Conference Rumors

It has been interesting to review the speculation online in recent weeks regarding potential changes that may be announced during the upcoming General Conference this weekend. I have reviewed many of these rumors. Most of these rumors lack credible information to substantiate them. However, recent comments from church leaders, such as President Eyring when he spoke in Seattle, Washington last month, hint that there will be "a new way of doing things" and the need for personal revelation to confirm to members that the "practical ways of doing things are changed by the Lord through his Prophet." In August, an article on lds.org quoted President Oaks in regards to changes in Church programs to help better address member needs. More specifically, President Oaks stated, “We have spent many hours talking about how we can simplify our Church programs to perform their essential function for a wide variety of family circumstances,” and, “Now, I am pleased to tell you that some help is on the way and more is under discussion.” These statements, as well as other information obtained from other unpublished sources, suggest significant changes may be in the works and may be announced this weekend.

As for the scope of this blog, it appears some of these changes may relate to church growth. As noted in a recent post, it appears highly likely that there will be a significant increase in temple announcements, perhaps with new temples announced numbering in the dozens in the immediate future. This is by far the most well-supported rumor for the coming conference. It appears that new temples will adopt a smaller building size with minimal maintenance to improve accessibility for membership. Thus, if these changes were to occur, it could significantly change the way we look at temple announcements as a sign of church growth if the standards for a temple to be announced for a given area are reduced.

Several other changes may be in the works but are not as well supported based upon sources I have reviewed. For example, there appears to be significant changes coming to the missionary program (such as discontinuation of the term "investigator" to refer to people who are not members of the Church and learning about the Church from missionaries) albeit it is unclear what changes may occur. Additionally, the Church's announcements of changes to its youth programs have been reported although details are scant. As for changes to the standard Sunday meeting schedule, what I can confirm from my direct knowledge is that the Church will likely continue to hold weekly Sunday School classes per the New Testament 2019 Come, Follow Me - For Sunday School manual. More specifically, this teacher manual specifically designates particular lessons to be taught on particular weeks (e.g. December 31st-January 6th introduction to the year and New Testament, January 7th-13th Matthew 1; Luke 1, etc). The manual was specifically developed just for the year 2019 and STRONGLY emphasizes individual scripture and gospel study during the course of the year.

I believe emphasis on use of the Church's full name and utilization of the Saints Church history series are likely topics to be addressed in the conference. The Saints book has enormous potential, particularly internationally, to help mature members' faith and familiarity with church history with accurate sources and within proper context as translations of the first volume in the series are available in 14 languages (Cebuano, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog and Tongan). All languages with at least 100,000 Latter-day Saint speakers have a translation of this new reference available, which is valuable considering the significant amount of negative, and often grossly inaccurate, information about the Church online in these languages.

In sum, the timing for these changes, whether already announced or speculated to be announced soon, does not appear to be a coincidence. Never in the history of the Church has there been as many active members as at present. Rates for missionary service among young adults have also increased albeit rates of early return from missions have also increased. Financial resources also appear to be the highest they have ever been. However, never in the history of the Church during the past 80 years has the international Church grown as slowly as it has in the past couple years (annual membership growth of 1.48% in 2017, number of convert baptisms in 2017 lowest since 1987). There are significant resources and manpower available, but significant problems of poor utilization of resources, lack of coordination between organizations, and unrealized potential - especially outside of North America. Announced and rumored changes have good potential to revitalize the growth of the Church, particularly in countries with large membership bases where growth has slowed in the past decade but where populations continue to appear receptive such as in Mexico, Brazil, and Peru. My greatest hope is that there will be a significant redistribution of mission resources and restructuring of the missionary program to enable more deliberate, methodical methods to open more cities and populated places to the Church. The greatest worldwide predictor for church growth is the creation of branches in cities where no LDS congregations previously operated. Therefore, the opening of thousands of additional cities to missionary activity will have likely the greatest impact on the growth and expansion of the Church in the coming years and decades.

Here are some statistics to put things into perspective with the size of the Church and its geographical reach. The Church currently has a legal presence in locations populated by approximately 20% of the world population. With only a few exceptions, nearly all countries report LDS congregations in locations populated by less than half of the national population. Even countries where the Church has had a legal presence for decades have vast unreached areas, including large cities. For example, the Church in Brazil continues to report more than 400 cities inhabited by 20,000 or more people without an official ward or branch. In India, there are over 200 cities with at least 200,000 inhabitants without a Church presence. Countries where the Church has a presence in at least 20 cities constitute only 25% of the world's countries. Significant advances in technology enable thrifty and efficient methods to expand the Church like never before and within the confides in the law in most nations. However, unless significant changes occur to the missionary program, the Church will continue to struggle to accomplish its mission to take the restored Gospel to the world as evidenced by steady recent declines in the number of converts joining the Church and lack of expansion into previously unreached or lesser-reached areas of the world. Although there will be challenges, there are also unparalleled opportunities for growth. It is therefore paramount that Church leaders seek out the needed inspiration and revelation to determine what can be done to mobilize the vast resources at the Church's disposal to maintain a vision for growth - a vision that maintains universal principles that can be adapted to meet the specific needs and opportunities for the diversity of cultures and societies throughout the world.