Church Membership Growth

What happened in 1989? In October, 1988 General Conference, Pres. Ezra Taft Benson gave his memorable talk about flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon. The Saints responded. Missionaries had boxes of books to give investigators with our photographs and testimonies pasted inside the front cover. The Book of Mormon is what happened in 1989. It is the divine tool uniquely designed by God to gather Israel in the last days. In 1989, we as a Church helped the Book of Mormon accomplish its intended purpose.

What has happened since 2000? The Internet has come to dominate popular culture. This creates several challenges for the Church:

1. The Internet is a network that empowers individuals and diminishes the influence of hierarchies. The Church, the Kingdom of God on earth, is the ultimate hierarchy. Our prophet, Pres. Russell Marion Nelson Sr., receives revelation directly from God. It doesn't get any more hierarchical than that.
2. Transparency is the coin of the realm in the Internet age. The Church, a Kingdom that is partly divine and partly human, struggles with transparency as indeed it must. Some things are sacred and pearls should not be cast before swine.
3. Trust in institutions is diminishing. How do people make buying decisions? They look for five stars from a neighbor on Amazon rather than reading the manufacturer's slick and glossy brochure.
4. You don't sell much stuff knocking on doors anymore. We need innovative new systems to keep our missionaries productive.
5. Social media is hard to manage. In the old days, the Church could air Home Front spots on prime time TV or take out an ad in Reader's Digest and get our message out. Nowadays, each of the myriad content distribution channels has different protocols and audience expectations.
6. Search engines only identify "relevance," not truth. Search results on many subjects are more likely to be faith-destroying than faith-affirming.
7. Anti-Mormons troll Church content online. The Church can post a terrific video on YouTube and haters within hours will post multiple low-budget videos contradicting the Church's position. After a member or investigator finishes watching the Church's polished production, YouTube's algorithm will suggest the attack videos.
8. Authenticity can outperform professionalism. The Church generally projects a clean-cut, classy image. Crude, unkempt reality content often gets more views, likes, and shares.
9. Humor rules. Most Church content is not very entertaining.
10. Diversity and tolerance are considered ultimate virtues. Obedience to eternal truth is often spun as old-fashioned if not discriminatory.

Is the Church true? Yes. Is the Book of Mormon the most divine object most of us will ever hold in our mortal hands? Yes. Will the Savior return in glory and clean up this mess? Yes. Are we gathering Israel on both sides of the veil and preparing the world for the Second Coming? Yes. Will the Church figure out this online technology thing? Yes. "The mill of the gods grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine."

I took several members of the Book of Mormon Central staff to Google Headquarters in March, 2018. Visiting with a number of Latter-day Saint Googlers, we learned that two of the Apostles had been in Mountain View a few months before us. After learning that Google has eight products used by more than a billion customers (Search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Android, Chrome, Play Store, Drive) Elder Bednar reportedly said that we in the Church need to raise our sights and increase our expectations.

Of the 16,313,735 baptized members of record on December 31, 2018, how many attend Church on a given Sunday? About 30% according to Matt Martinich who publishes the LDS Church Growth blog. That would be about 4.9 million people in the pews which is likely a reasonable proxy for the number who make the Book of Mormon an important part of their daily life. The United Nations estimates there are 7.7 billion humans on the planet in April, 2019. The Book of Mormon went on sale to the public on March 26, 1830 in Palmyra, NY. After 189 years, the Book of Mormon has achieved a market penetration rate of .000636, less than 1/15 of 1%, about 6 people out of every 10,000.

The bad news is we probably could have done better. The good news is we did pretty well in 1989 by following Pres. Benson's recipe given in the October, 1988 General Conference talk mentioned above. Pres. Benson asked us to produce:

• videos
• reading programs
• translations into many languages
• articles
• broadcasts
• lectures and symposiums
• classes
• talks
• books
• insights
• electronic media
• conversion stories
• recordings
• displays
• film, drama, literature, music, and paintings

He  also asked us to:

• read daily
• make the Book of Mormon more central in our work
• arouse mankind's interest
• answer the great questions
• abide by its precepts

FARMS was doing pretty much everything on the prophet's list in the 1988 - 1989 time frame. And, Book of Mormon Central is doing pretty much everything on the list today, albeit at a modest scale.

In order to learn how highly effective organizations scale in 2019, I took Zander Sturgill and Daniel Smith from Book of Mormon Central with me to Traffic & Conversion Summit 2019 in San Diego in February. The good news is some of the most talented digital marketers on earth are faithful Latter-day Saints who in their heart of hearts want to use their skills someday to help build the Kingdom. The additional good news is religious content has many characteristics compatible with modern distribution technologies.

The ideal mix for the Church in 2019 is to produce 50% of its own online content, with 30% user generated content coming from members, and the other 20% from trusted independent voices such as Book of Mormon Central. The actual numbers right now are closer to 90% coming from the official Church, 8% from members, and 2% from trusted independent organizations. The ideal is achievable with increased donor support. The Church, its members, and those of us in supporting organizations are getting more adept at the modern media landscape every day.

Official Church Social Media Channels

Every one of the 15 living prophets, seers, and revelators has a Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter account and the Church just created a public Facebook Group (a gutsy move, frankly. I do not envy the moderators). The Church has many YouTube channels. Here is how the Church's primary YouTube channel compares with a handful of others and with Book of Mormon Central:

Name                                                            Subscribers   Views

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints   855,293         310,717,388
The Bible Project                                         1,285,111           96,637,678

Vatican News                                                  223,177           38,208,070

Life.Church                                                     146,684           13,109,264

United Methodist Videos                                    9,356             2,512,833
Seventh Day Adventist Church                         21,751            1,910,035

Lakewood (largest US Megachurch)                60,624             1,491,423

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Book of Mormon Central (3 channels)             23,290             2,582,301

With Pres. Nelson's extraordinary leadership, can Church membership growth numbers come roaring back to the levels they were during Pres. Benson's era? Yes, if we help the Book of Mormon accomplish its intended purpose.