I’m not saying the internet doesn’t have an effect. I just think it’s much more muted than many do. I do think there’s been a big shift in how the Church handles it’s history. The church sponsored book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre for instance was warts and all. Many recent entries to lds.org also are pretty forthright about history. Also, to be frank, there’s no shortage of good books by faithful members on all these things and have been for quite a long time. Were you writing in 1992 I’d think you’d have a good point. In 2017 with the amazing collection of history available I’m far more skeptical.

Joel, I think the question is what this saturation point is. The reason I’m skeptical is because as the number of missionaries drops you’d expect the number of converts to go back to what it was in 2013 but it doesn’t. It drops. That suggests it’s not some maximum amount. Further when the number of missionaries increases significantly in 2014 the number of baptisms go up even the the number per missionary decrease.

I’m open to the theory you put forth as being possible. I just don’t think the numbers we have work with our having reached this saturation point.

Respectfully, I believe there is a much larger culprit at play: the Internet. When unfiltered information is now both abundant and credible (not just the old over-the-top anti-mormon pamphlets from the 1970s and 80s), it’s no wonder that interest in the church is declining. The church has tried to address this head-on with their essays, but it seems that the essays are also confirming many of the issues that used to be called “anti-Mormon lies” when I was growing up.

IMO, the Mormon church needs a fundamental shift in how it addresses its history. It relies on a story that in many cases can be easily debunked in a credible way on the internet. Sure, it’s not all about history — a lot is based on faith. But for the younger generation, the old black-and-white narratives no longer work.

I never thought about them being younger, because they don’t really seem any younger.

But they’ll linger at my house for literally 2-3 hours (more once or twice) before getting to the point of a message, which is always at the prodding of me asking them finally if they have a message.

We’ve just said to each other several times (different missionaries), “They don’t make them like they used to”. And they’re all from similar regions as well so it’s not like we’re getting tons of Florida missionaries now where they used to be from Utah or something.

I wonder if too many inexperienced missionaries were promoted too early to be leaders when the surge happened, which led to lots more poorly trained (in the field) missionaries, and that institutional on the job training is still trickling down?

They just seem less focused. Less determined. Less organized. Less self-directed.

I have a son in Georgia who used to feed the missionaries regularly, any time they had a dinner appointment fall thru. Then they only fed the sisters. Now it is a rare occasion to feed the missionaries at all. Reason? Rude behavior. Chances of a referral? Zero.

I have a daughter in Washington State. They used to feed the missionaries fairly regularly. Now they don’t. Reason given? Rude behavior. She said she didn’t put up with that type of behavior from her brother when he was that age, & she doesn’t see it as her job to teach these young men what their parents did not. Chances of a referral? Zero.

Another daughter living in Utah. Same story – immature, rude behavior. Chances of a referral? Zero.

Living in Utah County, I find myself simply passing the list to sign up to feed the missionaries on down the row. We have had convert baptisms in our ward, but the members referred to the ward mission leader, not the full time elders.

Since we know that referrals from members are more likely to bear fruit than other, I would think that a drop in member referral would be a significant reason for a drop in baptisms.

Peter, thank you for your candid comments above. I am returning to my mission field of France in a few weeks for the temple festivities so I have done a lot of recent reflection on my shortcomings as a missionary and about people I have not seen in 27 years.

Two years ago when my daughter was 18 she declared her independence from the Church and it is painful to wonder if she will come back after prodigal wanderings.

All of this is tied, I suspect, to the problem of 18 year old missionaries though. Giving missionaries more flexibility requires them to be more responsible. The reality is that even many well meaning 18 year olds simply aren’t yet. Some are of course, but enough aren’t that it limits what one can structurally do.

Again though, I fully understand wanting to maintain retention of the youth. A lot of people get converted on their missions, learn to understand the spirit, and become mature then. So there’s a balancing act of what you do for the youth and what you do for potential converts. The statistics just make me think that things are out of balance right now. Of course I say that not knowing retention statistics, but as I’ve said I’m skeptical the change to 18 will make a big difference.

To the idea that effects wouldn’t happen at 2008 but would take a while, I’m skeptical I’ll confess. But I also think that if that were the cause we’d expect a gradual shift instead of the big drop exactly when the 18 year old change takes place.

There is more than ever an intense infantilising hyper-control regime with missionaries at all levels bullied into constant totally unrealistic numerical goal setting that is very rarely achieved. This is totally demoralising, and morally compromises everything missionaries do as instead of focusing on the needs of the investigator and their free willl missionaries pressurise and manipulate them in countless overt or subtle ways to meet a sales target which they are repeatedly taught to believe is God’s revealed will (‘prayerfully set targets’) so trumps common sense or the investigators’ wishes.

They baptise people long before they have demonstrated being committed or rooted enough in the ward and regular attendance so we have a massive rate of almost immediate attrition which everwhelms and demoralises wards and stakes, who then get distracted from ministering to the active members by chasing dead wood on the ward lists and we lose active people we should have kept. My stake has 22% activity rate and everyone in the world should never forget that we probably have more members on the Address Unknown Files than the ward lists. So the scale of dysfunction in how we baptise people before they are ready under this hyper salesmanship culture is devastating the Church.

The message is also boring and irrelevant when with more flexibility there are a hundred ways missionary discussions and approached could be adapted to local needs and interests and culture, but we still don’t trust and allow local people and missionaries that flexibilith to experiment, so are trapped with a system that really hasn’t changed much in 70 years.

The missionaries recently were told there is going to be more flexibility in their daily routine (they currently stay indoors till all the functional people with 9 to 5 jobs are out of reach in their workplaces which drives me CRAZY) and investigators may be expected to attend longer than 2 Sundays before baptising them – baby steps in the right direction – and I think some abandonment of telling investigators in the first or second discussion that you have already prayed about and decided on their baptism date, which is in Preach My Gospel and totally insane.

The mental health damage this is doing to missionaries is appalling, specially 18 year olds with no experience of living and thinking independently so they naively trust totally dysfunctional systems and obedience obsessed amateurs in leadership without enough skepticism to question the crazy stuff, and it is causing carnage. So that is the main worry regarding younger missionaries. They drink the Kool-Aid and it is poisoning them and they come home early and sick and disillusioned by what was done to them and many immediately go inactive.

The problems are within, not without. We have been given a Restored Gospel with big exciting ideas for the space age. We should not in any way be following the trends of the apostate dead denominations – we should still be seeing exponential growth and if we are not that is entirely our fault for failing to communicate with world that exciting knowledge and news.

If the rhetoric and cultural trend in the Church is running towards pharisaical Amishness instead of embracing the wonderful worldly trends towards Christ-like compassion and tolerance and taking better care of the poor, we are never going to survive and the rapid decline is already settling in.

In a world of billions of people missionaries should be able to find one good convert a month if only how they are doing it was not so thoroughly dysfunctional. Stop ALL target setting and see what unfolds.

Nah, it takes awhile for a reputation to coalesce or settle in, and combine that with a public increase in sympathy toward our gay brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors, and 2014 should be exactly when you’d see that effect. Combine that with any possible reaction toward the Mormons being the party of Mitt Romney, and now Donald Trump. Except for Tea Party and white supremacist types, that’s not something that’s going to play well in many world markets.

My guess is that the main cause of the drop in converts is largely the rising secularization of the world and our failure to really be able to present a message to Asia.