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Here’s an article written by a Presbyterian. It broaches on a few things we’ve been discussing here. It implies that the LDS Church is growing and retaining youth better than other evangelical christians for reasons of family size, commitment etcetera. I don’t see much of the contents of the article rooted in solid numbers or research. The author seems to have used some statistics to support the superior growth of the LDS church, and then postulated reasons. But they are reasosn I’ve heard before.
Comments welcome:
SilentDawning wrote:Here’s an article written by a Presbyterian. It broaches on a few things we’ve been discussing here. It implies that the LDS Church is growing and retaining youth better than other evangelical christians for reasons of family size, commitment etcetera…I don’t see much of the contents of the article rooted in solid numbers or research.
The author seems to have used some statistics to support the superior growth of the LDS church, and then postulated reasons.But they are reasosn I’ve heard before…Comments welcome: The reason I’m not impressed by this is because we put all this effort into missionary work and reactivation but I’ve never had Baptists knock on my door trying to convert me and yet there are still something like 16 million Southern Baptists in the US alone compared to our 6 million in the US (and something like two-thirds or more are inactive). If you report short-term growth then maybe it sounds impressive but if the LDS Church was really growing that well year after year and retaining very many of the new members then it seems like it should have already passed up the Baptists, Methodists, etc. by now. That’s why I think this reported growth is mostly a mirage and the total membership numbers have typically coincided with general population growth so it doesn’t look like the Church is really gaining much in terms of overall market share. What happens is that the Church is basically counting a large number of members that don’t even self-identify as Mormons anymore until they would have been 110 years old.
Maybe other churches also count large numbers of less-committed members that belong to their particular denomination mostly in name only but what bothers me about these misleading statistics is not so much any blatant inaccuracy or intentional dishonesty as much as that I think it gives Church leaders a false sense of security. Basically I think some Church leaders have the mistaken impression that they don’t need to worry that much about what any “lost” members think unless they “repent” because they can supposedly be easily replaced by new converts and children raised in the Church so everything is supposedly right on track and progressing as expected. However, living in Utah I have seen first-hand just how many completely inactive and uninterested members there really are and on my mission in Brazil I saw how the vast majority of new converts there do not remain active very long. Personally, I think the Church would be lucky if one out of ten new members counted each year end up sticking around for very long and the best predictors of who will “endure to the end” are mostly whether or not they are already married to another active Mormon and whether they were already active last year.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Personally, I think the Church would be lucky if one out of ten new members counted each year end up sticking around for very long and the best predictors of who will “endure to the end” are mostly whether or not they are already married to another active Mormon and whether they were already active last year.
1 in 10? ?? Don’t you think that sounds too low? Which country are you thinking of when you think about that?
Heber13 wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:Personally, I think the Church would be lucky if one out of ten new members counted each year end up sticking around for very long and the best predictors of who will “endure to the end” are mostly whether or not they are already married to another active Mormon and whether they were already active last year.
1 in 10? ?? Don’t you think that sounds too low? Which country are you thinking of when you think about that?
I wasn’t trying to make it sound like only 1 out of 10 counted members are active at any one time, it could actually be 18-40%. What I meant was that of the 300 thousand or so “new” members added each year worldwide my guess is that most of the adult converts will not be active even a year later and the majority of the children counted as members will not remain active as adults. Even if my estimate is low I definitely don’t believe these new members represent anywhere near a viable one-to-one replacement for fully integrated members the way some people assume when looking at these statistics.
Basically the Church depends heavily on the Mormon traditions of full-time missions, temple marriage, etc. being successfully passed from one generation to the next to sustain a stable number of active members because the long-term retention of converts is so low. Essentially what I think is happening now is that the inactivity rates are slowly increasing so even though the total membership numbers continue to go up the number of functioning wards or branches is not increasing at nearly the same rate. Well at some point many of these inactive members’ children or grandchildren will not be LDS anymore so that’s one reason why you can’t just look at the short-term growth rates and use that data to project that there will be 260 million Mormons by 2080 if nothing changes.
Quote:Basically the Church depends heavily on the Mormon traditions of full-time missions, temple marriage, etc. being successfully passed from one generation to the next to sustain a stable number of active members because the long-term retention of converts is so low.
You know I hadn’t thought of it in that way before. My experience with friends across the world is a disconnection from long time traditions of thier church or culture. Those that I have known to maintain traditions in thier culture mostly have done so out of a feeling of obligation then a want or desire. This probably applies to our church as well. Many are feeling the need inside to find thier own path or traditions when I talk to them. Does anyone have experience of thier own want to chime in on this with regards to LDS. I remember doing many pioneer activities growing up in the church family ward. Now I rarely see them as a example. Anyone else’s experience or thoughts?
There is wisdom and growth available if we look at things and don’t automatically go to the negative, critical interpretation. I’ve done some research in the past about activity rates, and two things surprised me – although they probably shouldn’t have:
1) Our activity rate generally is at least as high as and often higher than that of most other Christian denominations. Seriously, we are “beating the Baptists” in measurable, important ways – so dismissing the recognition of and attempt to analyze and explain it misses a valuable opportunity for understanding.
It’s important during a faith crisis of any kind not to ignore stuff that actually can be “testimony building” or just help balance the force.2) Our activity rate is higher right now than it has been at pretty much any time earlier in our history – even as it’s not as high as I want it to be, it’s WAY too low with certain sub-groups and all certainly is not well in Zion. Furthermore, if you remove the effects of the baseball baptisms and other shoddy missionary practices of especially the late 70’s and early-mid 80’s, the activity rate is much closer to the top end of the standard estimates than the bottom end. We lost close to a generation of new converts in some countries and are battling the consequences of our actions into the next generation now – but the activity rate without those obvious, serious cases is higher than most members realize, especially in comparison to other religions.
Quote:It implies that the LDS Church is growing and retaining youth better than other evangelical christians for reasons of family size, commitment etcetera.
I was talking with a youth leader in the car back from the temple. We were discussing this matter, and I said my local presbyterian church would die out within twenty years (I visited it around Easter). We were discussing the groups which retain their youth, or some kind of hold on them, the best.
I mentioned the Roman Catholics, who have their own schools, and invest a lot in youth.
He mentioned the Jehovahs Witnesses, and said they had a good youth program. I know little about it.
The only presbyterian church doing well around here is the happy clappy one.
I personally think a lot of mainstream churches are too vague and wishy washy about things, whereas people need something more solid to look to. I’m not talking about fundamentalism, but we do need to be able to say, “we have to do x, y & z” rather than “we might have to do x, y & z, but it doesn’t matter and we’re not sure.”
Think of it like a marriage. If a woman said to me, “I might love you, but I’m not really sure.” or “I don’t know” all the time, she might be being honest, but I wouldn’t want to marry her.
Forgotten_Charity wrote:Quote:Basically the Church depends heavily on the Mormon traditions of full-time missions, temple marriage, etc. being successfully passed from one generation to the next to sustain a stable number of active members because the long-term retention of converts is so low.
You know I hadn’t thought of it in that way before. My experience with friends across the world is a disconnection from long time traditions of thier church or culture.
Those that I have known to maintain traditions in thier culture mostly have done so out of a feeling of obligation then a want or desire.This probably applies to our church as well. Many are feeling the need inside to find thier own pathor traditions when I talk to them… I think that’s exactly how it works at this point; the Church has found that it can get many people to do things they don’t really want to simply by asking them to so it has continued to exploit this approach for all it’s worth. Active Church members have basically been socialized to get used to believing and doing what they are expected to by other active members. It definitely depends more on a sense of obligation than a measure of personal of satisfaction with the Church and its doctrines. I think that’s one of the main reasons why the retention rates for converts and young single adults are so much lower than for children/youth and married members because they end up having to make more decisions mostly on their own but if members are constantly worried about what other active members they need to live with think about them then it often provides enough pressure to influence their decisions in favor of the Church.
Even if this current approach has worked alright so far from the Church’s perspective I don’t believe it will work nearly as well from now on for a few different reasons. For one thing there used to be more LDS families on average with 5 or more children and I saw cases where most of them ended up remaining active as adults. But now I am seeing more active members with 3 or fewer children and in many cases none of them end up being active as adults. So if this trend of fewer children on average continues as expected then it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing net losses compounded in each successive generation where we used to always see net gains compounded before and I doubt that the new converts will be nearly enough to make up for it.
Also, I think negative information about the Church on the internet is causing more investigators to never join the Church than before and more members that would have remained active in the past to lose faith suddenly and feel like victims to the point that they don’t want anything to do with the Church anymore and they often want to de-convert others as well. I’m not denying the Church’s relative success and growth so far I just think they should pay more attention to the reasons why so many members are inactive and at least try to make the experience of individual members as positive as possible not simply for the sake of maximum sustained growth but also as a harm reduction strategy when some members are inevitably lost and to avoid leaving so many inactive members with a negative overall impression of the Church.
DA, I’m just going to say that I disagree with you about the motivation of most active members of the Church – and of its leaders. SamBee wrote:Think of it like a marriage. If a woman said to me, “I might love you, but I’m not really sure.” or “I don’t know” all the time, she might be being honest, but I wouldn’t want to marry her.
I like the way you explain factors we consider when making big commitments, Sam.Old-Timer wrote:DA, I’m just going to say that I disagree with you about the motivation of most active members of the Church – and of its leaders.
I’m not saying Church leaders are intentionally manipulating Church members into doing things that make most of them miserable most of the time; I don’t believe that at all. I understand that many Church members are perfectly comfortable with the Church exactly the way it is and genuinely like it for the most part. I guess I just think that even those that really like most things about the Church will still typically have one or more things they don’t really want to do but they go along with anyway mostly because they believe they are supposed to. For one it could be tithing and for another it could be home teaching. I’m not saying this is necessary bad or a completely wrong reason to do something, in fact I actually believe some of the most noble behavior in the history of the human race has been done entirely out of a sense of duty when people didn’t necessarily feel like it. If you honestly believe that God expects you do something then what could be a better motivation than that? My main concern is that maybe the Church has been relying on this almost exclusively in a few too many cases where I’m not sure you can really call it good for individual members or even the organization as a whole.
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