- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
We know the LDS exaggerates its figures, but clearly we’re in a better position than Scientology. We have more missionaries than they have active members! Quote:Now, keep in mind, for all of Scientology’s nonsense about “expansion” with its unneeded Ideal Orgs in places like Auckland and Bogotá, all evidence suggests that Scientology is actually shrinking fast. Instead of the millions of members that the church has always claimed, the real number has been in the tens of thousands. Last year, we heard from Paul Burkhart, a high-level executive who defected in 2013 and who had daily access to Scientology enrollment figures around the world. He told us that there were fewer than 20,000 active church members on the planet.
Religions have a lot to gain from exaggerating the numbers. It’s the bandwagon effect. Have you ever read the book, “When Prophecy Fails”? It was written in 1956, as a psychological study on a Doomsday Cult. A couple of guys infiltrated this cult, which held that the end of the world would come on a specific day. Aliens would “beam up” the membership, to save them from the complete anhiliation of the rest of humanity.
Of course, the day came and went and nothing happened. So did the members recognize it as a scam and disband? One did. But the rest of the group, including their Prophetess did two things:
1. It was revealed that their faith saved the rest of the word from total destruction. The Aliens were appeased.
2. Despite before being a seculded and secretive group, they launched a massive “missionary” campaign. As the psychologist Dr. Festinger wrote, “If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must after all be correct.”
The more people believe in a system, the lesser the effects of cognitive dissonance on those people. Even further, the more people you THINK believe in a system, the less dissonance you will feel.
The church has solid records as far as membership goes. We record just about every baptism and that gets reported to church headquarters. The question then becomes how many of those members are still active and alive. The church’s active statistic is very liberal IMO (1 SM per 3 months) and inflates the statistics.
There may be 15+ million members, but probably only about 10-12 million self-identify as LDS, 5-7 million are actually active, 3.5-5 million hold temple recommends, and 4-5 million hold callings (or maybe the better way to frame this would be ‘have had a calling in the last 6 months’).
If you gave me a couple days with total API/DB access to the church’s records, I could probably scrape some interesting statistics.
An easy way to get a rough estimate is for all of us to ask for those statistics locally. And then aggregate them here. You can piece some approximations together without too much trouble. Go to church a few times and count sacrament meeting attendance. In our Ward, it fluctuates between 80 and 112, our HPGL told us recently. He also told us we have 700 people on our ward records. Therefore, in our Ward, we have an activity rate of between 11% and 16%. I know this is a more conservative estimate than the church uses, but it does give you an idea. And in my mind, a pretty clear one. Now, our records are not entirely clean, nor are we measuring it like the church does, but it gives you an idea of how much energy the local people are putting into their church membership. If our records are inaccuarate because someone moved out of our Ward, and didn’t advise the church of their new address, that’s a pretty good indication they aren’t active isn’t it?
What is your average sacrament meeting attendance in your Ward? What does the clerk say are the total number of people on your Ward records?Sacrament meeting Attendance/Total members on Ward List
I wonder if there is an easy way of getting a total from lds.org for your ward…
It’s clear our membership is in better shape than Scientology, but probably less so than Catholicism. We’ve got a great EQ president, who sends out an email to the Quorum each week, covering the highlights of the lesson, providing a way to report HT online, and also giving out class statistics. As of last week, we have 62 EQ members, with only 14 in attendance. That gives us a 22% active rate. The number of attending usually fluctuates between 10-15. Speaking with the bishop not too long ago, I heard that the ward is suffering from around 80% being “less active”, according to attendance records. I also had access to that data during my mission in California. In most areas, I’d say between 1 in 7-8 were inactive. It does vary pretty heavily by area. Also, do you know if “children of record” are part of the Church’s reported statistic (those who were blessed as babies, but never joined). They did “count” in the areas where I served.
SilentDawning wrote:
If our records are inaccuarate because someone moved out of our Ward, and didn’t advise the church of their new address, that’s a pretty good indication they aren’t active isn’t it?
The most fun I’ve ever had with a calling, was as a ward clerk, given the assignment of “finding those who do not wish to be found”. I ended up speaking to some very angry relatives, on multiple occasions.
A while ago I looked into Tonga since the church talks about how many members they have over there. According to this, http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/tonga Their membership numbers show 64,156 members in Tonga. There’s no date given for this info.
According to this website,
https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010/148900.htm Census data from 2006 in Tonga, show 16.8% of Tongans self-identifying as Mormon. There were 102,000 people living in Tonga at the time so 16.8% of that is 17,136 members self identifying as Mormons in 2006.
I was going to answer the question in the subject with just “Yes”, but I can’t just leave it at that. I do think they have names listed, but we all know how many inactives get “lost”. And I think they keep those folks on the rolls until they age out at 100. I can see not nuking their record before they turn 100 in case they do come back. But I think if you have lost contact with someone for say 10 years, they shouldn’t be counted in your numbers. So I don’t think there is outright dishonesty in the numbers, but I think they take the most liberal accounting they can in order to make the numbers be as high as possible (wow – the church being liberal!!). There may be even some of the top leaders might not even agree with some of the accounting, but just like in any big organization – you let sleeping dogs lie (no pun intended). You are just going to kick a hornets nest if you want to change the counting and make the numbers look worse (even if more realistic). It is easiest to turn a blind eye and go focus your efforts elsewhere.
Always Thinking wrote:
A while ago I looked into Tonga since the church talks about how many members they have over there. According to this,http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/tonga Their membership numbers show 64,156 members in Tonga. There’s no date given for this info.
According to this website,
https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010/148900.htm Census data from 2006 in Tonga, show 16.8% of Tongans self-identifying as Mormon. There were 102,000 people living in Tonga at the time so 16.8% of that is 17,136 members self identifying as Mormons in 2006.
Those sound like reasinable figures. The Polynesians have taken well to Mormonism perhaps more so than any other group of people.
LookingHard wrote:
I was going to answer the question in the subject with just “Yes”, but I can’t just leave it at that.I do think they have names listed, but we all know how many inactives get “lost”. And I think they keep those folks on the rolls until they age out at 100. I can see not nuking their record before they turn 100 in case they do come back. But I think if you have lost contact with someone for say 10 years, they shouldn’t be counted in your numbers. So I don’t think there is outright dishonesty in the numbers, but I think they take the most liberal accounting they can in order to make the numbers be as high as possible (wow – the church being liberal!!). There may be even some of the top leaders might not even agree with some of the accounting, but just like in any big organization – you let sleeping dogs lie (no pun intended). You are just going to kick a hornets nest if you want to change the counting and make the numbers look worse (even if more realistic). It is easiest to turn a blind eye and go focus your efforts elsewhere.
112…
By the way I have been doing enquiries into our elderly members and we did have an inactive member who lived well past a hundred! Inactive partly due to mobility.
Fwiw, I did a simple study of activity rates across Christianity. The LDS rate consensus was about 30%, give or take a few points, which was near the top of the list. Pretty much all denominations are struggling in the “spiritual but not religious” US society. Activity was measured pretty much the same way among denominations, with only subtle differences for most.
Exaggerated, as in lower than reported? Almost certainly – but not out of the ballpark with regard to religious membership reporting across the board. Some Protestant churches use a “once saved, always saved” approach, and they often include people who attended one revival and “accepted Jesus” at that meeting.
Old Timer wrote:
Exaggerated, as in lower than reported? Almost certainly – but not out of the ballpark with regard to religious membership reporting across the board. Some Protestant churches use a “once saved, always saved” approach, and they often include people who attended one revival and “accepted Jesus” at that meeting.
Works for me! But regrettably not a good business model.
My original post was really intended as a comparison with Scientology rather than a general topic on membership. Membership activity has been discussed a lot… this is a more unusual comparison perhaps. The Ideal Orgs are perhaps their equivalent of temples. They have outlets, if you will in many parts of the world, and the ideal ones are the ones which have had money pumped into them. While they are very good at snagging celebrities – much better than we are – they have no heartlands and their missionary program is less well thought out. They also have a degree of notoreity that we don’t. The common public perception round here is that Mormons are gullible fools, and in a cult, but that Scientology is downright dangerous.
The outlay for progression in Scientology is huge… I think we’re talking well over $100,000. In contrast, you can be poor and be an endowed LDS. They also have little or no support for members who get into dire straits.
The main thrust for Scientology is also quite different. They have endless therapeutic sessions – the core derives from an endless series of TR type interviews while wired up to a lie detector type device. They also use practises tantamount to hypnosis.
If you go inactive or hostile against the Church of Scientology, you will get bombarded with attention in a way the LDS don’t.
Scientology is a much heavier commitment than the LDS.
Quote:What is your average sacrament meeting attendance in your Ward? What does the clerk say are the total number of people on your Ward records?
Sacrament meeting Attendance/Total members on Ward List
For the record, in my Mormon belt ward, we have about 60% attendance with 300 members in the ward. Given that our area is pretty small geographically and nearly everyone is Mormon we can keep pretty good track of members (not the case in a lot of wards I know)
The numbers may be exaggerated a bit in public reports but I’m pretty sure that somewhere someone knows the whole picture. More than sacrament meeting attendance, you could look at Melchizedek priesthood holders as well as current recommend holders. When I was ward membership clerk, I was surprised at who wasn’t current with their recommend. Activity in the church is probably a fairly complex construct and I don’t know that sacrament meeting attendance really tells us the whole story
^^This.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.