59 Percent of Millennials Raised in a Church Have Dropped Out—And They’re Trying to Tell Us Why

However, as Ray has often pointed out, the LDS church often fares better at retaining its youth than many churches. This may be precisely because we have rejected the consumer driven model of church. When you are trying to attract parishioners based on how your church programs add value to their lives – it can be easy to drift from current consumer tastes and generational gaps. The LDS church does not seem to be trying to attract people so much as present a program that, if true, is vital to your salvation…Perhaps the LDS church can implement some of these suggestions without seeming to pander to the whims of changing generational expectations. After all, church does not have to be painful to be true.

I identify with this excerpt so much. To be honest, I see the lds church’s rejection of the consumer driven model, or emphasis of “truth” and downplay of “contributing to wellbeing” as greatly increasing the harm it causes.

I agree with ydeve, personally I think they should follow more of a consumer driven model. If the Church is still retaining youth/young adults better than some other churches then my guess is that this is mostly in spite of not doing more to reflect a consumer driven model, not because of it. It looks like the Church currently relies heavily on things like full-time missions, members getting married to another active member relatively young, a relatively high level of social/family pressure, and a sense of obligation based on the belief that these teachings are “true”, right, from God, etc. in order to retain followers. I don’t see how any of that directly precludes at least trying to provide a better and more attractive product that would be easier to sell than LDS Mormonism currently is for practical purposes. Also I’m not sure that sheer numbers should be considered the best possible measure of “success” in the first place. For example, probably the best religious group at retaining young adults world-wide right now would be the Muslims but is that really the sort of group the LDS Church would want to emulate more closely even if they could?

In any case, it looks like business as usual is just not going to deliver the results they were used to seeing in 70s, 80s, and 90s anymore. In a leaked document Church leaders estimated that in January 2004 only 35% of young single adults (18-30) were active in the US and Canada. As far as I can tell their proposed solution was to try to keep track of these members better and try to establish more “accountability” to local leaders. Well only a few years later (2008) in the leaked video about young single adults they said that only about 30% were active in North America and 20% worldwide. After that they lowered the mission age limits but personally I doubt that has done much to reverse these trends and now even full-time missions and temple marriage look like they are not as much of a factor in helping assure life-long activity in the Church as they used to be because we see many returned missionaries and temple-married members falling away now too largely because of the internet discrediting the Church’s truth claims and providing social proof/validation that there are many others that don’t believe in the Church, that it is alright or even preferable to leave the Church, etc.

I think that the church currently has a model where members must sacrifice for their own good in order to fit the church program. Members do not expect their church to bend to changing consumer trends and can be quite proud of this fact. Yes, this model appears to be similar to the model for Muslims. It also appears to be quite effective, especially in areas where your religion is the majority and there can be costs for members who do not conform…

I think the LDS Church is similar to Islam in that there is a certain element of being surrounded by other Mormons that expect you to go along with all these traditional teachings and if not then it’s not alright that makes it harder to go openly “apostate” than it seems like it is for the typical Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc. to just not go back to church if they don’t really care for it. But it seems like the Church should be more different from Islam than it actually is in practice because with Islam it seems like the general idea is that everyone should just submit to the will of God (as they see it) and if Sharia law is strictly enforced then so be it whereas the LDS Church has traditionally taught that it is important for people to have the freedom to choose for themselves (at least in theory). Sure this kind of social pressure and outright fear in some cases is fairly effective in getting people to go along with the group as long as it can be maintained in sufficient levels but I’m not sure it is a sustainable approach to rely on so much anymore now that the internet makes it so easy for members to discredit the Church’s truth claims and see that they aren’t the only ones that doubt or don’t believe this, often before they ever get very invested in the Church to begin with.