Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics (New RFM Podcast)

[consiglieri]

A new Radio Free Mormon podcast just went public yesterday.

It is called, "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics."

I didn't want to point attention to it until it went off subscriber only status.

Technically it is parts 1 and 2 of a 3 part series.

Part 3 is still in the works.

In summary:

Part 1 establishes the LDS Church tied its truth claims to its phenomenal rate of growth in decades past.

Part 2 establishes that all the top leadership are aware that the phenomenal growth is over and/or that members are jumping ship like rats off the Titanic.

Part 3 will examine the lengths (and lies) LDS leadership go to in order to address the crisis--said crisis being, what do you do when you have pinned your truth claims to phenomenal growth and that growth drops off to practically nil?

https://mormondiscussionpodcast.org/201 ... tics-pt-1/

https://mormondiscussionpodcast.org/201 ... tics-pt-2/

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[oliver_denom]

It's easy to reconcile.

When the church is growing, the growth is evidence that the church is true.

When the church is shrinking, the shrinkage is evidence that the church is true because the time of the gentiles is fulfilled a la prophesy.

When comparing Morminism to other religions, like Catholicism, it's small size is evidence that the church is true because God only ever leads a remnant.

Except when comparing Utah Mormonism to other restoration churches or "break offs", because then the church is true because it's the biggest.

[consiglieri]

It's easy to reconcile.

The problem the LDS Church has carved itself out on this is that during the decades of fabulous growth, episode 1 shows church presidents (Kimball and Hinckley) among others have publicly and persistently committed themselves to the proposition that the church will continue to grow until it fills the whole world.

This is what shows it is true.

The growth is fulfilling prophecy!

Both ancient and modern!

[oliblish]

I think this article in the Ensign is a great example of Church growth statistics double-speak:

Conversion and Change in Chile

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/10/conv ... e?lang=eng

From the article:

In August 2002, the First Presidency assigned two members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to preside over two Church areas: Elder Dallin H. Oaks was assigned to the Philippines, and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland to Chile. Elder Holland’s ministry and influence while in Chile is immeasurable, and its impact will remain for generations.

Elder Holland’s primary emphasis was to provide an example of leading in the Lord’s way. He helped train new leaders and oversaw the reorganization, discontinuation, and merging of hundreds of wards and dozens of stakes. This reorganization and training were needed because of the rapid growth of the Church in the country. His leadership helped to strengthen the units and prepare the Church in Chile for the future.

They make it sound like Elder Holland went to Chile to manage high church growth in Chile. What he did was eliminate 220 units (wards and branches) and 37 stakes in 2002 and 2003. 37 stakes! This was because of "rapid growth in the country?"

Most TBMs will think that the church is growing rapidly in Chile after reading this article...

[oliver_denom]

It's easy to reconcile.

The problem the LDS Church has carved itself out on this is that during the decades of fabulous growth, episode 1 shows church presidents (Kimball and Hinckley) among others have publicly and persistently committed themselves to the proposition that the church will continue to grow until it fills the whole world.

This is what shows it is true.

The growth is fulfilling prophecy!

Both ancient and modern!

To believe, to truly believe, is to live in a state of selective memory and justification of the facts to fit the belief. It's a really interesting discussion, but mostly how it's turned around and forgotten. No problem ever seems to stick unless you're at that point in your faith journey to allow it. Otherwise it's like finding Dory.

[Just This Guy]

Sounds interesting. I am looking forward to listening to it.

[consiglieri]

I think this article in the Ensign is a great example of Church growth statistics double-speak:

Conversion and Change in Chile

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/10/conv ... e?lang=eng

From the article:

In August 2002, the First Presidency assigned two members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to preside over two Church areas: Elder Dallin H. Oaks was assigned to the Philippines, and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland to Chile. Elder Holland’s ministry and influence while in Chile is immeasurable, and its impact will remain for generations.

Elder Holland’s primary emphasis was to provide an example of leading in the Lord’s way. He helped train new leaders and oversaw the reorganization, discontinuation, and merging of hundreds of wards and dozens of stakes. This reorganization and training were needed because of the rapid growth of the Church in the country. His leadership helped to strengthen the units and prepare the Church in Chile for the future.

They make it sound like Elder Holland went to Chile to manage high church growth in Chile. What he did was eliminate 220 units (wards and branches) and 37 stakes in 2002 and 2003. 37 stakes! This was because of "rapid growth in the country?"

Most TBMs will think that the church is growing rapidly in Chile after reading this article...

Nice find, Oli!

I just did a little additional research and this may well make it into part 3!

[GoodBoy]

Listened to both of these and really enjoyed them.

The biggest piece of evidence that they "statistics" are not faith promoting is that they are never talked about, and they are talked about less and less over time as they get worse.

[Corsair]

A new Radio Free Mormon podcast just went public yesterday.

Consiglieri, I thoroughly enjoyed these two episodes. May I humbly suggest examining some official statistics that the church happily releases every year in April. The April conference puts out the statistics report every year and I love hearing two numbers:

1. Total Membership
2. Number of units (wards + branches)

Separately, these numbers are touted as evidence of growth since they are "bigger" every year. But do examine this one equation:

• Membership / Units = the number of people that should be attending church each week in each ward.

This number has been steadily rising every year. Open up lds.org and look at the May Ensign each year and pull out the numbers. The table below is what I found tallied from 1979 onward. It start out around 400 people per ward but has been steadily rising from the late 90s until it is an average of 524 members per unit. Any ward that had 500 people show up on Sunday would quickly get split into two or three wards. This is the average based on both wards and branches. Keeping that average of 524 has implications. For every tiny branch of 30 people there would need to be a monster ward of 1000 people, or two wards of 750 people.

The number of units is harder to hide. There are directories published of those. If the active membership really is a theorized 5,000,000 then:

• 5,000,000 / 30,000 = 167 members per unit on average.

This is a lot more realistic number of people sitting in sacrament meeting each week. It makes me wonder if we will be able to honestly trust the numbers given each April going forward.

Year - Units - Membership - Avg
1979 - 11,486 - 4,439,000 - 386.5
1980 - 12,591 - 4,638,000 - 368.4
1981 - 13,213 - 4,936,000 - 373.6
1982 - 13,616 - 5,165,000 - 379.3
1983 - 13,994 - 5,400,000 - 385.9
1984 - 14,463 - 5,650,000 - 390.7
1985 - 15,005 - 5,920,000 - 394.5
1986 - 15,389 - 6,170,000 - 400.9
1987 - 16,006 - 6,440,000 - 402.3
1988 - 16,558 - 6,720,000 - 405.8
1989 - 17,305 - 7,300,000 - 421.8
1990 - 18,090 - 7,760,000 - 429.0
1991 - 18,810 - 8,120,000 - 431.7
1992 - 20,081 - 8,406,895 - 418.6
1993 - 21,002 - 8,696,224 - 414.1
1994 - 21,774 - 9,024,569 - 414.5
1995 - 22,697 - 9,340,898 - 411.5
1996 - 23,528 - 9,694,549 - 412.0
1997 - 24,670 - 10,070,524 - 408.2
1998 - 25,551 - 10,354,241 - 405.2
1999 - 25,793 - 10,752,986 - 416.9
2000 - 25,915 - 11,068,861 - 427.1
2001 - 26,084 - 11,394,522 - 436.8
2002 - 26,143 - 11,721,548 - 448.4
2003 - 26,237 - 11,985,254 - 456.8
2004 - 26,670 - 12,275,822 - 460.3
2005 - 27,087 - 12,560,869 - 463.7
2006 - 27,475 - 12,868,606 - 468.4
2007 - 27,827 - 13,193,999 - 474.1
2008 - 28,109 - 13,508,509 - 480.6
2009 - 28,424 - 13,824,854 - 486.4
2010 - 28,660 - 14,131,467 - 493.1
2011 - 28,784 - 14,441,346 - 501.7
2012 - 29,014 - 14,782,473 - 509.5
2013 - 29,253 - 15,082,028 - 515.6
2014 - 29,621 - 15,372,337 - 519.0
2015 - 30,016 - 15,643,199 - 521.2
2016 - 30,304 - 15,882,417 - 524.0

[blazerb]

I really liked the podcasts. I have just one thing, that is almost totally inconsequential, to point out. The story in Daniel 2 is translated incorrectly in the KJV. See footnote 5a in the LDS edition or look at another translation. Nebuchadnezzar remembered his dream. He refused to tell his wise men what it was so that he could test whether their interpretation was correct. If they could tell him his dream and the interpretation, he would know the interpretation was good. If they could not tell him the dream, he would know it was made up. The story makes way more sense this way.

This was actually an item on my shelf: Why didn't the JST correct obvious mistakes like this one?

In any case, I have been following the collapse of missionary work over the last few years. 'Raising the bar' was an effort to stop the decline, I think. The GA's thought the problem was impure missionaries. It clearly was not.

[wtfluff]

In any case, I have been following the collapse of missionary work over the last few years. 'Raising the bar' was an effort to stop the decline, I think. The GA's thought the problem was impure missionaries. It clearly was not.

Haha. Yep! They "raised the bar" and it didn't do anything, so they essentially "lowered the bar" again by lowering the missionary age, and... Still no positive results.

When you're selling crap, it doesn't matter how you wrap it up, or how many, or how well-trained your sales-people are, you're still selling crap.

Of course we do know that "new converts" is not the only goal of the missionary program, but those "other" outcomes don't seem to be improving either.

[oliblish]

I think this article in the Ensign is a great example of Church growth statistics double-speak:

Conversion and Change in Chile

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/10/conv ... e?lang=eng

From the article:

In August 2002, the First Presidency assigned two members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to preside over two Church areas: Elder Dallin H. Oaks was assigned to the Philippines, and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland to Chile. Elder Holland’s ministry and influence while in Chile is immeasurable, and its impact will remain for generations.

Elder Holland’s primary emphasis was to provide an example of leading in the Lord’s way. He helped train new leaders and oversaw the reorganization, discontinuation, and merging of hundreds of wards and dozens of stakes. This reorganization and training were needed because of the rapid growth of the Church in the country. His leadership helped to strengthen the units and prepare the Church in Chile for the future.

They make it sound like Elder Holland went to Chile to manage high church growth in Chile. What he did was eliminate 220 units (wards and branches) and 37 stakes in 2002 and 2003. 37 stakes! This was because of "rapid growth in the country?"

Most TBMs will think that the church is growing rapidly in Chile after reading this article...

Nice find, Oli!

I just did a little additional research and this may well make it into part 3!

Another more recent example of this is a report on KSL about the church in South Korea broadcast during the olympics. I have not been able to find the video, but there is a summary of it here:

http://ksltv.com/391467/lds-church-in-s ... s-to-grow/

They don't make a big claim of growth other than mentioning that the membership numbers are up from 86k to 87k since 2013. They also mention that there are 120 congregations but don't talk about congregational growth. That is probably because the church is shrinking in South Korea at an alarming rate. There were 175 congregations in 1999 and have closed 67 units since then.

The 120 unit number they mention is from 2016. 12 more units were shut down in 2017. That is 10% just last year. More than 1/3 of all congregations have shut down. The activity rate is somewhere around 10%. I don't know of a country in the world with worse congregational growth statistics.

From cumorah.com:



There is a reddit thread that talks about this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... e_amazing/

It looks like KSL changed the title of the article from "The Church in Korea Continues to Grow" to "Visting the LDS church in South Korea". Maybe because of emails from Reddit readers. The URL of the article still references the original title. Whoever renamed it mis-typed the word "Visiting".

The 12 units shut down last year are documented here:

http://ldsunitgrowth.blogspot.com/2017/

[No Tof]

Any idea when part 3 will be aired?

Cliff hanger.....