Church Membership Increase Lowest in 30 Years

19 June

Gathering info on the latest membership stats of the LDS Church provided more info than anticipated, on Cumorah.com. The site, run by Matt Martinich, has provided a wealth of demographic info spanning the world over.

Mr. Martinich is unabashedly Mormon, of this, there’s no doubt. Another thing not to doubt is if you need a stat on Mormons for any area worldwide, this is your go to guy. While we don’t necessarily agree with all of his personal philosophies, the numbers he provides are spot on.

We’ll be posting our findings on the Church’s real stats for 2016 later in the week, but for now we’re praising Jesus and wanted to share a piece of interesting news!

A report from a couple of weeks ago (May 16, 2017) on Cumorah.com, we read some startling stats that should be causing the Church to lose sleep at night. To read the report in full see LDS Congregational Growth Significantly Decelerates in the United States.

As its title would suggest, the Church is indeed experiencing a ‘significant deceleration in regards to increases in the number of congregations’ thus far in 2017.

Our response?

Thank You Jesus! We’re praying this continues to be the case, not just now, but into the foreseeable future!

They’ve also reported they’ve seen net increase of only 11 congregations thus far in 2017, which typically sits around 30-50 new congregations within the first four months of any given year.

To put things in perspective, Cumorah.com said the Church experienced a net increase of 65 congregations in 2016. Yet, even that total was a sharp decline from previous years –

142 congregations in 2015

152 congregations in 2014

124 congregations in 2013

In addition to that eye opener, the Church has also baptized fewer converts. Martinich said this is due in part, by a lower birth rate.

That’s something we can only agree with in part. Yes, Utah has seen a lower birth rate, but you’d have to go back at least 8 years from the beginning of the decline before you can add that into the equation.

Martinich believes ‘the influence of secularism appears to be primarily responsible for the trend’. We found that to be interesting considering both Utah and the Church, have reported the Utah Mormon population has increased by at least 7% in recent years.

All of that adds up to the bottom line, which in this case is the best part! Check out what Mr. Martinich found in the end –

‘LDS membership in the United States increased by a mere 0.93% during 2016 – the lowest in nearly 30 years.’

In another report on his site, Martinich unapologetically believes the internet has nothing to do with the slouching numbers, but we beg to differ!

If the internet didn’t have anything to do with the marked drop in membership, why pray tell does the Church warn its members to stay away? See Recent Talks of Mormon Leaders Show Panic for more info.

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