Active Membership of the Church

[SoyLeche]

A while back I got to wondering about the 16 Million or so number that keeps getting quoted as the worldwide membership of the church. I understand where it comes from, but it seems a bit misleading.

On my mission it was, quite frankly, fairly easy to baptize people. Getting them to stick around for the long term was the hard part. I spent plenty of time in different areas going through the ward list and trying to find inactive members - in some areas upwards of 90% of the list.

So, what would the actual, active membership number be?

I think a better metric (and the best one to measure the growth of the church by) is the number of stakes. There has to be some minimum threshold of active membership for a stake to be organized. So, I did a quick back of the envelope calculation.

In my experience, each ward tends to have between 200-300 active members (in the places I've lived in the US. Much smaller in a lot of international places, but let's get an upper limit by using the higher numbers).

Stakes tend to have 8-10 wards in them, so that puts a stake's active membership at 1600-3000 members. Call it 2000 for a good average.

At the end of 2018 there were 3,383 stakes. So, that makes somewhere on the order of 6.7 million. I recognize that there are many people that live outside of where stakes are organized, but I'd have a hard time putting the active membership of the church at over 8 million, so about half of the stated number. That's actually higher than I expected.

I found this analysis that puts it at around 30%. They probably had better methodology than my quick calculation. It's a bit dated though - 2014.

What are the takeaways from this? I'm not sure. It's just something interesting I thought I'd share.

 

[Katzpur]

Somehow, this post sounds like it was written by an actuary or some other such odd-duck.

Clearly, there are not 16 million active members of the Church, and activity probably varies from one part of the world to another. I'm not sure how much it really matters, though. The Catholic Church counts all baptized Catholics, even though its activity rate is probably even less than ours. We could probably come up with a pretty accurate number of active members, simply because of the way our wards and stakes are formed along geographic lines. With Catholics and especially Protestants, congregations seem to be more fluid, making getting accurate "active member" counts more difficult. If you don't like the preacher in your congregation, you simply stop going there and drive an extra couple of miles to a congregation where you have a better fit. And if you live in a small town where there's no Baptist Church, you may feel that the Lutheran Church a half a block from your house will serve your spiritual needs just as well. Until we can all find a consistent way to count "active" (i.e. practicing) members, you're comparing apples to oranges no matter what numbers you use. Also, church attendance isn't necessarily the only criteria that would measure commitment. I know of people who actually do have a testimony, but just don't enjoy going to church. Should they be counted as Mormons or not?

 

[SoyLeche]

I’m not really trying to compare anything. Just bringing up something I found interesting.

Yeah, it probably doesn’t add much to the conversation, although I do get a bit annoyed when the raw number is bandied about. The number of units is a better metric for growth - as long as the criteria for creating units stays constant.

As far as I’m concerned, if someone considers themselves a member of the church they should be counted as such. That’s an even more difficult number to get, but it’s probably closer to the 8M than the 16M.

 

[dianaiad]

I’m not really trying to compare anything. Just bringing up something I found interesting.

Yeah, it probably doesn’t add much to the conversation, although I do get a bit annoyed when the raw number is bandied about. The number of units is a better metric for growth - as long as the criteria for creating units stays constant.

As far as I’m concerned, if someone considers themselves a member of the church they should be counted as such. That’s an even more difficult number to get, but it’s probably closer to the 8M than the 16M.

According to PEW research (and other studies, but I'm going with PEW for the numbers right now) Mormons have made up 1.6% of the population of the USA for the last 12 years. During that same time, the people who self-identify as Christian has gone from 52% to 48%. Activity rates (those who attend church at least once a week) are very different: again, according to PEW, US Mormons are twice as likely to be 'active' (see above description of what 'active' means) than other Christians. Mormons go up to 67% active, (meaning that 33% are inactive...) while evangelical Christians have a 43 % activity rate, and Mainline Protestant and Orthodox Protestant have 20% activity rates. Catholics have a dismal 16% activity rate.

Also, just as a point of interest, not terribly applicable, the more likely a Christian (of almost any stripe) is to get a university degree or graduate degree, the less likely that Christian is to be a regular church goer, or even to claim to BE Christian. However, if one is LDS, that trend is reversed. The more education a Latter-day saint has, the more likely s/he is to stay active. In fact, it's the only religious group of which that can be said.

Are we losing members? Yes. We are. Are we losing them faster than we gain new ones? No. We are still growing by about 2% per year. Do many of us 'go inactive?" Yep. Look at LDS.org and see just how many programs there are for reactivating 'less active' members. In fact, around here the missionaries are just as, if not more, involved in that than with teaching new converts.

I'm getting a little curious about you, SoyLeche. I've been debating anti-Mormons on debate forums for YEARS. Many, many years, and you are...more gently than some, but still...bringing up the anti-Mormon memes as if you had read their talking points.

 

[SoyLeche]

According to PEW research (and other studies, but I'm going with PEW for the numbers right now) Mormons have made up 1.6% of the population of the USA for the last 12 years. During that same time, the people who self-identify as Christian has gone from 52% to 48%. Activity rates (those who attend church at least once a week) are very different: again, according to PEW, US Mormons are twice as likely to be 'active' (see above description of what 'active' means) than other Christians. Mormons go up to 67% active, (meaning that 33% are inactive...) while evangelical Christians have a 43 % activity rate, and Mainline Protestant and Orthodox Protestant have 20% activity rates. Catholics have a dismal 16% activity rate.

Also, just as a point of interest, not terribly applicable, the more likely a Christian (of almost any stripe) is to get a university degree or graduate degree, the less likely that Christian is to be a regular church goer, or even to claim to BE Christian. However, if one is LDS, that trend is reversed. The more education a Latter-day saint has, the more likely s/he is to stay active. In fact, it's the only religious group of which that can be said.

Are we losing members? Yes. We are. Are we losing them faster than we gain new ones? No. We are still growing by about 2% per year. Do many of us 'go inactive?" Yep. Look at LDS.org and see just how many programs there are for reactivating 'less active' members. In fact, around here the missionaries are just as, if not more, involved in that than with teaching new converts.

I'm getting a little curious about you, SoyLeche. I've been debating anti-Mormons on debate forums for YEARS. Many, many years, and you are...more gently than some, but still...bringing up the anti-Mormon memes as if you had read their talking points.

you can check my extensive history here if you like.

 

[dianaiad]

you can check my extensive history here if you like.

I will. Right now, I'm worried.

 

[SoyLeche]

According to PEW research (and other studies, but I'm going with PEW for the numbers right now) Mormons have made up 1.6% of the population of the USA for the last 12 years. During that same time, the people who self-identify as Christian has gone from 52% to 48%. Activity rates (those who attend church at least once a week) are very different: again, according to PEW, US Mormons are twice as likely to be 'active' (see above description of what 'active' means) than other Christians. Mormons go up to 67% active, (meaning that 33% are inactive...) while evangelical Christians have a 43 % activity rate, and Mainline Protestant and Orthodox Protestant have 20% activity rates. Catholics have a dismal 16% activity rate.

Also, just as a point of interest, not terribly applicable, the more likely a Christian (of almost any stripe) is to get a university degree or graduate degree, the less likely that Christian is to be a regular church goer, or even to claim to BE Christian. However, if one is LDS, that trend is reversed. The more education a Latter-day saint has, the more likely s/he is to stay active. In fact, it's the only religious group of which that can be said.

Are we losing members? Yes. We are. Are we losing them faster than we gain new ones? No. We are still growing by about 2% per year. Do many of us 'go inactive?" Yep. Look at LDS.org and see just how many programs there are for reactivating 'less active' members. In fact, around here the missionaries are just as, if not more, involved in that than with teaching new converts.

Thanks for the information. I've looked up the Pew study and there is a lot of interesting stuff in there.

This is all US centric though. Activity rates in other parts of the world (particularly in Latin America) are much lower - on the order of 25% according to some research I've seen. Worldwide, the number I've seen in a couple different places is about 30%.

In my particular ward the 67% activity rate seems pretty close to accurate (171 households. Assume about 2.5 people per household. Observation of about 250 people on average in sacrament meeting - so about 60%). I wish I were still ward clerk so I could pull out the numbers more easily.

I'm getting a little curious about you, SoyLeche. I've been debating anti-Mormons on debate forums for YEARS. Many, many years, and you are...more gently than some, but still...bringing up the anti-Mormon memes as if you had read their talking points.

I'm curious what "talking points" you think you have seen. I too have spent plenty of time arguing against anti-Mormons, so I do know their methods fairly well. I've found that activity to be less entertaining now than in my youth. Now I'd rather discuss things with members of the church that I find interesting instead of arguing against the antis.

In this thread, for example, all I've intended to do is argue against the use of a statistic that I find misleading. Assuming retention rates have been constant, the growth rates should still be fairly accurate. The idea for the thread came from Katz mentioning the 16M number in another thread that reminded me of the back-of-the-envelope calculation I had done a couple months ago.

If your faith somehow rests on that number, or if attacking it feels like an attack on your faith, there's not much I can do about that.

 

[dianaiad]

Thanks for the information. I've looked up the Pew study and there is a lot of interesting stuff in there.

This is all US centric though. Activity rates in other parts of the world (particularly in Latin America) are much lower - on the order of 25% according to some research I've seen. Worldwide, the number I've seen in a couple different places is about 30%.

In my particular ward the 67% activity rate seems pretty close to accurate (171 households. Assume about 2.5 people per household. Observation of about 250 people on average in sacrament meeting - so about 60%). I wish I were still ward clerk so I could pull out the numbers more easily.



I'm curious what "talking points" you think you have seen. I too have spent plenty of time arguing against anti-Mormons, so I do know their methods fairly well. I've found that activity to be less entertaining now than in my youth. Now I'd rather discuss things with members of the church that I find interesting instead of arguing against the antis.

In this thread, for example, all I've intended to do is argue against the use of a statistic that I find misleading. Assuming retention rates have been constant, the growth rates should still be fairly accurate. The idea for the thread came from Katz mentioning the 16M number in another thread that reminded me of the back-of-the-envelope calculation I had done a couple months ago.

If your faith somehow rests on that number, or if attacking it feels like an attack on your faith, there's not much I can do about that.

No, it does not, of course.

As for the 'anti-mormon memes' I have mentioned, they seem to go...not necessarily in order of popularity:

"Mormons brag about how fast and how much they grow, but they are losing members and people are going inactive at a terrifying rate; Mormons who talk about how many there are are lying because there aren't even half as many Mormons as they claim."

"Mormon Doctrine isn't found in the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon directly contradicts Mormon doctrine."

"Jesus and Satan are brothers"

There are many more. I'm sure you know what they are.

 

[SoyLeche]

No, it does not, of course.

As for the 'anti-mormon memes' I have mentioned, they seem to go...not necessarily in order of popularity:

"Mormons brag about how fast and how much they grow, but they are losing members and people are going inactive at a terrifying rate; Mormons who talk about how many there are are lying because there aren't even half as many Mormons as they claim."

That one's fair. As far as the 16M number goes, it's even reasonable, IMO.

"Mormon Doctrine isn't found in the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon directly contradicts Mormon doctrine."

"Jesus and Satan are brothers"

There are many more. I'm sure you know what they are.

Not seeing those ones in any recent posting of mine. Seems like I may have discussed the "Jesus and Satan are brothers" thing in the past - but that one is reasonably accurate in the grand scheme of things.

 

[dianaiad]

That one's fair. As far as the 16M number goes, it's even reasonable, IMO.

Not seeing those ones in any recent posting of mine. Seems like I may have discussed the "Jesus and Satan are brothers" thing in the past - but that one is reasonably accurate in the grand scheme of things.

the first time I heard that one 'Jesus and Satan are brothers" my first reaction was 'yeah, so?" I didn't know why everybody thought it was so horrible.

Still don't.

 

[SoyLeche]

the first time I heard that one 'Jesus and Satan are brothers" my first reaction was 'yeah, so?" I didn't know why everybody thought it was so horrible.

Still don't.

I’m not sure why you brought it up then.

I guess I don’t know what the conversation is about anymore...

 

[dianaiad]

I’m not sure why you brought it up then.

I guess I don’t know what the conversation is about anymore...

Don't worry about it.