returns.

But that's how one writes a proper PR release. Bury the negative in a swirl of positive (or positive sounding) hooey and hope no one notices. At least the church included the 15% number. They could've left it out.

I'm suprised that baptisms have increased at all. Even with all the new missionaries, they didn't open tons of new areas. They just crammed more missionaries into the same burnt out areas...a lot of them in the US where nobody wants to hear their message. When I was in Brazil there were 8 missionaries assigned to some wards/branches. We weren't baptizing anyone then, and having 12 missionaries probably wouldn't have helped much.

"Choco rations up--doubleplusgood, Winston!"

That 15% sounds exaggerated.

Truth be told, TSCC is baptizing fewer converts each year than they did 25 years ago -- even with all the additional missionaries. So, typically, only the positive spin is reported by the Morg.

Every self respecting statistician (not a lot of those) will tell you that per capita is the first base line you go to. If it doesn't start there than they are trying to rewrite the story.

Yes! When you put it into that perspective the church seems puny.

To most members "convert baptism" means someone who previously had nothing to do with Mormonism, ever, who was found and convinced (by the power of the Holy Ghost, of course) that the church is true. That was once the case. But missionary work in much of the world has devolved into member reactivation. More and more "convert baptisms" are of people who had some familial connection to the church -- usually nevermo spouses of members who finally relented in order to keep peace in the family, or the over-eight-years-old children of inactive members.

Oh, as the missionaries would say with their new favorite word....

"Oh, what a true MIRACLE we have just seen. The Lord has seen fit to bless our hard work with a 15% increase in baptisms. It really is the last days and the Lord's work is going forth at an amazing pace.

Now, pass me the cookies and punch."

What the article omits, too, is that while church membership has supposedly grown to whatever number they're claiming today, the missionary force (even with the surge) hasn't grown at the same rate as membership. That means an increasingly smaller percentage of membership goes on missions -- probably because they disappeared from the pews long before.

There are no increases in baptisms, not because we want that to be true, but because you can plainly see the church shrinking in terms of the unit count and building consolidation taking place all around.

Temples in places with low property values are closed and the money is used for the PR and appreciation value of constructing a NEW temple in another area.

It is a common camouflage of using activity as a substitute for results.

Other signs of failure are the placement of missionaries in ward buildings to "give tours," and the construction of a huge building to house the missionaries coming home who are being given the opportunity to complete their mission "honorably" at a computer after being unwilling to submit to the emotional abuse treatment in the mission field.

I am sure they are simply following in the footsteps of their founder who would have described his tar and feathering as a miraculous event in which an angel saved his testicles from Satan.


Kathleen Waters

Let's break this down...

A 15% increase of what they had last year, correct?

Now, if you have 15,000,000 members, and you had 2% growth on 2012, you have 300,000 more people. And then in 2013 you see a 15% increase in 2012's numbers(300,000), that's an additional 45,000 people baptized in thus far. You are now at 2.3% annual growth.

The 15% was used to spin a good look, when in reality the numbers are still on par with the 10-year period ending in 2013.

Previous reports on this site quoted the figure of 5% increase in baptisms. Was this just for "convert baptisms"? Or has there been a sudden surge of baptisms recently?

5% was reported at the last general conference, which was the change from 2012-2013. The article references the change between 2013-2014, which wouldn't be officially reported until next year.

The Tribune Article indicates that there analysis puts the numbers at 4%. That's a bit lower than 15%.

yeah, that's what I thot, thanks...

Don't forget all the dead dunking numbers, which they can easily manipulate. That may be the extra 11 percent!

I realize they dead dunk more than that, but they can slowly pull those numbers over to show steady improvement in the "hastening".