This afternoon, the Church will publish its annual statistical report for the year 2024 with figures as of December 31st, 2024. My analysis of the 2023 statistical report can be found here. The following is what I anticipate for these growth metrics:
- Membership: 17,600,000
- Converts Baptized: 300,000
- Increase in Children of Record (i.e., children under age 8, most of whom are infants born and blessed during the previous year): 100,000
- Official Congregations (i.e., wards and branches): 31,700
- Stakes: 3,609
- Districts: 492
- Missions: 450
- Missionaries Serving: 77,000
I anticipate that convert baptisms in 2024 will reach a 25-year high, based on reports indicating approximately 300,000 convert baptisms during the year. I also expect the number of children of record to be slightly higher than in 2023—potentially surpassing 100,000 for the first time since 2018.
The number of proselytizing missionaries may have reached as high as 77,000 by the end of the year. However, this figure could be inflated, as it is unclear whether some reports from Church leaders included young service missionaries.
Notably, the number of districts appears to have experienced a slight net increase in 2024. If confirmed, this would mark the first such increase since 2008. The Church organized a near-record number of new districts in 2024, largely driven by expansion in lesser-reached areas of Sub-Saharan Africa.
11 comments:
This report has been released during the Saturday Morning Session the last few years, so last year's report could actually be released in just a few hours.
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/2024-statistical-report
Total new additions with New Converts and Child of Record top 400k for the first time since 2014. Increase is largest since 2015, but the number of removals from deaths/removing records totals 146k, which is the largest ever, and a 58% increase from last year. Only other year that was close was 2018 and the baptism of LGBT children issue that led many to remove their membership. Don't feel like there has been anything particular to drive more resignations, makes me wonder if they are culling old records.
2024 vs 2023 changes:
+43 Stakes
+5 Districts
+186 Wards and Branches
+254,387 total membership
-1,977 children of record
+56,919 converts over 2023
+6,256 full time teaching missionaries
Most convert baptisms this century. W&B's YoY highest post-Covid, increase in stakes and districts YoY highest post-Covid. Highest ever missionaries aside from the age change spike.
Overall a great year on all categories aside from relatively flat child of record and removal of records.
Converts per missionary increased from 3.71 in 2023 to 4.16 in 2024 (12% increase). In 2022 it was 3.39, so a relatively material jump in 2 years (23%). Glad to see productivity is increasing. I'll have to go back and see how it compares but that's a good trend.
I would guess cleaning up membership records would be the biggest reason for record removal in 2024.
I know a year or two back I started an audit of membership records in my ward mostly focused on deaths as my ward had a large number of members on record over 90 years old. It was found that between 2-6% of the ward membership had passed away at some point in the last 5 years but the death was never recorded. I even found one who had passed away almost 10 years ago.
Matt, thank you for adding the 1st District in the West African nation of Guinea. I had not seen that earlier this week on the Cote d'Ivoire Yamoussoukro Mission on the Meetinghouse site. Thanks for catching that.
https://maps.churchofjesuschrist.org/missions/2107449
These are very good numbers. At least my branch is on track to exceed our already high baptism numbers in 2024 in 2025.
The full report breaks down missionaries into full-time teaching, senior full-time service, and young full-time service. The full-time teaching is at 74,000. Do we have comparisons for the 31,000 senior service and the 4,000 young service? I think these are good numbers.
One key to success with more baptisms has been focusing more on inviting people to church early on. At one point the focus was teaching people in their homes and then eventually inviting them to church. Now missionaries often invite people to church, and then give them a lesson after they attend sacrament and other meetings for the first time.
There were 16 new general authorities called and only 5 given emeritus status. I believe the new general authorities were born in 8 countries (Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Jamaica, the United States and Venezuela). Elder Brown from Jamaica and Elder Matswagothata from Botswana are the first called from their country. Elder Amos becomes the third African-American general authority called and this is the first time three black general authorities were called at once.
I believe this is an excellent point. I have never seen anyone (no exceptions that I can think of) stay active when they did not make a clear commitment to attend Church before baptism. I wish this was done here more often and there was more emphasis on this in my area as well.
I had not actually put this together until reading your comment, but I am seeing the same thing. I'll see friends of missionaries be at church multiple times with relatively little progress through the missionary lessons. With the exception of our most recent baptism, the others over the past 18 months have almost all been well-established in attending church prior to baptism.
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