For the second year in a row, the number of reported members in UK has actually decline. cumorah.com reports the following:

2012 188,462
2013 186,768 -0.9% (-1,694 members)
2014 186,193 -0.3% (- 675 members)

cumorah.com estimates an activity rate of 18%, which would give about 34,000 active members. Looking at the UK birth rate, applying a fudge factor to the number of active members in order to account for semiactive members who have their babies blessed, and there should have been about 400 births in 2013.

Taking a scenario of zero baptisms, there would have to be over 2,000 people being taken off the ranks of either by death or resignation. Rough calculations (similar to the method of calculating the birth rate) would give about 380 for a net gain of 20 people.

There are six missions so approximately 1,200 missionaries. Looking at an impossible hypothetical scenario where there were zero baptisms, there would approximately 1,700 people leaving, or about 5% of the total number of active members. Many of them would likely already be inactive, so the number attending may not change.

Any baptisms would mean that there would have to be additional resignations in order for the net change to remain the same.

Chile also had a net negative growth for 2014, from 583,359 to 579,235. cumorah.com estimates their activity rate at 18%.

As the Morg typically reports increasing numbers of members without taking into consideration of number of active members, it's interesting to see a couple of countries with net negative growth, despite having a large number of missions.

Thanks for your carefully-reasoned analysis. I won't pretend that I fully follow it all, so I'll read it over a few times but it sounds like good news to me. Thanks again.

I didn't go through the math in detail, but basically you can use the national birth rate and multiply by the number of members.

As the numbers of reported members are far too high, and include people who do not consider themselves Mormon any longer or are dead and not reported, I used the number of estimated active members, then multiplied it by an additional number to account for semi-active members who would have their child blessed.

Normally, the number of members increases each year because of the number of reported births is greater than the number of reported deaths, plus the number of baptisms. TSCC doesn't report the actual number of active members so if a country adds 40,000 members and only retains 10,000 members after a year, they still add the full 40,000 to the membership, despite the net increase only being 25% of it.

A good example is Japan, which shows an increase in total members from 127,635 in the year 2000 to 127,635 members in 2014 but a net decrease in wards and branches over the same period from 175 wards and 142 branches in 2000 to the current 158 wards and 109 branches. Obviously the number of active members is decreasing, yet they are reporting increasing numbers of members. This just means that there are more inactives.

You can look at the number of members per unit (wards and branches) to get an idea of the number of active members. The higher the number of members, the more inactives there are. Japan has 478 members per unit, and the likely number of attendance is going to be less than 100 for wards and many fewer for branches. For 2013, cumorah.com reports an average of 81 active members per unit. I think that's still high, so the likely percentage of active members is lower than the 18% which cumorah.com gives.

What is unusual is that the UK has shown two years of actual decrease in reported members. This can only mean that lots of folks are dying or people are actually sending in letters of resignation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2015 04:35AM by outsider.

It's just the beginning. I reckon in about 10 years time we'll see the overall worldwide membership decrease (not just the number of active members, the actual number of members on record). Whatever is happening in the UK will happen in most countries eventually. Especially with mormons having less children, the church being more open about troubling issues now, the missionaries being younger, and so on.

well, I reckon a lot of brits have been exploring the court case that was thrown out, since it was mentioned on the main teatime news a couple of times. I meant to look for more information at the time the case was still ongoing, but it was a good while before I started investigated the details.

Perhaps Tom Phillips' actions have had more effect than he realises? I say this because my husband was talking to the bishop a few months back while helping my brother move house. Bishop asked about daughter's baptism, hubby told him I was having crisis of faith and had been checking out american websites. Hubby told bishop he did not influence me and has no problem with bishop coming to talk to me, bishop said he would, even got new phone number, but he did not. This has pissed off hubby as his father was a protestant minister and would make a point of visiting with those he knew were having problems with their faith.I told hubby that bishop most likely only wanted number to update records and had no intention of talking to me. My TBM family has not broached the subject with me either. In fact, their silence is deafening.

Most converts I saw have not hung around.

Thanks, I understand a little better now.

I was going to suggest that since the UK offices moved to Frankfurt, they may have changed the staff recently and may not know how to massage the figures but then I remembered the UK membership-records staff who moved to Frankfurt are mostly still there. (I know some of them).

Unless, Copolt, having been forced to move to a foreign country maybe they are feeling embittered and less likely to want to massage the figures?

Hi Matt. Your suggestion may have some merit or maybe "Langeweile" or even "Dummheit". Regards.

Yea, and it came to pass that the new office and residence The LDS Church in the UK shall be known upon the records of the land as "Doubting Tom Abbey".

Yea, verily, even the "Crawling Under Over Or Around The Book of Mormon Family" shall live in this house of the Lord along with their servants who shall work with all of their might, mind and strength to prevent a mass apostasy from embarrassing the mother Church in Salt Lake City.

Presiding at Doubting Tom Abbey is Hugh Bonneville International whose "new name" is Robert Crawling, Pearl of Great Price.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2015 06:52AM by cricket.

Ways you can get taken off the church records in the UK:

- Dying (with the church knowing about it)
- Ex-communication
- Resigning
- Being "lost" and turning 110
- Leaving the country

So in the UK the number of people doing one of the above must simply out-weigh the number of people being born, moving into the country or getting baptised.

One factor could be that a lot of members who went inactive and then died without the church knowing decades ago are finally hitting 110 and getting removed.

Another factor could be that with such a high inactivity rate a lot of the new babies of inactive members aren't getting added to the membership figures. Mormons in general are having less children than they used to. That combined with missionary work not being successful in Europe in general, means not many new people will be getting added each year.

I don't see why there would have been an increase in ex-communications, but I could see there having been an increase in deaths and resignations. Also the church in the past years has moved a lot of its employees from the UK to Germany, so that could play a small part too.

I could only guess based on my experience but I realised the Church was actually the cause rather than the solution to my problems.

The church is no support in times of crisis. Many people have lost their employment due to the economic problems (my husband for almost 2 years) and financial stresses are made worse by paying tithing. Members are not real friends so you feel isolated and lonely. Pressure is applied to perform multiple callings and leadership just gets rotated around the same people as very few new members hang around long enough to be able to take over. Temples are far away and members are encouraged to use holiday time to attend week trips so people with young kids struggle to go at all.

And that is before you include the internet which probably finishes most people off.

The church and it's message is becoming irrelevant and not offering any sort of hope for the future unless you want to write off your life here and just aim for eternity.