The Church’s annual stat report given at their General Conferences in April proved to be much more of the same. I’m not sure why, but I always hold out hope they’ll be truthful, yet they refuse to live up to that standard. Sigh…
Be that as it may, here’s what we discovered by doing some simple math. The overall outlook of the Church is bleak. Membership is down, converts are down, and the missionary workforce numbers are down.
The only stat that went up was the inflated number they claimed for new members.
Let’s take a look at the basic stats provided at this conference so you can get an idea of what they’re trying to do –
Church Membership
15,882,417
Total of New Members
349,377 – Total
109,246 – Children of Record (BIC – Born in the Covenant)
240,131 – New Convert Baptisms
This total number comes from a combination of new converts, and ‘Children of Record’, which simply means those born into the Mormon Church. For the sake of the ongoing argument on how the Church defines this latter group, we’re going with their latest explanation that Children of Record are those born into the Church.
By simply subtracting the 2015 membership total (15,634,199) from the 2016 membership total we should come up with an increase of 248,218 new members.
