Church Growth and Activity

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Church Growth and Activity

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Chart depicting LDS Church growth from 1900 to 2021. — Church growth with a 10-year moving average. In the last 20 years, growth rates have stabilized around 1%–2% but the trend lines indicate a downward trend from the higher growth rates of the 1980s and 1990s. [1]

Is the church growing or shrinking?

Overall, it's growing.[2] However, in some places, the growth rate is flat.[3] In others, it is relatively high.[4]

But isn't the rate of growth declining?

Yes. The Church's growth rate has been declining for the past couple of decades, from a growth rate of 5%–10% in the late twentieth century down to a stable growth rate of about 1%–2% in the twenty-first century.[5]

Why has the Church's growth rate been declining?

Religious affiliation has been generally declining in the United States[6] and elsewhere.[7] Nearly all major religious organizations have declined in numbers in the U.S.[8]

Isn't most of the Church growth from children being born into the Church as opposed to converts?

No. For the past decade, the Church has had about a quarter-million convert baptisms each year, with the children of record reported by the Church in the low hundred thousand each year.[9]

Has the Church ever been the "fastest-growing religion"?

Possibly. The U.S. Census Bureau does not collect information on religion, so it's difficult to make comparisons with other religions.[10] The Church says it "makes no statistical comparisons with other churches" and "makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination."[11]

What percentage of Church members are "active"?

The best current data from the U.S. General Social Survey indicates about 65% of U.S. members attend church once a week.[12] Worldwide membership activity is estimated to be around 30% from Reaching the Nations: International Church Growth Almanac, an unofficial Church almanac.[13]

How many new converts remain active?

Possibly 20%–50%, according to various third-party studies.[14] However, convert retention rates vary widely by geography[15] and by time measured.[16]

The Facts

The growth rate of the Church is positive but has been on the decline for about two decades.
The number of members, stakes, and wards are all growing at about 1.5% per year.
Convert baptisms are the primary means of growth as opposed to children born into the Church.
Metrics like growth, retention, and activity vary depending on geography, with developed countries showing little, stagnant, or negative growth, and developing countries showing high growth.
Accurate activity rates in the U.S. are unknown, but estimates are about 65% depending on geography.

Our Take

Some might connect the truthfulness of the Gospel to the way the Church grows. Some might feel that high growth affirms their belief in the Church, while others might see declining growth as an indication that the Church isn't true.

So if someone's image of the Church is that of a fast-growing community, it can be uncomfortable to discover that the Church isn't growing that quickly. If the gospel is true, shouldn't it be more popular?

The Church is growing, with growth primarily coming from convert baptisms. However, the growth rate of the Church, along with other religions, has been declining for the last two decades.

There may come a day where Church growth becomes stagnant or declines, and it can be sad that more people don't accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. While it can feel affirming to have evidence that our beliefs are popular and that missionary efforts are succeeding, Church growth and the truthfulness of the gospel aren't necessarily tied.

What's Your Take?

Drew T.
“I believe there is a sifting going on. We will pretty much sift ourselves out of the Church for varying reasons like getting caught up in the world and its strong attractions.”
Brent
“The convert baptism rate needs more context. Since 9 year olds of inactive parents count as a convert it muddies the water. If 8, 9 or even 10 year olds get baptized, they don’t fit well in the convert category, but make more sense as a child or record.”
Grant
“I think with information about the church being so widely available now testimonies either get destroyed or strengthened. You need a lot of faith to join a church that is so against the norm that I’m not surprised at all by declining growth rate.”
Jordan W.
“I used to think it was important that the church grow fast and sweep in converts by the tens of millions. But then I looked more carefully at the prophecy of 1 Nephi 14:12-14. We will be a scattered few, but because of our covenants, we will be blessed with power and great glory.”
Mason
“I am a convert myself and a child of apostates far from the pioneer belt. I have been a member for a year and baptized a friend of mine. As I see it, in a world where activity rates among all faiths decline so steadily, any kind of growth, no matter how small, is impressive.”

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Footnotes

[1]↩︎
The trend lines show a moving average, whereas the dots indicate a point in time growth rate.
- Stephen Cranney in Times and Seasons analyzes Church growth.
[2]↩︎
Growth can be measured in different ways. For example, growth in branches, stakes, and wards may be different than growth in members of record, and all of these metrics may vary from region to region.
Looking across these metrics and across geographies, the Church population is growing overall. For example, from 2010–2020 the number of wards and branches grew from 28,660 to 31,136 (+8.6%), the number of members on the Church records went from 14,131,467 to 16,663,663 (+17.9%), and the number of stakes went from 2,896 to 3,463 (+19.6%).
[3]↩︎
Generally, more developed countries outside the United States report stagnant or no growth, while developing countries report stronger growth.
For example, according to Reaching the Nations: International Church Growth Almanac, in Germany "annual membership growth rates during the 2000s ranked from a low of -.9% in 2007 to a high of 1.2% in 2010 and generally varied between zero and one percent."
In Australia during the same time, "annual membership growth rates fluctuated from a low of -.6% in 2001 to a high of 5.2% in 2005 and generally ranged from 2 to 4%."
- Externally published Church Almanac that tracks growth across different countries.
[4]↩︎
For example, according to Reaching the Nations: International Church Growth Almanac, Nigeria in the 2000s saw "LDS annual membership growth rates decreased from 6%-11% between 2001 and 2006 to 5%-6% from 2007-2010."
Growth in Cote D'Ivoire was even higher, with "annual membership growth rates during the 2000s ranged from a low of 6.3% in 2008 to a high of 13.7% in 2002 but averaged around 10%."
- Externally published Church Almanac that tracks growth across different countries.
- Official Church statement on Church growth.
[5]↩︎
For example, from 1979-1980, the Church grew from 9,365 stakes to 10,324 stakes (+10.2%), whereas from 2018 to 2019 (the last year before COVID) the number of stakes increased from 3,383 to 3,437 (+1.6%). However, from 2019 to 2020, the number of stakes only increased from 3,437 to 3,463 (+.8%).
Stephen Cranney, a data scientist, wrote a blog post in Times and Seasons explaining that the exact numbers vary depending on whether the changes in members, wards, or stakes are what's being measured, but that the overall trends are similar for each.
[6]↩︎
The Pew religious survey indicates that most people in the United States still believe in God and maintain some religious affiliation, but the number of people who don't have grown significantly.
According to the 2019 large-N Pew religious identification survey, religious "Nones" who don't affiliate with a religion went from 17% in 2009 to 26% in 2017.
- Pew Research Report on religious declines in general in U.S.
[7]↩︎
The World Values Survey, a large survey taken across multiple countries, reported:
From about 2007 to 2019, the overwhelming majority of the countries we studied—43 out of 49—became less religious. The decline in belief was not confined to high-income countries and appeared across most of the world.
- Reports World Values Survey shows decline in religiosity across the world.
[8]↩︎
According to Pew, the Catholic population in the U.S. has declined from 24% down to 20% from 2007–2018. The Protestant population has declined from 51%–43% during the same period of time.
The Church has maintained about 2% of the U.S. population over the past decade.
- Pew Research Report on religious declines in general in U.S.
[9]↩︎
According to the Cumorah Foundation, an NGO that studies Church growth, the Church has traditionally reported numbers of convert baptisms and new "children of record" in General Conference.
The convert baptisms number is noted as the number of people over the age of eight who join the Church. "Children of record," in general, are listed as unbaptized under-8-year-olds who are added to Church records (though the way this is calculated may have shifted).
The "children of record" number is typically much lower than the number of converts reported.
- Martinich describes the history of the "children of record" indicator.
- Martinich summarizes the history of the "convert baptisms" indicator.
[10]↩︎
The Church's growth rate was fastest in 1830–1832 when it grew from 6 to 2,661 members.
Religious censuses (not the U.S. Census) taking data from the 1990s–2000s and from the 2000s–2010s have reported that the Church is one of the fastest-growing denominations that they collected data on.
[11]↩︎
The Church released an official statement in 2015:
Despite its increasing numbers, the Church cautions against overemphasis on growth statistics. The Church makes no statistical comparisons with other churches and makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination . . . such comparisons rarely take account of a multiplicity of complex factors.
- Official Church statement on Church growth.
[12]↩︎
Data from the General Social Survey indicates that about 60–70% of those who self-identify as Latter-day Saints report attending Church "about once a week" or more (for the past couple of decades in the U.S.).
- T&S blog post that discusses GSS data on church activity.
- National survey with data on Latter-day Saints.
[13]↩︎
In the introduction to Reaching the Nations: International Church Growth Almanac published by the Cumorah Foundation, authors Stewart and Martinich estimate that around 30% of worldwide members regularly attended Church services.
The authors do not disclose their methodology or sources for activity data.
- Externally published Church Almanac estimated in 2011 that 30% of worldwide members regularly attend church.
[14]↩︎
A study by Matt Martinich, that relied on surveying returned missionaries, found about 50% retention inside and outside the U.S. after one year.
According to an academic article by David Knowlton and a Salt Lake Tribune piece by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Many countries with religion census questions such as Chile, Mexico, and Brazil show wide disparity between Church numbers and self-reported identification, with self-report showing about 20-25% of on-the-record numbers.
[15]↩︎
For example, according to the 2000 Mexican Census (as reported by a study by Knowlton), only about 23% of members on the Church records self-identify as Latter-day Saints.
However, according to the Cumorah Foundation's Almanac, in 2006 about 45% of Australians on the Church records identify as Latter-day Saints.
- Study that reports on fact that Chile and Mexican censuses show many fewer members than are on Church records.
- Externally published Church Almanac that tracks growth across different countries.
[16]↩︎
Activity rates one month after baptism are different than activity rates 10 years after baptism. One study found about 50% retention after one year. However, the authors noted that some qualitative responses suggest that retention is also a major problem after one year.
- Results of a large, cross-national survey about convert retention.
- Analysis of discrepancies between Church numbers and government numbers in Brazil.