Sunday attendance stats

[askandanswer]

At Stake Conference last week, there was much discussion about the fact that of the approximately 2,800 members of this stake, only about 640 regularly attend Sacrament meeting. I'm curious as to how typical this figure might be of other stakes. Any idea what the perecentage of regular Sunday attendees is in your stake? Its also been widely discussed for many yeaars by many members in this stake that we are really too small to be a stake so I'd also be interested in hearing how many members, active and inactive, there might be in your stake. Grateful for any contributions and figures anyone might care to share.

[zil]

The average member can't see stake statistics - pretty sure you have to have specific callings to see those - same for ward stats.  Looks like our average Sacrament attendance (my ward) is ~40% (with ~450 people in the ward, which is the largest in the stake - or so I'm told).

[Guest MormonGator]

I've heard rumors that some stakes in Florida are at 25-30% attendance, so it sounds like you are doing better than we are. No, I can't prove anything-just what I've heard. 

[Vort]

640? Oh, my. How many wards does that comprise? An ideal ward will normally have around 150-200 active, attending members, including children. You can run fine with a smaller group, but things start getting tight and people have more than one calling. (Much bigger than 200 and people start getting lost in the crowd.) If you get below 100, it starts getting really tough to fill all the callings.

3: Bishopric
3: RS presidency
3: EQ presidency
3: HPG leadership
3: Primary presidency
3: YW presidency
3: YM presidency
3: SS presidency
1: WML

That's 25, including 9 women and 16 (!) men, just to fill out the ward council-level leadership positions. It doesn't include people called to stake-level positions, or internal organization callings such as compassionate service leader, various group- and quorum-level instructors, and so forth. It also does not include Sunday School teachers or (especially) Primary teachers, things like the family history specialist, the librarian, staffing for the Scout committees (in the US, both Scout-level and Cubs), the ward take-care-of-cleaning-the-meetinghouse person, and a bunch of other callings I'm not thinking of right now. Past the  barebones leadership, the most important callings to keep a ward functioning are probably the teacher callings. Even with a small Primary, I don't see how most wards could get by with fewer than a dozen Primary teachers. You probably need at least a half-dozen youth Sunday School teachers, and you really need two gospel doctrine teachers (though you can get by with one in a pinch). Including group-level and quorum-level instructors, you probably need at least another 25 or so adults for a typical small ward. That's 50 people just to fill out the skeleton crew of running the ward. If you're in a ward of fewer than 100 people, you quickly run out of adults who are able (and willing) to accept callings. Doubling and tripling up callings works...for a while...but people get burned out.

I'm just some random internet guy, so don't attach any real meaning to my  opinion -- but it sounds like you might be due for some ward-level or even stake-level redistricting. 640 active members in an entire stake does not bode well. Even if that were the number of active adults, that's still pretty thin.

[Jane_Doe]

Ballpark of all the places I've lived: 1/3 show up every week, 1/3 consider themselves LDS but are so-so in things, 1/3 don't really think of themselves as LDS.  

[Guest]

My ward's activity level is about 90% or so.  But this includes households that don't attend regularly because they have transportation issues, health issues, etc.  But they are known in the ward.  And they attend as often as they can, which is about 50% of the time for most of them.  One never attends due to health.  But she has requested the sacrament be brought to her home.  She's considered active.  The YW have often gone to her house for activities and service nights.

Of the remaining 10%, there are some who have varying levels of apathy or hostility to the Church.  One man still considers himself LDS.  He still believes it all.  But he got offended over something a while back -- before I moved into the ward -- so he doesn't attend church or any activities.  I told about the one guy how had nothing but positive things to say, but he just didn't feel like he belonged.

[Guest]

My current ward is pretty active - probably 80%.  My last ward was more like 50/50, and it is only 15 miles away.  On my mission in France, it was very common to see wards with 10% or less activity.

So it is all different, depending on local circumstances and culture.

[askandanswer]

10 hours ago, Vort said:

640? Oh, my. How many wards does that comprise? An ideal ward will normally have around 150-200 active, attending members, including children. You can run fine with a smaller group, but things start getting tight and people have more than one calling. (Much bigger than 200 and people start getting lost in the crowd.) If you get below 100, it starts getting really tough to fill all the callings.

3: Bishopric
3: RS presidency
3: EQ presidency
3: HPG leadership
3: Primary presidency
3: YW presidency
3: YM presidency
3: SS presidency
1: WML

That's 25, including 9 women and 16 (!) men, just to fill out the ward council-level leadership positions. It doesn't include people called to stake-level positions, or internal organization callings such as compassionate service leader, various group- and quorum-level instructors, and so forth. It also does not include Sunday School teachers or (especially) Primary teachers, things like the family history specialist, the librarian, staffing for the Scout committees (in the US, both Scout-level and Cubs), the ward take-care-of-cleaning-the-meetinghouse person, and a bunch of other callings I'm not thinking of right now. Past the  barebones leadership, the most important callings to keep a ward functioning are probably the teacher callings. Even with a small Primary, I don't see how most wards could get by with fewer than a dozen Primary teachers. You probably need at least a half-dozen youth Sunday School teachers, and you really need two gospel doctrine teachers (though you can get by with one in a pinch). Including group-level and quorum-level instructors, you probably need at least another 25 or so adults for a typical small ward. That's 50 people just to fill out the skeleton crew of running the ward. If you're in a ward of fewer than 100 people, you quickly run out of adults who are able (and willing) to accept callings. Doubling and tripling up callings works...for a while...but people get burned out.

I'm just some random internet guy, so don't attach any real meaning to my  opinion -- but it sounds like you might be due for some ward-level or even stake-level redistricting. 640 active members in an entire stake does not bode well. Even if that were the number of active adults, that's still pretty thin.

We are down to 4 city based ward and one Branch, a little over 3 hours drive away of about 45 regular attendees. My ward fluctuates between 145 - 180, although about two years ago we were getting more than 200 about once a month. About a decade ago we were 4 city wards, one town branch, three rural branches and one Samoan branch. The Samoan Branch was disbanded and the members started to attend the ward in which they lived. The town branch was merged with one of the city wards because the numbers in the ward were falling. In two of the country branches, a few key families moved out thereby rendering those branches untenable. This stake was formed a two years before we arrived in this city and I've heard that in the years preceding its transformation from a District to a Stake, all sorts of shenanigans and trickery was engaged in to make the numbers look better. I've also heard that part of the reason was that being the national capital, we should be a stake. We've only ever had one Gospel Doctrine teacher at a time although she sometimes swaps with her husband. I'm not sure if we have 2 or 3 youth Sunday School teachers and I'm not sure how many Primary teachers we have but it would certainly be less than a dozen. The EQP is only 2 people and just today our Sunday School President called a Secretary. I don't think he has counsellors. 

[askandanswer]

9 hours ago, Carborendum said:

My ward's activity level is about 90% or so.  But this includes households that don't attend regularly because they have transportation issues, health issues, etc.  But they are known in the ward.  And they attend as often as they can, which is about 50% of the time for most of them.  One never attends due to health.  But she has requested the sacrament be brought to her home.  She's considered active.  The YW have often gone to her house for activities and service nights.

Of the remaining 10%, there are some who have varying levels of apathy or hostility to the Church.  One man still considers himself LDS.  He still believes it all.  But he got offended over something a while back -- before I moved into the ward -- so he doesn't attend church or any activities.  I told about the one guy how had nothing but positive things to say, but he just didn't feel like he belonged.

90%? Wow!! I suspect that would be totally unheard of in Australia. Is that common in your part of the world?

[Sunday21]

@askandanswer I am not sure about my stake although our stake president reported the stats to us once and I think that the intent was to shame us...so I guess we are bad! Apparently virtually no one pays fast offering which is pretty bad!

My Ward is 100-150. Although about 20-25 people arrive on time for sacrament and the rest arrive after the first hymn and after sacrament. Visitors are amazed!

We have 5 times as many inactive as active although many inactive I suspect have moved away. As we were their last known ward, they remain on our list.

Apparently we are the worst ward in the worst stake but I really don’t know if that is the worst in a division of the church, or the province and I don’t know why we are considered bad, on what basis? Any hew, about 5 years ago, stake speakers would come and ball us out. Not really a good tactic if you think about it! 

I do think, not that anyone is asking my opinion,  but I am dying to tell someone!

If you have a bad ward:

Don’t load people up with callings. Many people here flatly refuse callings. I suspect that they have had some bad experiences.

If you have people who do not work well with others be cautious about who you assign them to work with. If you have someone who hates women, get them to work with the elders quorum.

Dont keep telling the bad ward, how awful they are. The people in the pews are the people who show up. They have no control over the people who decided to play golf that day.

Go easy on new members. When you join the lds church, you don’t get a lot of the expectations, like going to church when the sun is shining.

Thank you. I have been dying to vent for years now!

[JohnsonJones]

We tend to have between a 50-60% activity rate.  It goes up and down.  Many times I think it depends on which meeting time slot we are assigned that year on whether we have 50%, 55%, or 60%.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, askandanswer said:

90%? Wow!! I suspect that would be totally unheard of in Australia. Is that common in your part of the world?

I've been in wards as low as about 30%.  I've been in two wards that were close to 100%.  One ward had over 600 members and only two individuals were inactive.  Another ward with almost 500 members with only 5 inactive individuals.

I've only been in about five wards in Texas.  They varied.  This ward and the previous ward are both really high in the 90% range.  The others were clearly over 50%. But they weren't near 90%.  Remember that Texas in general is a very religiously active state.  So, if you're going to be a Mormon, you're going to be an active one.

[Grunt]

I have no idea what are percentage is, but I know when I go on the LDS app there are WAY more people than there are in church.

[seashmore]

 

Same.  I've been in this branch almost four years, and our numbers fluctuate.  I once heard that we could get the numbers to make us a ward, but we could never sustain them long enough for that process to happen.  We're on the outer edge of our stake's boundaries, and jut up against the largest geographical stake in the continental US.  All of our stake visitors (and regular out of towners) all say they love the feeling they get when they come to our branch.  There are only four active members (maybe five or six) who have been in the boundaries for more than twenty years.  When I hear people lament over our branch status or lack of activity, I'm quick to remind them that we live in rural America, a place where there are towns that, even if every person was an active LDS, it still wouldn't be a ward.

On 3/17/2018 at 6:27 PM, Vort said:

3: Bishopric
3: RS presidency
3: EQ presidency
3: HPG leadership
3: Primary presidency
3: YW presidency
3: YM presidency
3: SS presidency
1: WML

Yeah, we don't have that.  No HPG leadership (I honestly think all of our high priests are accounted for in the above stats) and no SS Presidency.  Right now, we don't even have a Gospel Doctrine teacher.  Our ward clerk/executive secretary taught two weeks ago and after class, asked me to teach last week.  Which I did, and then he asked me right after sacrament if I had passed the buck to someone else.  I hadn't because my invitation to teach hadn't included the instruction to ask someone else to teach the next lesson.  I couldn't tell you how it went because I had to run home and get some things for a YW camp meeting that I wasn't fully expecting.  I had asked for it to be put in the bulletin two weeks ago.  The email was never replied to and I didn't see it in the announcements last week, so I internally cancelled it since I figured no one would be there.  Then they announced it from the pulpit, so I skipped out on GD to make copies needed for the meeting.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2018 by seashmore

[Guest MormonGator]

I was told once by a lifelong, fairly devout member that talking about attendance statistics was like asking a woman how much she weighs. Very dangerous and probably best to avoid the subject completely. In my experience many members (no on here, for the record) are very defensive about the subject. 

[person0]

5 hours ago, Grunt said:

I have no idea what are percentage is, but I know when I go on the LDS app there are WAY more people than there are in church.

This is an unfortunate and sad reality, but for some reason it makes me want to laugh.  

[Traveler]

On ‎3‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 4:48 PM, askandanswer said:

At Stake Conference last week, there was much discussion about the fact that of the approximately 2,800 members of this stake, only about 640 regularly attend Sacrament meeting. I'm curious as to how typical this figure might be of other stakes. Any idea what the perecentage of regular Sunday attendees is in your stake? Its also been widely discussed for many yeaars by many members in this stake that we are really too small to be a stake so I'd also be interested in hearing how many members, active and inactive, there might be in your stake. Grateful for any contributions and figures anyone might care to share.

 

At a leadership meeting – a visiting authority claimed that any ward or stake below 40% active temple attendance will not remain to the millennium.   It seems that the % of temple recommend holders is less than the % of average sacrament meeting attendance and that the % of active temple attendance is less than the % of temple recommend holders.

It seems to me that temple worship is a more important goal than sacrament meeting worship.  Never-the-less every individual needs to begin somewhere and if there are individuals not attending sacrament meeting – I would think that encouraging Sabbath worship with sacrament covenant renewal is a good place to start.

 

The Traveler

[e-eye]

Our ward in AZ runs at about 55% but I know we are the highest in the stake and way above normal as I think the stake is at about 38% for an average with 6 wards.

[anatess2]

I was ward missionary for a while.  That time, we had around 300 adults in the ward roster and only around 80 or so adults in the Sunday School attendance roster.  The roster goes around GD, GP, YM/YW, and Primary.  People that have callings or jobs that keep them out of these classes usually don't get counted.  We have several hospital/military/etc. people that leave after Sacrament Meeting.

Edited March 19, 2018 by anatess2

[mrmarklin]

On 3/17/2018 at 3:48 PM, askandanswer said:

At Stake Conference last week, there was much discussion about the fact that of the approximately 2,800 members of this stake, only about 640 regularly attend Sacrament meeting. I'm curious as to how typical this figure might be of other stakes. Any idea what the perecentage of regular Sunday attendees is in your stake? Its also been widely discussed for many yeaars by many members in this stake that we are really too small to be a stake so I'd also be interested in hearing how many members, active and inactive, there might be in your stake. Grateful for any contributions and figures anyone might care to share.

This is fairly typical in units outside of the Mormon Corridor.  I’ve lived in California all my life, and those are typical statistics for the units I’ve lived in. I suspect in many third world countries, this statistics are worse than this.

[Fether]

17 minutes ago, mrmarklin said:

This is fairly typical in units outside of the Mormon Corridor.  I’ve lived in California all my life, and those are typical statistics for the units I’ve lived in. I suspect in many third world countries, this statistics are worse than this.

In Kentucky, I was in a branch with 600 members but only 80 attending regularly