NOM

Just as we all thought, the church is losing steam in creating new converts and maintaining activity. I think this is a trend that will continue. People are distancing themselves from groups that do not accept all as they are rather than conforming to a set of made up rules. Fewer wards and buildings are being created. Likely tithing money is down as well. The perfect storm is brewing.

http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/4 ... researcher

Note: follow this link and other links to the top 10 good and bad changes.
Good: a lot of growth in Africa and Asia. We all know these areas will skyrocket with inactivity shortly.
Bad: Mexico. Not one new.ward created.in 2016. Wow. 34 missions. Thousands of missionaries. Not one new ward. Something is seriously wrong (right) down there.

It seems the church is doing well in areas where the message is new, but in places that have experienced the message, people are defecting and not joining. The gospel message has met its capacity.,

That was an enlightening article. The comments section was amusing also. It is clear which newspaper is favored by apostates in Utah.

Let's just say the Church is growing only in those places where fast mobile internet is still in it's infancy.

Internet didn't start a Maas-Exodus in my country.
Mobile internet did, and why: because it's much more private than the desktop in the livingroom of 15 years ago.

Meilingkie wrote:Let's just say the Church is growing only in those places where fast mobile internet is still in it's infancy.

Internet didn't start a Maas-Exodus in my country.
Mobile internet did, and why: because it's much more private than the desktop in the livingroom of 15 years ago.

I quite agree. I think the ability to check the real story away from a home computer is so completely necessary for some. Luckily I just don't care anymore what Sister M. sees me posting on here. And I think it's healthier for her to see where my head's at, instead of just having to ask me all the time, and then having to listen to my ramblings.

So in 50 years when the Africans learn the complete history and doctrine of Mormonism and they begin to reject it like Europe and USA - where will the church go?

Where will the find an uninformed audience that will accept their stories without fact checking?

Corsair wrote:That was an enlightening article. The comments section was amusing also. It is clear which newspaper is favored by apostates in Utah.

As a tbm and living in SLC most of my life, there is/was the unwritten order of things to stay away from a certain liberally leaning newspaper.

To be fair, Mormonism is following the trend of Christianity in the United States. It is in a process of shrinking.

document wrote:To be fair, Mormonism is following the trend of Christianity in the United States. It is in a process of shrinking.

I have seen faithful LDS commenters point out the the LDS church is still better at retaining young adults than other Christian faiths. The percentage difference is pretty thin, but is better. This is certainly finding a silver lining in this data, but it emphasizes that there is a problem that the institutional church ignores at its own peril.

Korihor wrote:So in 50 years when the Africans learn the complete history and doctrine of Mormonism and they begin to reject it like Europe and USA - where will the church go?

Where will the find an uninformed audience that will accept their stories without fact checking?

Where will the church go? I believe that is a question for Russel Ballard...

wtfluff wrote:

Korihor wrote:So in 50 years when the Africans learn the complete history and doctrine of Mormonism and they begin to reject it like Europe and USA - where will the church go?

Where will the find an uninformed audience that will accept their stories without fact checking?

Where will the church go? I believe that is a question for Russel Ballard...

You caught my little subversiveness, didn't you?

I wonder how bad the slowing growth will become before the church stops reporting membership data at all. Will they wait until it's negative growth? They already fudged the numbers once when they began counting blessed babies as members. What more can they do? Start leaving dead people on the roles forever?

nehor90210 wrote:I wonder how bad the slowing growth will become before the church stops reporting membership data at all. Will they wait until it's negative growth? They already fudged the numbers once when they began counting blessed babies as members. What more can they do? Start leaving dead people on the roles forever?

The church will start claiming dead people baptized in the temple as members. Since they are confirmed members after baptism they technically are members right? Just deceased.

I came across this link in my bookmarks from a few years back. Still relevant.

https://exploringmormonism.com/how-a-co ... n-airline/

2bizE wrote:I came across this link in my bookmarks from a few years back. Still relevant.

https://exploringmormonism.com/how-a-co ... n-airline/

Increasingly relevant

2bizE wrote:I came across this link in my bookmarks from a few years back. Still relevant.

https://exploringmormonism.com/how-a-co ... n-airline/

That's a very pointed article. How many of us were in that top 10% of membership doing the hard jobs and paying a gracious tithe? There are almost 300 registered users on NOM today (minus the occasional Russian spammer). We have one entire ward doing everything they can to avoid paying tithing and doing church jobs. Many of us were in serious leadership callings and now we can no longer fulfill such assignments.

The reddit/r/exmormon subscription has more than 30,000 people and that is 10 stakes worth of people that are usually far more vehement about serving. Plus, it's a lot of young people from active families that left the church just before they would have started contributing in a big way. These are young people that incurred all the expenses of being raised LDS and now will no longer give back to the community.

Corsair wrote: Minus the occasional Russian spammer.

Hey, I'm not Russian.

Zadok wrote:

Corsair wrote: Minus the occasional Russian spammer.

Hey, I'm not Russian.

You are also not trying to sell pharmaceuticals on NOM either. However, you are contributing to the slowing growth rate of the church like the rest of us.

This is a great podcast with Gina Colvin about the Church in Europe.
I LOVE Gina, a close friend to a friend of mine.

http://www.athoughtfulfaith.org/in-fait ... -bleakley/

Korihor wrote:So in 50 years when the Africans learn the complete history and doctrine of Mormonism and they begin to reject it like Europe and USA - where will the church go?

They better hope SpaceX is phenomenally successful and they can start moving on to other planets.

fh451