The pandemic plunge
All church statistics for 2020 should carry a COVID-19 asterisk. While everyone expected the pandemic to shrink growth, we now know the extent: Convert baptisms cut in half, for instance, and new children of record down by nearly a third.
Independent researcher Matt Martinich, who religiously tracks these demographics at ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com, sheds more light with some eye-popping observations:
Total membership • 16,663,663, up 98,627 (0.6%) from 16,565,036 in 2019.
“The last time the church reported an annual membership growth rate that was slower than 2020 was in 1857, when negative membership growth occurred (this was during the time of the reformation movement when church leaders advocated rebaptism to recommit to their covenants and to church teachings),” Martinich writes. “.The last time there was an increase of less than 100,000 for total church membership was in 1973, when there was a net increase of 87,750 members.”
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The Daily Universe
BYU Women’s Conference will be completely online this year without any on-campus gatherings, the university announced Friday.
Both paid and complimentary sessions will be available through the conference website related to this year’s theme, “I am a Child of God. His Promises are Sure.” One of the seven complimentary sessions will feature Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his wife, Sister Melanie Rasband. Registration and session information can be found here.
The other six complimentary sessions available will include a Sister to Sister event and messages from selected presidency members of Church organizations.