If there are 15 million Mormons and 21,683 Wards (as church statistics claim), that's roughly 691 people per ward (including members in the branches that report to Wards). That would be the 100% activity number (approx).

At 200 active members attending the average ward that would be 4.3 million active members. A 28.6% activity rate.

At 100 active members attending each ward it would be 2.17 million active members. A 14.3% activity rate.

These don't appear to be good numbers. How many attend your local ward (plus any branches) each Sunday?

(Please double check my math)

Mine is around 200 to 250 (but I live in Utah). :P

About 8 million of those "mormons" are exmormons (formally resigned or quit with their feet), dead, or were fictitious names turned in by number hungry missionaries in foreign missions

I would bet that half of the ~1 million members reported for Brasil weren't real baptisms. Missionaries were "baptizing" hundreds of people in the 80's and 90's, but my entire mission had about 1,200 active members. The activity rate in my first area was ~1%. We had a huge ward list that we used for reactivation, and most of these individuals that were supposedly baptized didn't seem to know a single thing about the church...they didn't even recognize us as missionaries.

Forgot to mention, there was a HUGE reactivation push when I was on my mission. There were thousands and thousands of people that were supposedly baptized and never confirmed. Elder Eyring came to the mission to talk specifically about this issue. We never got anybody "back to church", 'cause I don't believe most of these people had ever been to church in the first place.

Sounds like the baptizing missionaries were getting beaten/forced into getting the numbers up so they went to the phone book and just entered names and address. Who knows, maybe it was the mission president or APs doing it. But it does appear they were real people. Strange. Very strange.

My MP, for reasons only known to him, took it upon himself to eliminate the truly dead wood on the records in his field. We had thousands of names who had never had any ordinance other than baptism. This was in Germany in the 70s and they were the children of people who nominally converted to Mormonism right after the war to get free aid. Once they were back on their feet, poof. Something more than 90% of the people contacted did not know who the Mormons were, much less that they were members thereof!

Prez had to cut his effort short, though, because he seriously pissed off 50 E North Temple by having the dubious notoriety of ex-ing far more names on record than were brought in through baptisms in his entire term.

Just imagine, in another fifty years, when all of those "converts" start hitting the magical age of a hundred and ten. It's going to be mass chaos at the church. They may have to start counting people until they are a hundred and seventy in order to hide it.

A typical ward on my mission would have 600 members on paper, 50 or so active, another 50 or so inactive that still considered themselves mormon and 500 that were ex mormons. I baptised whole families that never went to church ever again after being baptised. Families that I would ask about later and be told - no they said they are never going back to church, they only got baptised because they liked you and wanted to make you happy.

ASteve, that is unreal. Those numbers!!! But they sure like YOU.

Taylorsville, UT.

Approximately 405 to 410 on the rolls.

Actual (no inflation) SM weekly attendance, approximately 175.

Reported SM weekly attendance, anywhere from 195 to 230.

The ward I went to had 650 on the list.
It was a good Sunday if 125 showed up. It was usually around 90 people. At least 1/4 of those were kids. Another quarter were there in hopes of handouts. The rest were mostly retirees. About 5 families that were the diehards.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2013 11:02PM by madalice.

I'm currently the ward clerk in my ward. We have around 400 members on the roster but average SM attendance is between 140-150. I live in the Atlanta area.

My last ward in the heart of the prosperous mormon Sandy benches had about 200-250 on average. This, from a ward three streets by four streets, with less than a dozen non-mo homes. (Yes we kept a blown up map with intel on each one!) Activity was a little over 50%.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2013 10:14AM by rodolfo.

I have not been to church in Utah for a long time, so I don't remember the activity level. However, do remember the activity level in Seoul from my mission. There were always hundreds of names on the rolls, but a normal sized ward had maybe 30 total members in attendance. Huge wards made it to 60. There were lots of branches with much less than 30, especially in the areas outside Seoul.

When I would actually take count as ward sec.

We would usually have about 125 and that counted shutin's in Missouri

One college town we lived in we had 3 wards but everytime the ward hit average of 200 they would split it into another ward.

I'm wondering if that is the norm. Not just something I have observed outside the Morrador.

Cumorah Foundation did say, in fact, that actual real church attendance of full-up active people did not constituted more than 2.5 million, and that there were another 2 million considered "active" because they broke the Mormons' threshold for "active" by attending sacrament meeting at least once per month.

On my mission in central america I was in an extreme rural location. I was Branch pres. and there were close to 400 names on the list. We were lucky if 3 people showed up each week for church, all from the same family.

When we moved into our cul-de-sac 19 year ago, it was full of active, devout LDS families. Now, of the 8 homes here, only 1 family is active. I hear comments from LDS friends and neighbors about the low attendance numbers.

Things are NOT well in or outside of Zion!

I'm not sure about where I live now, but when I lived in Hong Kong, there were about 20,000 members on the books, but only about 3,000 considered active (15% activity rate), but they still built that super expensive Temple there.

Were you in that building by the ferry terminal where half the ward in sacrament meeting can't see the other half?

squeebee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Were you in that building by the ferry terminal
> where half the ward in sacrament meeting can't see
> the other half?


Ha ha! I forgot about that! I visited that building, but did not attend there.

Only visited once, can't remember if I was TBM at the time or not.

I haven't attended for about 4 years, but before that I was in the bishopric in my Texas ward, and we had about 450 members with a weekly attendance of 110-125. Our Texas stake covers an area of 100 miles by 180 miles (yes, that's miles, you Utah folks) that includes 5 wards and 6 branches. When I was on the high council I visited all of the units each year and attendance throughout the stake was pretty consistent at about 25%. That was about 10 years ago.

When I was the Mission President's secretary in Bolivia 35 years ago we did a major research project compiling church statistics for the entire country. It was pathetic. While there were some thriving wards in the larger cities, many remote branches had literally disappeared and no longer met. Overall for the country, attendance was 10%, with MANY, MANY meaningless records of names of people that had disappeared (or never existed?). I was floored when I heard, years later, that a temple was being built in Cochabamba. Maybe things changed.

My El Paso stake in the 60s-70s was roughly 400x200 miles. From Lordsburg to Carlsbad E/W, from Van Horn to Truth or Consequences N/S. Being a high counselor meant real expenditure in travel and gas time alone. I'm sure they were blessed mightily for it. <polite cough> For conferences we would put up members from outlying areas on Sat night.

I don't know how many people go to my home ward over here (since I haven't been to church in about 20 years and it's been 12 years since I last lived in my hometown), but I do know that two more wards have been added since I left. It seems that every 10 years or so, the lines get redrawn and people are forced to move into different wards (begrudgingly).

In fact, about a year ago my FB page was blown up by friends and family members who were upset that they were being told that the wards were getting too big and that some of them would have to drive over 13 miles to another church building. Now, I live in a small town and let's just say that 2 miles is more miles than most of the members were willing to drive to church. Some people even began to say that they would stay in their old wards if they were one of the ones who were being forced to leave.

In response, their bishops told them to do as they were told or else they would be punished (though I'm not sure with what). It was a huge scandal and, being an exmember, it was very comical to read posts from all of the defiant TBMs out there. LOL.