“Mormon growth rate falls to lowest level in 80 years”

“Mormon growth rate falls to lowest level in 80 years, but ups and downs vary by region”

It’s not at all clear, though, that the drop in growth rate is peculiar to Latter-day Saints.  Others are also experiencing a slowdown:

“Hundreds of New Churches Not Enough to Satisfy Southern Baptists: Baptisms are at a 70-year low, while Sunday worshipers are at a 20-year low”

There are, no doubt, many factors involved.

And, on one centrally important level, it’s plainly unfortunate.

But it’s also possible to see this as an interesting challenge.  That’s how I view it.  What can we do to improve our messaging and our reach?  How should we change our approach in order to speak to new sensibilities?  Active, committed members of the Church should be thinking about this.  What can we as individuals do?  We now have easy access, unthinkable a generation ago, to means of communication that we can use in all sorts of creative ways in order to share, among other things, our testimonies and the message of the Restoration.  There’s almost no limit to what we can do, if we’re creative.

“For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.

“Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

“For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.”  (Doctrine and Covenants 58:26-28)

Posted from Grindelwald, Switzerland