Updated Country Profile - Norway

Click here to access the updated Reaching the Nations country profile for Norway. The Church in Norway has arguably experienced one of the slowest growth rates during the past century in the worldwide Church as Church membership has increased from only 1,507 in 1930 to 4,598 in 2018. It has taken nearly 20 years for the Church to report a net increase of 600 members between the late 1990s and 2018. Most convert baptisms in recent years have appeared to be immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The Church in Norway maintains an impressive level of national outreach as 53% of the population lives within 10 kilometers of a Church meetinghouse or a city or town with its own ward or branch. The establishment of a second stake in Drammen in 2012 indicated some progress with leadership development although the number of active members nationwide has not appeared to noticeably change in two decades. Oslo appears a likely candidate for a small temple one day as Norway is the only Nordic country with at least 1,000 members without a temple. See below for the future prospects section of the article.

The Church has established congregations in most areas and has the basic infrastructure to meet outreach needs in most areas, but secularism remains a cultural influence that has reduced receptivity. The missionary complement assigned to Norway has been cut to less than half of its prior levels without noticeably affecting growth. The Church depends heavily on the larger Latter-day Saint populations in the Oslo area and in a few additional cities such as Bergen to stabilize the national church population and looks to this region for future growth. Many members in small branches are considering moving to the Oslo area that, over time, may lead to additional consolidations of smaller branches in northern Norway. The heavy emigration of Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century has continued, although at a slower rate in recent years and has made local growth harder to achieve. Outreach directed toward youth is needed due to low birth rates among Latter-day Saints and the small number of youth converts in order to ensure long term growth.