At every spring General Conference, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offers a glimpse of its growth by reporting worldwide membership statistics, including the number of converts and children added to the faith’s rolls the previous year.
A more reliable barometer for tracking church expansion, however, can be found in the congregations created — or subtracted. So when the governing First Presidency recently announced new requirements for establishing wards and stakes, or clusters of congregations, insiders and outsiders naturally wondered what impact the changes would have.
On their face, these new standards appeared to make it easier to form new stakes and, in essence, inflate the church’s congregational count. But experts say that may not be the case.
In fact, Matt Martinich, an independent researcher who tracks church movements for the websites cumorah.com and ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com, argues the overall rules will result in fewer stakes and wards coming on line.
(Photo courtesy of Matt Martinich) Independent Latter-day Saint researcher Matt Martinich.
The Salt Lake Tribune spoke with him in its latest “Mormon Land” podcast about the updated criteria, as well as a newly released study showing that a minority of Utahns identify as members of the global faith headquartered in Salt Lake City.
Explain what the new requirements are for wards and stakes.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) This 2014 photo shows two Latter-day Saint chapels built adjacent to each other in Kaysville. The church has new rules for creating additional congregations.
Previously, there were different requirements based on geography inside the United States and Canada or North America and outside of the United States and North America. With this announcement, which goes into effect as of Jan. 1, there will now be a uniform standard for minimum requirements to create new wards and stakes.
[For stakes] now what that will be is 150 active, full-tithe-paying Melchizedek Priesthood holders capable of serving in leadership positions. Previously, it was 120 for other countries and 180 for the United States and Canada. Membership now is just going to be 2,000, regardless of what country the stake would be organized in. Previously, it was 3,000 for the U.S. and Canada and 1,900 for other countries.
Participating adults — this is a new metric required for creating new stakes and wards — and for a stake, it’s 500 adults that are participating adults and youth is 100, although not required for the youth. These are adults that are participating in church regularly, they pay a full tithe, hold a temple recommend, hold a calling. So these are some fairly strict guidelines for being considered a participating adult.
Now for the wards, previously it was 300 in the United States and Canada in terms of total membership required to create a new ward, 150 for other countries. Now it’s going to be 250 to create a ward and then also the requirement for the number of active, full-tithe-paying Melchizedek Priesthood holders capable of serving leadership positions will be 20 for all areas where wards are created. Before it was 20 for the U.S. and Canada and 15 for other countries. [The recommendation for] participating adults is now 100 and participating youth is 20.
What effect do you believe the new rules will have on congregations in the U.S. and Canada?
I do think it’s going to make it easier for the church, of course, to organize new wards in terms of raw membership…but it might make it more difficult in terms of participating adults. So these aren’t just adults that go to church regularly. They have a calling, pay a full tithe, have a temple recommend. Those are pretty significant requirements, and that’ll likely result in a decrease in the creation of new wards in the United States and Canada in the coming years.
You have to have 500 participating adults to create a new stake. And again, that’s a pretty high number…and that might delay the creation of new wards and stakes.
How might they affect growth in the rest of the world?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Latter-day Saints in the Democratic Republic of Congo celebrate their temple in the capital of Kinshasa.
We’ll likely see a significant decrease in the number of new stakes and wards being created internationally. …It’s going to be much more common probably for stakes to create more branches instead of wards now and then, hoping that these branches can become large enough to become wards, or maybe just focusing more on smaller congregations of branches instead as a way to bypass some of these more stringent qualifications.
Are you a fan of the changes and can you think of maybe a reason why they were put in place?
One of the things I really like about these requirements is the lower standard for membership in the United States, just because we have many places in the United States where the church functions much more like it would in Europe or in industrialized East Asia than it would in Utah.
But you also have many stakes that cover large geographical areas in the Plains states and in the Northeast. And this can allow for creating stakes that are not as large geographically and place less of a burden on on stake leadership to visit and work with the members and leaders in these areas.
It also is great … because it really takes down this barrier or this distinction between the church in the United States and Canada versus everywhere else. The church should be the same everywhere in terms of how it’s administered in a lot of ways.
I think the reason why these standards have been updated is that really, across the world, one of the biggest challenges that church has had has been finding these participating men that are able to serve in these leadership positions that women cannot serve in.
The church’s news release says nothing, at least explicitly, about women or the all-female Relief Society. Should those numbers be part of the equation?
That’s a really interesting question. … My initial response to that is that has not been a problem the church has had in terms of participating women. And so I think the reason why these standards have been updated is that, really, across the world, one of the biggest challenges the church has had has been finding these participating men that are able to serve in these leadership positions that women cannot serve in.
What messaging does it send by not mentioning women or the Relief Society in the requirements? Does it mean you could technically have a ward without women?
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Kristin Yee of the global Relief Society presidency visits with Relief Society sisters after a special meeting involving multiple congregations at a church meetinghouse in San Diego on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023.
Technically, yeah. I can’t think of any examples of where that’s happened. There are branches that are almost entirely made up of men, and there are branches that are almost entirely made up of women, and that’s not just in a correctional facility setting. That includes branches and isolated areas. For example, there’s a branch in Mongolia that serves a mining complex, and I believe that branch is probably entirely made up of men.
And then also you have branches that are almost entirely made up of women, especially in Hong Kong. There are branches there where there are housekeepers and women doing those types of jobs there from other countries, a lot of times from the Philippines.
Let’s talk about the new study, which made headlines, saying that self-identifying Latter-day Saints make up 42%, less than half, of Utah’s population. What did you think of that finding?
I was totally not surprised. That really conforms with what we’ve known about with member activity rates in Utah for decades.
What do you think most observers, including researchers, get wrong about Latter-day Saint membership in Utah?
(Photo by Chris Samuels and Graphic by Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
People think that Utah is homogenous, just everyone is Mormon. And it’s just not correct. It’s never been correct. If you go back to 1920, only 60% of the population of the state of Utah was on church records. That’s lower than it is now.
It has ebbed and flowed a little bit over time, but roughly speaking in the last century, it’s really been about two thirds of the state population have been on the church’s records as members. And in terms of the activity rate in Utah, that’s typically been about 50% overall for quite some time, at least the last few decades.
If you take that approximately two-thirds of the state population [are] Latter-day Saints and you take half of that, that’s 33%. That’s lower than the number that’s reported in the study, which was 42%.
So the thing that was really neat with this study is that then we’re able to get an idea of, OK what are the number of people in Utah who do not appear to attend church really at all or have any measurements of activity — how many of those people still identify as a Latter-day Saint? And that comes out to about 10% of the population of Utah…. There’s been a lot of information that you see on social media where people make it sound like the church is just falling apart. And that’s just not true. … Furthermore, the rate of stakes and wards and branches being created in Utah has been so consistent for the past 20 years at about 400 members per ward or branch in Utah, and that hasn’t really changed much.
Where do you peg the activity rate in the church around the world?
For the United States, approximately 40%.... For the world as a whole, I’d say about 30%.
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