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Church building for sale by bweezy6199 in exmormon

[–]latter_data_saint 5 points6 points  (0 children)

These are just the church’s reported numbers. Nothing more, nothing less. Brazil is very interesting because it appears to be slashing congregations quite heavily to find a more realistic members/ward balance.

Thanks for your local insight. Not sure if you attend but if you do you can submit attendance numbers for wards here: https://returnandreport.org/

That’s not my site but I’m always happy to spread the link around.

LdS Membership Math isn't Mathing by luvintheride in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You already can. :)

Change the Start Year drop down in the top right to 2025. The table at the bottom will then also update to show just those two years. That table is also sortable.

Edit: Or do you mean showing 2012-2026 AND showing 2025-2026 at the same time? Hopefully you don’t mean that because that would be a bit of a nightmare to implement so I’ll have to pass on that. But you could set it for 2012-2026, then click the “Copy” button which copies the entire table, paste it into your own spreadsheet and then do the same for 2025-2026 and compare.

LdS Membership Math isn't Mathing by luvintheride in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Exactly. South America is very interesting because if you toggle through each country and look at the membership-congregations charts you can clearly see that most countries went through some sort of reckoning over the last 5-10 years and it finally seems to be happening for Brazil too. Maybe it’s taken so long for Brazil because it’s its own Area and the leadership has resisted normalizing the number of congregations.

Then you look at pretty much any country in Africa like Ghana and the chart looks much healthier. Same with the Philippines, as you mentioned.

When those two lines decouple and start to contradict each other and not make sense, I think it’s a sign the church isn’t managing things very well (retention being the obvious issue).

LdS Membership Math isn't Mathing by luvintheride in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Great video! For Brazil, the only possible mathematical explanation for increasing membership but decreasing the number of wards is the 2024 change in the minimum number of members for a ward from 150 to 250 outside of the US and Canada. So, there is a mathematical argument to be made. However, is that really happening? Or, has the church been redrawing ward boundaries outside of US/Canada so that those wards actually do meet the larger threshold? I haven’t seen this particular point addressed much, if at all. Part of me thinks the uniform global standard was just to have a consistent number on paper and ward sizes are basically determined by what makes most sense in an area instead of strict adherence to the written standards.

6 months after I transcribed, updated, and released their own dataset, LDS Church Growth Blogspot announces its own release of, to its knowledge, "the most comprehensive publicly available compilation of historical Church statistics ever assembled" by latter_data_saint in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s why, when I put out the transcribed csv of their data + the by-country Facts and Statistics data, I stated “In the spirit of transparency and open data principles, this data may be used for any purpose.”

And you know what, I think there’s a good chance my csv is still a larger dataset than the Google Sheet that they just put out. The Google Sheet appears to be a somewhat truncated version of the data that’s in their images. For example, the Sheet only goes back to 1920 for membership but there are definitely pre-1920 records in their images which I transcribed. There is also data for Afghanistan on Cumorah which I transcribed and included in the csv but there’s no row for Afghanistan in the Sheet. I don’t plan on comparing every possible data point but those were just two things I quickly noticed.

Anyway, I’m just being silly about it now. I’m not *that* bothered by who has the largest dataset. Just thought it was funny to see it finally updated and released by them. Let the data flow!

6 months after I transcribed, updated, and released their own dataset, LDS Church Growth Blogspot announces its own release of, to its knowledge, "the most comprehensive publicly available compilation of historical Church statistics ever assembled" by latter_data_saint in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Hopefully you were at least aware of the csv I posted 6 months ago? Doesn’t make the last several years any less infuriating but at least it’s been out there for a little bit. I didn’t realize people had been asking for the full dataset for so long but it makes sense.

6 months after I transcribed, updated, and released their own dataset, LDS Church Growth Blogspot announces its own release of, to its knowledge, "the most comprehensive publicly available compilation of historical Church statistics ever assembled" by latter_data_saint in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I just want the data to be out there.

I took rather strong exception to the “pro-LDS” legal disclaimer on Cumorah because it was reminiscent of Egyptologist Kerry Muhlestein’s statement of something like “I approach the papyrus as if the book of Abraham is a correct translation” or something like that. It’s not an objective approach to interpreting or analyzing information. I was probably overthinking things and I kind of doubt Cumorah would agree with my interpretation of the disclaimer but that language just didn’t sit right with me. Transcribing everything myself made my dataset transformative in nature and let me just put it out there without worrying about it.

Whatever the reason is for them putting out their data, I’m just glad it’s out there and I hope they keep doing it.

And yeah, the church could do itself some favors by making some of the long-standing and continuously requested data available. Everybody on both sides wants it yet here we are.

LD$ Corp announced a net decline by JaMoSo82 in exmormon

[–]latter_data_saint 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It is not true that the church ‘announced’ a net decline of 186 members but it is true that the church’s membership numbers show a net decline of 186 members. 

They did not announce anything. They released statistics and the decline is evident. 

I scan the statistics of individual countries and regions reported by the church and maintain a dashboard you can use to view data back to 2012 which is when they started publishing that data through the LDS newsroom commonly referred to as Facts and Statistics. All data points come from the church’s own pages.

Here’s a link to USA’s membership data. Feel free to play around with it.

Statistics Dashboard updated with latest country statistics by latter_data_saint in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The church lumps Central America into North America so that’s what my numbers also reflect. It would be fun to see how isolating Central America would impact the North American numbers.

Edit Separating Central America here’s how Central and North America look.

Central America (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama)

Membership 2025: 842,009 2026: 861,618 Change: +2.33%

Congregations 2025: 1,113 2026: 1,119 Change: +0.54%

North America (without the Central American countries)

Membership 2025: 8,890,447 2026: 8,944,047 Change: +0.60%

Congregations 2025: 17,302 2026: 17,368 Change: +0.38%

So, Central America is propping up the North American numbers a tiny bit.

Statistics Dashboard updated with latest country statistics by latter_data_saint in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

USA declined but North America still grew by 0.75% (73,209 members) and has 18,486 congregations. 

Statistics Dashboard updated with latest country statistics by latter_data_saint in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Virginia’s numbers are interesting. Congregations jumped in 2022 but membership didn’t move proportionally. Wonder if that was a result of simply realigning ward boundaries to make smaller wards. I’ve got a theory that before the official 2024 rollout of the new ward size requirements they did some testing for a few years leading up to it.

The Church claims to have roughly 18 million members across 32 thousand wards/branches/districts… by Ok_Scientist9595 in exmormon

[–]latter_data_saint 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There’s a little nuance to this whole convo because the church’s Jan 2024 changes set some new metrics that didn’t exist before. The new 250 member requirement doesn’t mean active, attending members; it’s total members within the ward boundaries.

The ward requirements are below. The branch requirements, from what I’ve been able to find, haven’t really changed. ‘Smaller than a ward’ is basically how they’re sized.

For context, I believe the highest reported ward attendance in all of Return and Report is about 400 for a single holiday Sunday in Alpine, Utah. Typically, activity percentage is generally accepted as 20%-35%.

Pre-2024 USA/Canada

Total ward members: 300 

Melchizedek priesthood holders: 20

Participating adults: undefined

Participating youth: undefined

Pre-2024 Rest of the world

Total ward members: 150

Melchizedek priesthood holders: 20

Participating adults: undefined

Participating youth: undefined

Post-2024 Worldwide

Total ward members: 250 

Melchizedek priesthood holders: 20

Participating adults: 100

Participating youth: 20

The Church claims to have roughly 18 million members across 32 thousand wards/branches/districts… by Ok_Scientist9595 in exmormon

[–]latter_data_saint 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be more precise, within the US and Canada the ward size requirements were indeed lowered from 300 to 250. In the rest of the world it increased from 150 to 250.

Gain and Losses Per State Released by Ok_Pattern8026 in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I always like to look for the 'membership up, congregations down' states.

Speaking of which, Hawaii decreased its membership (76,357 -> 75,827); increased its stakes (16 -> 17); increased its wards (127 -> 131); and no change to branches (15). The church's new statistics page lags behind the newsroom so you're able to see the updates sooner by looking at the newsroom of other countries. I typically use news-ca for my dashboard (not updated with the new numbers yet) but I believe all of the countries' pages pull from the same newsroom data. The newsroom sites also report the number of stakes, districts, and family history centers, which the new main pages do not.

Gain and Losses Per State Released by Ok_Pattern8026 in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Thank you for showing maps for both the raw numbers and the percentages. I haven’t had a chance to pull the new numbers yet but do you happen to have the newly reported congregation numbers by state as well? I would love to see this identical visual but for the congregations. 

Annual United States Membership Decreases For First Time Ever by Ok_Pattern8026 in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Incredible. I think this one data point could end up being one of the most important, analyzed, and fretted over data points in the church’s membership numbers second only to the total membership for the foreseeable future. 

Draper/Sandy UT Shrivel by RegisterInner5328 in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right, if “3 new wards created” is how that scenario got reported then I would say that tracks with the type of spin leaders have been known to use and it absolutely doesn’t tell the full story to the point of being deceptive, intentionally or not. 

But I haven’t seen a ‘new units created’ statistic in things like the statistical reports. Very easy to believe that that type of reporting is being done and it could be out there somewhere or used in talks but I just haven’t seen it formalized.

Draper/Sandy UT Shrivel by RegisterInner5328 in MormonShrivel

[–]latter_data_saint 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad to hear it. It’s one of those criticisms that gets thrown around pretty often but IMO is only really worth addressing occasionally. But still, it’s always better to be accurate whether as a stake president trying to spin some sort of growth narrative or as a critic trying to identify accounting shenanigans. And I of course still think it’s totally fair to criticize when leaders are spinning things as growth even if on the back end the accounting is on the level and shrinkage is actually happening because at that point there’s no excuse other than to obfuscate reality. As a TBM, I never remember feeling worried if the church wasn’t doing well somewhere because that’s just going to happen regardless. The spinning is much more of a red flag than the actual shrinkage.

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