The Missionary Problem
We've doubled missionaries, but convert baptism rates are the same?
Introduction
In October of 2012, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced an age change of when missionaries could serve. Boys could now serve at age 18 and girls 19. This resulted in a surge of missionaries as you will see in the charts below.
The primary subject of this post is looking at trends like these and how the number of missionaries and converts have changed over time.
Data
For this week, we are looking at the official numbers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every April General Conference, the church releases numbers from the audit report that are read over the pulpit. Looking online, I found a source that has compiled these numbers over the years. Feel free to look at this source and explore; they have a lot of interesting graphs and data joined in.
Charts
As the charts show, there was a huge increase in the missionary count after the missionary age change. Also, during covid, there was a sharp decline in both full-time missionaries and convert baptisms.
Those findings are interesting, but the most notable thing to me is the relative consistency of convert baptisms since the 80s-90s given that we have doubled (tripled since the 80s) in the active missionary count.
What this means is that for every missionary, there are fewer convert baptisms over time. And, that’s exactly what the figure below shows…
From some years of an average 8 converts per missionary, in 2023 was saw below 4 converts per missionary. And, even more interesting, this has been a steady decrease over time 40+ years.
Some drops in this time period are explainable. For example, there was a strong drop after the age change suggesting missions weren’t prepared for the influx of missionaries which perhaps led to inefficiencies. Also, the Converts-per-missionary dropped again during COVID-19. This change was also understandable as there are fewer missionary daily encounters and lessons with lockdown. But, why has their been a steady decline in the number of converts-per-missionary over the last nearly 50 years? This is not so easily explained away. Perhaps its a mixture of secularization and general decline in interest in religion. I’m honestly not sure.
The leaders of the Church seem aware with preach my gospel being released and new editions. Also, that may be a reason behind the missionary age change to try and boost convert numbers. But, so far, these efforts haven’t seemed to help as there continue to be fewer converts per missionary.
What we don’t explore here is the why behind this trend… perhaps I can explore a little bit and write up another post more about that in the future. Because, as of now, I really don’t know.
Discussion
Why do you think convert baptisms to Mormonism peaked in the 90s despite having more missionaries now?
From a micro-level, conversion is a matter of the condition of one's heart. Switching to macro, 7 billion people who aren't ready to receive/produce a spiritual experience, will not accept the Spirit. Evidenced by the "Master Teacher" who wasn't able to "convert" many people.
Of course there are better practices for missionaries, but a "hardened heart" will never receive the gospel. Unfortunately, diagnosing a hard heart is nearly impossible. Which is one of the reasons we are charged to share the gospel to everyone.
Conclusion: We could quadruple our missionary force and still have disproportional changes due to the individual being unready/unwilling to accept Jesus Christ and the restored gospel because of cultural formulation.