Have you ever tried to quantify the membership of the Church to get a better idea of its size? Consider the following thoughts:
- roughly the same size as Buenos Aires, Argentina, or Se?ɬ?ul, South Korea
- larger than Cambodia but smaller than Guatemala.
- would fill 584 Conference Centers
- if you were to count one member every second, it would take roughly six months to count them all.
12 million members claimed, but Mormon statistics are notorious in that you’re counted as a member even if you haven’t been inside a church for 50 years.
6.5 million outside the U.S., at an activity/retention rate of at best 20%, gets you 1.3mm, inside the U.S. (5.5 mm) with an activity/retention rate of at best 35% gets you another 1.9 mm = 3.2 mm active members worldwide.
“12 million members claimed, but Mormon statistics are notorious in that you’re counted as a member even if you haven’t been inside a church for 50 years.”
Uh, yeah. I’m not sure what your point is.
Once you’ve been baptised as a Mormon, you’re a Mormon until you die, are excommunicated or ask for your membership to be removed. Same goes for any other organisation. You join and then remain a member until you withdraw from the organisation or abuse one of its policies.
“6.5 million outside the U.S., at an activity/retention rate of at best 20%, gets you 1.3mm, inside the U.S. (5.5 mm) with an activity/retention rate of at best 35% gets you another 1.9 mm = 3.2 mm active members worldwide.”
OK. I do not understand the point of this information. I don’t believe I claimed the 12 million mark was the number of active members.
Additionally, the 20% and 35% figures are speculation since accurate, objective and reliable records are not kept regarding activity rates.
Are these statistics more “notorious” than those of any other church?
So it’s okay to run with the pack?
If all the other kids were doing it would you want to as well?
They’re as wrong as us, so we’re okay.
These are all similar arguments.
When one of your sales pitches quotes that you are the fastest growing church, the method which you calculate and record your statistics becomes very important.
I think the point is that the stats should probably come with a disclaimer.
I think the point is it’s an interesting statistic. Why read more into it. I didn’t hear a sales pitch.
No the sales pitch comes from the members and the missionaries; I didn’t mean to imply that the stats themselves included a sales pitch.
I didn’t say anyone else’s statistics were wrong. But Ted would have us believe that our Church is well known for being untruthful on this subject, in comparison to others. I don’t think the Church is untruthful at all, and I doubt that most other churches are being untruthful with their membership statistics.
I do believe, however, that it is difficult if not impossible to differentiate between “technical” members and “active” members when compiling such statistics. Kim has already pointed this out.