First of all, there was a huge amount of growth from 1974-1990. The bulk of this time was under President Kimball's administration and five years of it was under President Benson's.
Second, there appear to be small pockets of growth decline every few years.
Third, from 1978 to 1982, the reported number of converts was rounded to the thousands place (152,000, 193,000, etc).
Finally, and perhaps most notably, the number of converts has been on a general decline since 1990, when it had reached a record 330,877 converts. In fact, last year, the number of converts reported was at the lowest it has been in 16 years.
5 comments:
Oddly enough the current down-trend is during the same period that Internet use has climbed.
Do you think that the Internet has had an adverse effect on the number of converts per year?
I think it has to do with the church being concerned about the retention rates. Even though the church reached an all time high in 1990 with growth, I think they probably reached another record in low retention.
I have a feeling a lot of the people who joined the church initially met with the misisonaries to learn more and then ended up accepting their commitments. Now they can get information about the church without meeting with the missionaries and without risking pressure sales tactics.
I'm not really seeing the internet affecting this much. Otherwise the 3rd World countries' conversion rates would be static, but they are falling as well.
I believe there is also been a big drop in the number of missionaries due to the end of the baby-boomers, raising-the-bar, etc.
That is an interesting trend indeed, and one I hadn't heard about. I wonder what the analysts (if any) are saying.
Perhaps there has been more of a focus on retention.
It sounds feasable that the internet is affecting things. There are probably many factors to think about.
I wonder if this gradual decline because fewer new countries have been allowing missionaries in. I don't have any data to back that up or anything.
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