NOM

The SL Tribune posted an article about survey results on churches in America. The method for data collection was simply to ask each church how many members attended. Some results from the LDS church reflect the church’s ongoing commitment to inaccuracy.
A few key figures to mention. “For the LDS Church, Idaho’s Franklin County and Utah’s Rich County are reported to have 16,095 and 2,763 adherents, respectively. Those counties had 14,194 and 2,510 residents, respectively, in 2020. Given the location of both counties, I suspect that this might be a case of double-counting people who attend church for a weekend at Bear Lake. Regardless of the exact reason, some inflation is occurring.”. This means that 110% of Rich county people are members. Think about that one for a minute.


https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/11 ... sus-sheds/

Oh my heck. Those darned Mormons are fibbers.
I'm curious to see if other churches have inflated numbers as well.

This is interesting. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Protestant Bodies Account for Most
Congregations and Adherents
Grouping Congregations Adherents % of
population
Black Protestant 17,754 4,877,067 1.6
Evangelical and
Conservative Protestant 191,112 50,013,803 14.3
Mainline Protestant 77,760 22,655,826 7.3
Catholic 20,589 58,928,987 19.1
Orthodox Christian 2,551 1,056,535 0.3
Latter-day Saints 14,393 6,267,771 2.0
Other Faiths 11,661 6,667,542 2.2
Total* 344,894 150,686,156 48.8
*includes 9,074 congregations and 218,625 adherents of
Other Christian bodies not listed above 1

This is interesting. It adds up 48.8%. Does that mean that 51.2% aren't religious? That seems unlikely.

2bizE wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 3:01 pm The SL Tribune posted an article about survey results on churches in America. The method for data collection was simply to ask each church how many members attended. Some results from the LDS church reflect the church’s ongoing commitment to inaccuracy.
A few key figures to mention. “For the LDS Church, Idaho’s Franklin County and Utah’s Rich County are reported to have 16,095 and 2,763 adherents, respectively. Those counties had 14,194 and 2,510 residents, respectively, in 2020. Given the location of both counties, I suspect that this might be a case of double-counting people who attend church for a weekend at Bear Lake. Regardless of the exact reason, some inflation is occurring.”. This means that 110% of Rich county people are members. Think about that one for a minute.


https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/11 ... sus-sheds/

Your are underestimating the number of tourists. Believe me. I live at Bear Lake in the summer. My husband attends the ward for visitors sometimes and the local ward most of the time. Snowbirds can attend either, but they strongly encourage the tourists to go to the tourist wards, all three of them. So, depending on how much he feels like seeing people he knows, he may go to the local or tourist ward or stay home. He has been feeling anti social lately. But, Rich County will have inflated numbers because of three wards in Garden City. The tourist wards in Garden City have over 1,000 visitors on a good weekend and just across the border into Idaho, the same situation. In Garden City, Rich County, Utah, there are two wards specifically for visitors, and one for locals that meet in Garden City. There are two church building in Garden City. One built especially to accommodate tourists, because they don’t have classrooms and do nothing but Sac meeting. Then across the border into Idaho, there is another ward especially for visitors. The snow birds are another crowd. Some are counted as citizens of the counties and others are not, because their legal residence is at their winter home. But they can attend either the local or tourist ward. Then there are tourists who don’t realize there are special wards for them and just show up at the wards in Dingle, Laketown, or even Montpelier, because if you want to stay in a Motel, Montpelier is closest. So, our population is NOTHING compared to the tourists and snowbirds. The tourists easily triple the locals.

Nope, don’t be so quick to accuse the church of fudging the numbers. We get a gazillion tourists. And you might also want to compare the numbers in Bear Lake county, Idaho. That where we live.

I think the census surveys are self reported. So it’s possible the church data was inflated by people who moved but didn’t forward their records or people that have died but haven’t had their records removed.

Either way I think everyone knows the church membership statistics are always over inflated because they are never scrubbed or audited.

Red Ryder wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 5:21 pm I think the census surveys are self reported. So it’s possible the church data was inflated by people who moved but didn’t forward their records or people that have died but haven’t had their records removed.

Either way I think everyone knows the church membership statistics are always over inflated because they are never scrubbed or audited.

I'm sure the church will say that they are audited. As a ward clerk, I had to do a membership audit every year. We usually did it by sending out some sort of Christmas message by mail and hope that the USPS would send us back forwarding addresses. I can't remember everything we were supposed to do, but I avoided doing the ugly stalking that the church instructions asked us to do. I do remember that we would send records to SLC because someone was no longer around only to have them sent back to us for whatever bureaucratic reason they had.

So the records are audited, but not in any meaningful way. Certainly it would not be hard to leave people on the rolls long after they were gone. It was too much hassle to deal with.

alas wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:49 pm Nope, don’t be so quick to accuse the church of fudging the numbers. We get a gazillion tourists. And you might also want to compare the numbers in Bear Lake county, Idaho. That where we live.

Isn't this still a way to fudge the numbers? The church should know who lives there and who is a tourist. Double counting can be avoided if the church wants to. The snow bird situation is more complicated, I know. Of course, the church could always be transparent about how it counts members and a whole bunch of other things and avoid being accused of the subterfuge.

blazerb wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 8:00 pm

Red Ryder wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 5:21 pm I think the census surveys are self reported. So it’s possible the church data was inflated by people who moved but didn’t forward their records or people that have died but haven’t had their records removed.

Either way I think everyone knows the church membership statistics are always over inflated because they are never scrubbed or audited.

I'm sure the church will say that they are audited. As a ward clerk, I had to do a membership audit every year. We usually did it by sending out some sort of Christmas message by mail and hope that the USPS would send us back forwarding addresses. I can't remember everything we were supposed to do, but I avoided doing the ugly stalking that the church instructions asked us to do. I do remember that we would send records to SLC because someone was no longer around only to have them sent back to us for whatever bureaucratic reason they had.

So the records are audited, but not in any meaningful way. Certainly it would not be hard to leave people on the rolls long after they were gone. It was too much hassle to deal with.

alas wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 11:49 pm Nope, don’t be so quick to accuse the church of fudging the numbers. We get a gazillion tourists. And you might also want to compare the numbers in Bear Lake county, Idaho. That where we live.

Isn't this still a way to fudge the numbers? The church should know who lives there and who is a tourist. Double counting can be avoided if the church wants to. The snow bird situation is more complicated, I know. Of course, the church could always be transparent about how it counts members and a whole bunch of other things and avoid being accused of the subterfuge.

The church is transparent about how it measures attendance. Visitors are counted as attending the ward they visit. It has advantages and disadvantages.

I grew up in Provo and everyone knew the wards around BYU had more funding because of the visitors they had with parents visiting students and students that just went to a local ward rather than a student ward. We down on the other side of town felt it was unfair that they got funding for visitors, but we knew why it was happening.

I agree that attendance *might* be counted as people who are members there are counted there, and visitors are put into a “visitor” category. But then, how do they divide the visitors from the locals. You can’t count and know, so your method simply will not work with the number of visitors. So, the church has always done it that way, just lumping everyone attending into one group.

If they didn’t count visitors, then the total attendance would be off because people going to another ward would be counted as if they stayed home.

But then again, the way the church divides up funding and builds buildings, it would be very unfair for, say St.Charles (my ward in Idaho, by Bear Lake) ward to have a building big enough for it 300 member ward, when on the forth of July weekend 1,000 visitors descend on them. So, the way the church takes attendance is necessary for building and budgeting. And what about the new building in Garden city that had to be built just for visitors because it got to be way to many visitors to fit into the regular ward building even if they held 5 sacrament meetings? The way the church counts is needed for places like Bear Lake so we can cope with the wards having a gazillion visitors.

Garden City has 3,000 visitors on many Sundays. St. Charles has over 1,000. Then there are the many visitors who stay in Montpelier, or come to the Lakes East side and do not want to drive to the West side of the lake, so they attend in Dingle or Montpelier. With your method of counting attendance, there would be ZERO funding to cover that. Zero way to even track it. It is NOT fudging the damn numbers. It is dealing with a problem you ward doesn’t have. Just because you have no concept of the shear number of visitors doesn’t mean the church is being deceptive. Just come up sometime and wait in line 4 hours for your hamburger, or try to get a last minute reservation at KOA. Then show up at GC visitor ward and when you can’t even get into the building because you didn’t arrive 1/2 hour early, maybe you will believe me.

When I was a ward clerk we counted sacrament meeting attendance each week. Didn’t matter if visitors were there or not. We just counted everybody. Of course the weeks when there were missionary farewells and primary programs attendance was higher. If I recall the weekly numbers were entered into the computer and an average was used.

Then the Sunday school attendance was kept by marking attendance on the rolls passed around. Same with elders quorum and relief society.

Home teaching and relief society visit numbers were typically entered by the EQP and RSP secretaries.

When I was the EQP secretary, the first two months I spent time calling all the people chasing down their visit numbers. It was a difficult process because everyone claimed to be doing their visits but never reporting it. So by the third month, if visits hadn’t been reported, instead of calling everyone I just looked back at the history and entered visits for the people who had been doing it in the past. I found that the numbers never significantly changed and that most were lying about it anyway.

The church statistics are half true and half made up. I saw it on my mission with reporting discussions given and BoMs handed out. I’ve seen it in Elders Quorum reporting. I’ve seen it as a membership clerk.

It’s a well known secret that the membership numbers are inflated in one form or another.

Conservative Protestant 191,112,501,380.314.3

More than the total number of humans on Earth.

alas wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 11:46 am Garden City has 3,000 visitors on many Sundays. St. Charles has over 1,000. Then there are the many visitors who stay in Montpelier, or come to the Lakes East side and do not want to drive to the West side of the lake, so they attend in Dingle or Montpelier. With your method of counting attendance, there would be ZERO funding to cover that. Zero way to even track it. It is NOT fudging the damn numbers. It is dealing with a problem you ward doesn’t have. Just because you have no concept of the shear number of visitors doesn’t mean the church is being deceptive. Just come up sometime and wait in line 4 hours for your hamburger, or try to get a last minute reservation at KOA. Then show up at GC visitor ward and when you can’t even get into the building because you didn’t arrive 1/2 hour early, maybe you will believe me.

Please don't misunderstand. I believe you. I've gone to church in the Bear Lake area. I know that the church needs bigger buildings than local membership would justify. I was not doubting your experience at all. I'm sorry I came across that way.

blazerb wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 6:21 am

alas wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 11:46 am Garden City has 3,000 visitors on many Sundays. St. Charles has over 1,000. Then there are the many visitors who stay in Montpelier, or come to the Lakes East side and do not want to drive to the West side of the lake, so they attend in Dingle or Montpelier. With your method of counting attendance, there would be ZERO funding to cover that. Zero way to even track it. It is NOT fudging the damn numbers. It is dealing with a problem you ward doesn’t have. Just because you have no concept of the shear number of visitors doesn’t mean the church is being deceptive. Just come up sometime and wait in line 4 hours for your hamburger, or try to get a last minute reservation at KOA. Then show up at GC visitor ward and when you can’t even get into the building because you didn’t arrive 1/2 hour early, maybe you will believe me.

Please don't misunderstand. I believe you. I've gone to church in the Bear Lake area. I know that the church needs bigger buildings than local membership would justify. I was not doubting your experience at all. I'm sorry I came across that way.

No, problem, because I am probably venting some frustration about it and it was an excuse to blow off steam. The problem is that the number of people is causing problems with my husband who needs the social contact and isn’t getting it because you don’t get to know anyone when there are that many people. And they cannot keep the tourists out of the local ward, so they just treat him like they wish he would go to the tourist ward. He is a shy extrovert, which, yeah I know kind of strange that extroverts can be shy. But he needs social to recharge so although he claims to be an introvert, he is just still slightly socially anxious and has overcome terrible shyness. I don’t know what to do, except to stop snowbirding. But he goes to the grocery store on any and every pretext just to talk to people.

And I realize that it is almost unbelievable that the area has one ward for locals and three for visitors in Garden City and one of each in St Charles. I have been to church on the less touristy weekends in St Charles and you had to be half an hour early to get a seat in the back on the folding chairs and not be put into a classroom with sound piped in. And with both wards in the same building, the tourists are not staying in their ward. Oh, and word is getting out in Garden city, that you can’t get into the 9 am meeting because it is standing room only by 8:30. And assigned speakers to the tourist ward get to repeat their talk three times, and if you are the snowbird type, you are first on the list to talk because the locals are tired of entertaining tourists.

It is growing, mostly condos and summer homes for visitors much faster than the infrastructure can handle. Not enough restaurants, not wide enough roads, not big enough church buildings and the Garden city building is brand new and already too small. A new KOA campground just went in, and the old one recently expanded by taking out trailer storage and putting new camping spots in, and a another new one is in the process f being built.

alas wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 11:16 am No, problem, because I am probably venting some frustration about it and it was an excuse to blow off steam. The problem is that the number of people is causing problems with my husband who needs the social contact and isn’t getting it because you don’t get to know anyone when there are that many people. And they cannot keep the tourists out of the local ward, so they just treat him like they wish he would go to the tourist ward. He is a shy extrovert, which, yeah I know kind of strange that extroverts can be shy. But he needs social to recharge so although he claims to be an introvert, he is just still slightly socially anxious and has overcome terrible shyness. I don’t know what to do, except to stop snowbirding. But he goes to the grocery store on any and every pretext just to talk to people.

And I realize that it is almost unbelievable that the area has one ward for locals and three for visitors in Garden City and one of each in St Charles. I have been to church on the less touristy weekends in St Charles and you had to be half an hour early to get a seat in the back on the folding chairs and not be put into a classroom with sound piped in. And with both wards in the same building, the tourists are not staying in their ward. Oh, and word is getting out in Garden city, that you can’t get into the 9 am meeting because it is standing room only by 8:30. And assigned speakers to the tourist ward get to repeat their talk three times, and if you are the snowbird type, you are first on the list to talk because the locals are tired of entertaining tourists.

It is growing, mostly condos and summer homes for visitors much faster than the infrastructure can handle. Not enough restaurants, not wide enough roads, not big enough church buildings and the Garden city building is brand new and already too small. A new KOA campground just went in, and the old one recently expanded by taking out trailer storage and putting new camping spots in, and a another new one is in the process f being built.

Areas that grow fast or have wide seasonal variations in population have huge challenges. Tourists don't always respect the arrangements made for them. We all feel that we deserve to be the exception. When I have attended in that area, it was because I was with family. I'm sure that was a big pain for the locals. If I lived in a place like that, it might have driven me from attendance a lot quicker.