Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Moving

I will be away from the Internet for much of the rest of the week as my wife and I will be moving back to the United States. A district was discontinued in Saint Kitts-Nevis that I have not reported on yet which I provide background and analysis on once we return.

6 comments:

Odell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Odell said...

Good luck with your move. I hope it goes smoothly.

churchgrowth said...

Matt,
when you get back I was wondering what your thoughts are on Argentina? It has now been over 4 years since a district/stake was created in that country. Between the years of 1983-1987 there was also a slow in growth, however we have now matched that amount of time that passed without a stake/district creation and will soon be passing that amount of time. I was wondering if there is a new policy or church approach that is keeping the church from growing in Argentina?

Matt said...

Thanks for the comments. We had a great trip back.

Argentina is an anomaly as it experienced continued congregation growth when other Latin American nations experiences congregations declines during the early and middle 2000s. Over the past two years we have seen a major slowdown in growth, which appears appropriate considering convert retention rates have not improved much over the past decade despite the creation of so many new congregations.

Many of the stakes in the Buenos Aires area have enough congregations to split. However there remain not enough active members to create additional stakes. I figure within the next few years we'll begin to see some of these stake divide. Many branches in this area mature into wards regularly.

Overall, I would say that the strongest long-term growth continues to occur in Buenos Aires. Areas in the country which appear to have the biggest issues developing leadership and retaining converts are the far northern areas near Paraguay, such as the Argentina Resistencia Mission. But then again I've talked to returned missionaries who recently served in Buenos Aires and they tell me stories of some branches with 50-100 active members and almost 1,000 total members on the records - most of whom have moved away and cannot be located.

Michael Worley said...

Matt,
see above,
same issue here?

Matt said...

I have been having a hard time deleting all these irrelevant posts with links to adult websites which keep coming up. Any tips on how to block these comments?