http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2012/11/lds_leadership_chart_how_the_mormon_hierarchy_is_organized.html

Check out this infographic, this thread could go most anywhere, but I do have one primary point.

Check out the leadership in contrast (sterile, uniform) to the membership (colorful, more diverse)

Of course anyone who knows me by now knows I must say there are more living former Mormons than living Mormons. There are only 3 to 5 million living Mormons that claim membership including sinners, Jack Mormons, and TBMs. If you were baptized, but consider yourself Catholic--you're not a Mormon (that account for about 3 million Central and South Americans the Mormons claims as part of their 14 plus million.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2013 03:09AM by gentlestrength.

http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_lds.html

This is a great reference site on religious numbers and demographics. I want to drill down more and educate myself about the data sources, looks like I might disagree with a few things, but I really like the detail and they have an understanding of the complexity of documenting religious membership numbers.

By the way, Utah is the #1 State in the Union for donating to charity. Take away the Mormon church as a charity, bet that number sinks to the 40-50 section. When will that misnomer of The Mormon church being identified as a charity end?

http://www.adherents.com/largecom/lds_dem.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2013 03:14AM by gentlestrength.

I agree. I wouldn't be suprised if Utah dropped to dead last if you took out the church. Who has money to donate to worthy causes when you're supporting the church?

http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/search/label/Census%20Numbers

Great insight into how Mormons view discrepancies of counts in South America can be found in comments.

The data pretty much shows 1 million Brazilians are counted by Mormons as members that do not consider themselves Mormon.

Keep this link available next time you see an article or report that claims LDS membership at 14.7 million and growing, post it in the comments sections. Ask them if they are counting the 1 million missing Brazilians!

Scroll down and you'll find a million Mormon Mexicans missing from the 2010 Mexican census.

That's down to 12.7 million members and shrinking.

Let's make sure this data is shared with the media when they use the LDS church numbers in their reporting and blogging.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2013 09:01PM by gentlestrength.

Check out this quote on Mexican membership issues. They won't talk to them to help them clean up their records, so they still count them. Brilliant!!!

Our membership won't talk to us, Meet the Mormons!


Brandon Plewe said...
The big issue with this (and has been for 50 years) is who decides exactly who gets dropped and by what standard? My experience as an EQP in an inner city branch was that most of the people on the "really really inactive" list wouldn't talk to us, so we couldn't officially determine their willingness to stay on the list. Also, we were instructed *not* to suggest or encourage people to request their name being removed. Many felt they were no longer mormons, but didn't want to bother helping us clean up our records, they just wanted us to leave them alone.

This is hilarious.

Found that post in the comments section of the Mexican article.

This link documents two census from Brazil and Mexico and over 2 million people that Mormons count as members that do not consider themselves members. The Mormons know many of them don't want to be Mormon or contacted by Mormons but keep them on the records.

This is not a faith conversation with TBMs and the media this is a conversation about the ethics of the Mormon culture.

I think it is time well spent to engage them on this point whenever the opportunity presents.

Why do Mormons count as members, people that reject Mormonism?

What's their answer?
Take me off your membership, do not contact me any more.

Answer: we have a policy and process you must follow to resign, that we will not tell you so that we can keep in our active count to create an illusion for Utahns that Mormonism is more than 3 to 5 million people and growing fast--did you see how many missionaries we've got out there?

Once you have a tattoo it is almost impossible to remove the ink.
Same with baptism!

If I ever start a cult we are going to have baptisms in ink. You'll be marked for weeks afterwards.