Introduction to Matt Martinich and the Cumorah Foundation

Scott Holley [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

Scott Holley [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org hello and welcome to Mormon Stories. My name is Scott Holley. I'm sitting in for John Dehlin as a guest host today and I'm very happy to have this chance to talk to a person I think a lot of our listeners are going to find has a very interesting perspective on the world of contemporary Mormonism and his name is Matt Martinich. Matt, welcome to Mormon Stories.

Matt Martinich [00:00:52] Thank you very much.

Scott Holley [00:00:53] Well Matt, I guess you and I have been exchanging emails and have been in con few months. Just by way of background, our listeners will know that at Mormon Stories we've been doing a lot of work lately to really try and understand what's going on in the contemporary church in terms of the growth of the church, membership, retention, baptism and activity rates and looking at it not just from the US perspective, but globally. And you can't really have a conversation online about the growth of the church without being referred to one of two sources, which is the Camorra foundation and ldsgrowth.blogspot.com both of which are really

Scott Holley [00:01:46] led

Scott Holley [00:01:46] or at least informed significantly by the work that Matt Martinich has done really over the past decade. So Matt, I'm talking you up a good game here, but I'm sure our listeners are excited to dive in and hear but just a little bit more background about Matt. Matt is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He served his mission in the Korea Seoul West Mission. Is that right Matt?

Matt Martinich [00:02:15] That's correct.

Scott Holley [00:02:16] Back when that mission existed. It now has since been folded into the Korea Seoul Mission. He has a Bachelor's degree from the UC Boulder and in Geography and psychology. And if you spend any time on ldsgrowth.blogspot.com I think you can see Matt's affinity for geography and maps coming through pretty clearly. In fact, at the start of this broadcast Matt and I were video skyping and there was prominently displayed a map of the world behind him. So perhaps we'll do a little geography quiz towards the end of this. So Matt is pursuing his doctorate in psychology, according to his biography online, has had an interest in church growth since 2002 and as I mentioned, he is with the Camorra Foundation. We'll ask Matt to tell a little bit about what that is and what they do. But he is the treasurer and lead researcher for the Camorra foundation and also the proprietor, creator, webmaster of ldsgrowth.blogspot.com links to both of those groups. We will include on the MormonStories.org page when this podcast. So, Matt, as per Mormon Stories tradition, we'd love to just dive right in and talk a little bit about your Mormon story. So maybe you could tell me and the listeners a little bit about your experience growing up in the church, and particularly those experiences which may have directed you towards a study of Mormon growth in the world as you focus on it today.

Matt Martinich [00:03:58] Okay, great. Well, thanks, Scott. And yeah, like you said, I've been a member of the church, actually been an active member my entire life. And I'm a Colorado native and I've lived in the Denver area pretty much my entire life with the exception of my mission. And also I taught English in South Korea for a year with my wife and we returned back to the States just a couple years ago and we've been living in Colorado Springs ever since. Just kind of my background with my membership in the church, I've always really enjoyed studying the church doctrinally. Something I've really enjoyed is reading the scriptures and listening to General Conference, studying the Gospel by myself and of course at church as well.

Scott Holley [00:04:49] So your parents are both members of the church. You grew up born in the Covenant, I guess?

Matt Martinich [00:04:55] Yes, that is correct. My father was a convert and he joined a church in his late 20s, mid to late 20s, and my mom is a lifelong member of the church.

Scott Holley [00:05:06] Great. Siblings as well?

Matt Martinich [00:05:09] Yeah, I have three siblings. I'm the oldest and my youngest sister is actually 12. So there's a pretty wide age range in my family.

Scott Holley [00:05:19] That sounds like, you know, you're a Mormon. Wen joke, you know, about the difference in ages there. I won't ask you to reveal your age in a sense of propriety, but. Well, that's great. So you're so lifelong member, active in the church, always had a real interest in the doctrine. When's the first time that you can remember thinking, gee, I wonder what the percentage growth in Latin America versus Asia is? Was that something that occurred earlier or how did that come about?

How Matt's Interest in Church Growth Began

Matt Martinich [00:05:55] Yeah, I started to get interest in the worldwide church and looking into growth and missionary work back in about 2002. And I think it kind of started when I was looking through an enzyme and I didn't really read the ensign at all, something my parents read growing up. And I was looking through it and I noticed There was a map in there of where all the temples were located at the time. And actually this experience was when I was younger, maybe, I don't know, like 10 or 12 years old. And I remember thinking it was pretty cool to see where the temples of the church were located and where they were not located. There were a lot of surprises to me back then, like, hey, there's no temple in France, there's no temple in Italy. That's really strange for me to think about because those are two of the largest countries in Europe by population. I kind of forgot about that. And then later on I started thinking about that again and saying, hey, I should kind of look into that and see where all the temples of the church are located. And that was kind of the springboard towards me looking into more about, well, okay, how many members are in each country? How many congregations are there? Why would I care to know how many congregations there are? What does that mean, if anything, besides the fact that's just an organizational structure that the church has to organize its membership. And David Stewart's sitemore.com was the site that really keyed my interest into this subject. And, you know, ever since then, it's grown. When I was serving my mission, even then, I had church almanacs with me and I would request my parents to send them to me so that way I could look at the membership totals for year to year and compare those to the years before and kind of look, okay, how did membership growth and congregation growth look in different countries around the world? Because I didn't really want to be out of the loop during that two year period. So I'd say that's probably how that background, that, that interest as a hobby got started. And then working as much as I do now, and the work that I do that really got started at the end of 2007 when I decided I should organize my thoughts and present it in a blog.

Scott Holley [00:08:23] So I have to back up real quick to the mission and I just have to ask, what were your mission companions thinking when they're asking for root beer and peanut butter in their care packages and you're asking for LDS almanacs?

Matt Martinich [00:08:36] Yeah, and a lot of my missionary companions are just like, you know, Elder Martinich. He's, you know, he knows a lot about church growth and he's really obsessed in it, but he's kind of weird was kind of the feeling I got. And they never ostracized me or anything or whatever. They just thought it was a bit peculiar. Well, that I was just so obsessed with it. So.

Scott Holley [00:08:59] Well, I really empathize with you there because I'm kind of an Ammun amateur musician. And on my mission, on preparation days, I'd ask my companions to go with me to look at old Catholic church organs. And, you know, obviously they would all be rather playing basketball. And so I can empathize with you, my friend. I know exactly what. Where you're coming from there. Okay, so you came across Camorra foundation before the mission. You go on your mission. Tell me a little bit about how that might have changed or informed your perspective. Was it your first time out of the country when you went to Korea?

Matt Martinich [00:09:41] With the exception of a couple short vacations, yes.

Scott Holley [00:09:45] Okay. Which I guess would be pretty. Pretty typical for a young Mormon boy growing up in the Intermountain west for me as well, was kind of my first real experience outside of the US So how did that help inform your perspective on what it means to be a member of a worldwide church?

Matt Martinich [00:10:10] Before I came on my mission, and I had gone very thoroughly through all of the original maps that were posted on David's site that indicated where all the wards and branches and stakes and districts were. And after I got my mission call to Korea, I pretty much memorized the layout for all the units in that area. One of the things that struck me was that I saw that there had been a lot of congregations that had been closed in my mission, and so I thought that was interesting. And I was aware of how low the member activity rate was in Korea and also how the number of people joining the church had dropped dramatically just in the past few years before I started my mission. And so I started my mission, of course, with the very enthusiastic and lofty goals of baptizing a lot of converts. But at the same time, though, I. I felt, you know, we need to be really careful about who we baptize, and not just for numbers, but for members who can be retained and stay in the church and become contributing resources to help perpetuate the growth of the church. And, you know, during my mission, the first part, just the language barrier and learning the language, I felt really kind of limited my ability to do that. And also, of course, me being a new missionary, you know, you don't boss your senior missionary companion around and say, this is how we do it. So, you know, but over time, that's something I felt like I did really try to implement. And I was a district leader as a missionary for those of our listeners who know what that is. And I did a lot of baptismal interviews and, you know, I felt safe to say that most of the converts that I interviewed probably remained active within a year after their baptism, but I don't know for longer than that just because I left. But that's something I just really felt strongly about, is we should be baptizing people to stay active for sure.

The Korea Mission: Falling Away and Retention Problems

Scott Holley [00:12:21] So you went into your mission knowing that there had been a real falling away and retrenchment of the church in Korea. Did you have any idea as to why that happened going in? And did you have a better idea once you were there and after what kind of happened, what drove that?

Matt Martinich [00:12:39] Yeah, that's something I really thought a lot about, because there were several wards that were in my mission that only had 15, 20 active members. And to think that's a ward. Right,

Scott Holley [00:12:54] I'm sorry, 15, 20 active. Out of how many members of record, what percentage or activity rate were you looking at?

Matt Martinich [00:13:02] Most of the units that I was aware of, the activity rate was actually a lot higher than if you look at the number of estimated active members to the nominal church membership for the country. But I would say most of the units I served in, about 25 to 50% of the members were active.

Scott Holley [00:13:19] Okay, so explain the difference to our listeners, then, between the nominal number of members on the roll and the real number of members in the ward versus the number of members attending. What would be the difference between, say, 400 nominal members and a lower number of actual members?

Matt Martinich [00:13:38] Sure. So in Korea, one of the things that has made missionary work difficult there is that there is a lot of members where no one knows where they are.

Scott Holley [00:13:47] So kind of like the lost member file that we have here in the U.S. exactly.

Matt Martinich [00:13:54] And so because of that, it appeared that the activity rate was a lot higher than it was. And of course, those members losing contact with the church has precipitated into them remaining inactive today. But it kind of gives a false impression on kind of what the activity rate's really like.

Scott Holley [00:14:14] But then it would also give a false impression as to what the number of nominal members in the country actually was as well.

Matt Martinich [00:14:23] Exactly. And so, you know, if you take the number of members in Korea that are reported by the church every year, which is about 82,000, 83,000 right now. And divide that by the number of congregations, which I believe right now is around, I think it's 140 or so, you know, you get a number that's something along the lines of about 600 members per unit on average. But most of the units, if you look at their membership roles, it's, you know, Most of the wards have maybe two or 300 members on record and maybe, you know, 60 to 120 active members. And this was five years ago, so I'm not sure how much it's changed, if much at all since then. But so that was something that was, that was really interesting to me is just that there was tens of thousands of members that no one knew where they were. And we'd run into them on the street sometimes and they would say, yeah, I was baptized in your church when I was a teenager. And we'd say, oh, so where do you live now? And then they would quickly run away.

Scott Holley [00:15:24] Right, okay, so that was a follow up question is why can't we find them? And I guess what at least one reason is, you know, some of them don't particularly want to be found.

Matt Martinich [00:15:35] Exactly. And something I neglected to mention earlier is that before I believe the church was able to use the different members would be their equivalent of their Social Security number to look up where they were. And I believe there was legislation passed that prevented the church from doing that. At least this is what I was told. I'm not sure if this is 100% true. And so once that happened, that made reactivation efforts and finding these lost members much, much more difficult.

Scott Holley [00:16:06] Got it. Okay, so did you figure it out then, what it was that was driving this, this lower activity? So you've mentioned the fact that certain people are just moving away, but the fact that they aren't actively seeking out the church in their new locale suggests that there's something beyond just transition occurring. What was it that you think was driving this falling away in South Korea?

Matt Martinich [00:16:37] Sure, and I don't think that the number of active members ever declined in the church in Korea within the past two decades, but we just see a really high turnover. And that's for a lot of reasons. One of them was that in the mid-90s, the middle class in Korea collapsed and a lot of those middle class Koreans left the country that were in the church and they went to Australia, they went to Canada and the United States and other places. And so that left a pretty big vacuum from, from my understanding. And the rate at which converts were being retained did not appear to change very much. And so they were just barely replacing the members that were leaving.

Scott Holley [00:17:23] Okay, so that sounds like something similar to what we've seen in the US as Utah's or Salt Lake City's percentage of Mormons has declined due to out migration. Is that safe to say?

Matt Martinich [00:17:38] Yeah, and I would say this is particularly active Members, not necessarily nominal. You know, nominal in the sense that they're just on church records and they're not participating in church. You know, I'd say it's more of those active members, and I've run into some of them here in Colorado Springs since I've moved here. Of those members who I left Korea about a decade ago. So, you know, I think that's one of the issues there. Another one is that the church has been in Korea, has been really trying to make the units having more active members than before. And so, okay, instead of saying let's have wards that all have 50 to 75 active members, you know, let's work towards having wards that have 100 to 125 active members. So that's another decision that's. That's been made that has resulted in a number of congregations dropping. Koreans. There's a lot of cultural issues. Koreans can have a difficult time assimilating into new congregations. Koreans move very regularly, every few years, a lot of times to new places. And that reshuffle sometimes can result in members losing contact with the church, either purposefully or just sort of incidentally.

Scott Holley [00:18:55] Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It seems like when there's a transition period, someone moves. There's a. An opportunity for a member to leave the church, either by design or accident or just habit. Okay, well, great. Well, I'd love to get into some of the. You brought up a lot of interesting issues about the cultural differences and the transition, which I'd love to dive into more. But let's just finish up your mission experience. Anything else about your mission? Maybe particular experiences you had with people that's informed your views of research on the global church since then?

Matt Martinich [00:19:39] Just that. I think one of the things that impressed me about Korea is that there were a lot of great local leaders there. Just wonderful in terms of just being very experienced, very knowledgeable, very dedicated. But one of the downsides to that is that there just weren't very many of them. I felt, you know, you either were one of those who was giving 100% or you weren't. And so, you know, that kind of has led me to see that that's really the case in a lot of places in the church throughout the world is, you know, you have oftentimes a small nucleus of active members that kind of run everything administratively. And then you have some members that. That maybe do that some of the time. And then maybe most of the members, they contribute in their callings, but they tend to be a little more removed from A lot of that.

Scott Holley [00:20:31] Okay, great. Well, one other thing before we move off of your mission that I'd like to ask, and we'll come back to this theme. There is, I guess you could say, perhaps two different worldviews on. On what it is that is driving in certain cases and in certain areas of the church today, a retrenchment or a falling away or a lack of activity or a lack of retention. I think there's a caricature of the church's official position or the nominal position of attending and believing members that people leave because of A, a desire to sin or B, because offended by something that some person said or some. Some type of combination of the above. Outside of the church, among disaffiliated or disenchanted members of the church, there is a perception that the majority or at least a large number of people who leave leave because of historical issues or issues with certain policies or programs of the church which they view as harmful to themselves and. Or to others. What was your perspective in terms of interacting with Koreans who had left in terms of the real drivers of that as relative to maybe what it is in the US or what perceptions within the US Are of why people choose to leave the church?

Matt Martinich [00:22:27] Sure. And in Korea, I think it kind of goes back to what I was saying just before you asked that question with what kind of member of the church is it? And if it's a member of the church that's more in a leadership role or someone who's very active, I would tend to say maybe half the time it's for. Because they get offended by a member at church. And maybe other half of the time it's for a doctrinal issue. But when it comes to just kind of ordinary members of the church who have joined the church and maybe have a calling, maybe they don't. And if they stop coming to church and disaffiliate themselves, whether officially or just by avoiding contact with the church, I would say about maybe 80, 90% of them, it's for social reasons or just because their initial conversion was pretty superficial. And so maybe it was driven more just kind of by a curiosity, you know, kind of. Yeah, they had a good impression of the church, but it just didn't really go beyond that for whatever reason, you know, kind of more of a social. Social aspect to it. But serving my mission in Korea for two years, I only met a handful of people who had left the church that really left it more for a doctrinal issue. And a lot of those members had experienced some pretty significant stressors in their life before they made that decision as well, that culminated in their apostasy.

Scott Holley [00:23:51] So it tends to be a culmination of issues as opposed to kind of a single, single driver for people who had more invested in the church.

Matt Martinich [00:24:01] Exactly.

Scott Holley [00:24:02] Okay, great. Well, let's go ahead and leave your mission behind, if that's all right, and move into. To wrap up kind of your story before we dig into your research and talk to us about how you got involved with the Camorra foundation and your decision to start ldsgrowth.blogspot.com sure.

Researching Worldwide LDS Growth and Methodology

Matt Martinich [00:24:25] And like I was saying earlier, like, I just had this disinterest in, of course, in doing my own research and gathering data from returned missionaries, missionaries that are currently serving, that operate blogs online by their parents or from other people. And then of course, the statistics that the church releases relating to membership and congregational data. And I just kind of was collecting all of this and just doing my own thing with it as a hobby. And then I got the idea, you know, I should organize this so that way people can know about it. And this also goes back to something that happened when I was in the missionary Training center, the MTC in Provo was that I had a talk once from one of the people in our branch presidency there, and it was about the growth of the church. But nearly every single thing he said was incorrect. And, you know, just saying things like one out of every three Chileans is a member of the church and which is just totally incorrect. And it just got me so frustrated that, you know, here's this person in the church who's a leader, granted on a very local level, but who's really entertaining a lot of false information and ideas about church growth. And so when I was going to create my blog, I figured, well, this will be a good way to provide accurate information that is unbiased as much as possible, but at the same time that that is pro lds. So I decided that this would be a great way to set that up and just kind of organize my own thoughts as a part of a hobby. And I got that started in December 2007 and just maintain that regularly. One of the first things I did was I provided lists of countries with the most members without a temple, countries with the most members without a stake, and just kind of discuss some of the issues on, well, why don't these places have temples or stakes yet? And if you know, of course, people that who members of the church that are believing, members of church that practice, and our faithful members believe that temples and in these Things are done through revelation. And while that is, you know, I believe that's the case as well, there are still certain things that have happened in those places that have prevented stakes and temples from being announced, other than the fact that it just hasn't been revealed. And so that was one of the first things I did with the blog. And then it kind of came also into reporting church growth developments around the world, whether that be the announcement of new temples, new stakes, new districts, and then also the expansion of missionary work into areas where there hasn't been missionary work before. So just kind of really cataloging all of that information. And then back in mid-2009, I got an email from David Stewart from the Camorra foundation, and he proposed that me and him work on a country by country almanac where we go through all the countries in the world and we write an analytical report where we provide the demographic data and the background for that country, and then we provide the LDS history and all of kind of the data that we have, and then to the analysis section where we discuss the challenges, opportunities, and prospects for future growth.

Scott Holley [00:27:56] So that sounds like a ton of work.

Matt Martinich [00:27:59] Yeah, it was. It took about a year and a half, almost two years to complete.

Scott Holley [00:28:06] So how did you get the information? Did you call up church headquarters and ask them to send over their database of membership and retention and whatnot? That's a tongue in cheek question, by the way.

Matt Martinich [00:28:23] Yeah, yeah, no, we didn't do that. What I used was, well, for a lot of the demographic data that came from from sites like the CIA, World Factbook, US State Department, for a lot of the historical, religious or religion, economic, just all that information came from those sites was where we collected that to produce those profiles. And then when it comes to the data concerning church activity and statistics that came through, the figures that are in the church almanacs released every year that provide the membership and congregation portals, and a lot of the information also came from members of the church in these countries and also from missionaries who have served in these places. So we had a large mosaic of resources when writing these profiles, and some of it came directly from me and David, from our experience from going to some of these places or talking to members or people from these places, whether or not they're in the church.

Scott Holley [00:29:34] So would you guys actually get on planes then and go to these countries and do primary research?

Matt Martinich [00:29:41] David would do some of that work. And a lot of his work was done in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. And so he's very knowledgeable about that area in terms of the church and also just a lot about culture and history and religion in that area. But as for myself, I haven't done that yet.

Scott Holley [00:30:01] So I want to go back to one thing that you said about your experience in the MTC where the person was saying 1 in 3 Chileans. So I have a few quotes here from the Camorra website. Sources claiming that the LDS Church is the fastest growing in the United States are too numerous to chronicle. Claim that the Church of Jesus Christ for Latter Day Saints is the world's fastest growing church has been repeated in the Los Angeles Times, Salt Lake Tribune and Guardian. LDS Church News described international LDS growth astronomic dynamic, miraculous, spectacular. So why do you think that those kind of inflations or misrepresentations exist? And why is an outside group necessary to give information? I mean, it seems like the church itself would have access to A, a lot more resources and B, a lot better information. So why is an outside organization necessary to bring, to bring light to this if your intended audience is actually church and church members and church leaders?

Matt Martinich [00:31:21] Yeah, and that's a good question, you know, and I say there's, there's several reasons for that. One of them is that the church is concerned about its public affairs. It's concerned about its public image. And some of the statistics that are available, you know, really are exciting and they really reinforce the common notion that a lot of members have, that the church is growing, had an astronomic rate. And there's also some statistics that really don't say that at all. And it's very concerning to see those things. And so, you know, and I think another reason for that too is the church doesn't really see that as one of its priority. Priority, one of the biggest priorities that it has, instead of placing emphasis on other things which it sees as more important, like actually doing missionary work and things like that. So I think that's a good answer for your question there about that. But another one is, like I said, is that people see as exciting. You know, it's when people hear that the church is growing this fast in this place and you know, it's exciting. And so I think that's one of the reasons why that really gets pushed a lot in the church and you hear it a lot from a lot of people.

Scott Holley [00:32:40] And would it be safe to say that the opposite is the truth, that some of the figures that are less promising from a church growth perspective could be viewed as threatening or demoralizing?

Matt Martinich [00:32:53] Yeah, I think so. And I think there's a lot of members of the church who feel strongly that if the church is true that it's going to grow a lot.

Scott Holley [00:33:04] And that's, I guess another question I have is, you know, we have a single centralized correlation committee. We have a single centralized mission department. Books are written in English and then translated to other languages. Kind of a one size fits all model for bringing people into the church, teaching them, and then training leaders. Given that dynamic, does country specific research become superfluous if the intent is just to approach every country the same way?

Matt Martinich [00:33:42] Are you talking about with the almanac that Dave and I were working on?

Scott Holley [00:33:46] Right.

Scott Holley [00:33:46] Well, with what Camorra is doing with the almanac and the country specific research, I mean, how does that get used, would you say? Or how should it be used if we do have this kind of centralized approach to the global church?

Matt Martinich [00:34:06] Yeah, and that's a good question. And it goes back to the Camorra Foundation's purpose. And you know, one of the things that we do is country and culture research. We do missionary work. David coined the term missology to talk about the study of missionary work. So that's another focus area that we do. But a lot of it just centers on education, providing resources for individual members to use. So it's more of a grassroots approach. But, you know, I see your concern there and saying, well, you know, when you have an almanac that goes country by country and both of you are in the United States, you know, aren't you kind of really imposing that view that, you know, one size fits all? But, you know, our purpose in going through this is really to catalog how the church has grown in different places, how we know it's grown in different places in different rates, by using certain statistics and certain measures to indicate growth, whether that's real growth, meaning people who are staying active, the number of members and congregations increasing to the point that new ones need to be organized, the expansion of missionary work into previously unreached areas, and those are the areas that we really look at to indicate, to really to see whether or not growth is occurring.

Scott Holley [00:35:27] So let's go ahead and dive into that then. And I guess I'll just ask kind of a straightforward question to really kick off the discussion of membership growth across the world. Is contemporary Mormonism a growing religion or is it a religion that's in decline?

Is the Church Actually Growing? Measuring Real Growth

Matt Martinich [00:35:48] And I would answer that question by it depends on where you are. And I wouldn't say there's really anywhere where the church is in decline, but I would say there's a lot of places where growth is stagnant. Okay, so it's either stagnation or there is growth.

Scott Holley [00:36:10] And what are we talking about? You know, are we talking. Are there areas of the church where we're seeing what you would call explosive growth or what type of ranges are we talking about when we talk about variability of growth?

Matt Martinich [00:36:25] Sure, sure. I think a good example to illustrate maybe a country where growth has been very slow or stagnant would be like Puerto Rico, another example. Well, I guess that isn't a country, it's a dependent territory of the United States. But Denmark, Scandinavia, these are Hong Kong, Japan, these are places where membership growth is very slim, if any growth is occurring at all, or even there's been a decline in church membership on church records. But in all of these places, there does not appear to be an actual decline in active membership that just appears to be stable. But like I said, with those declines in total membership, a lot of that's due to people being removed from church records over time because no one knows where they are. They've reached that age where they're taken off of church records or whatever.

Scott Holley [00:37:23] Okay, so church is somewhere between stable and growing across the world. On a top line number, what are we talking about? What is the growth of the church? And maybe we can talk about it from a nominal perspective and to the extent we know it, kind of active membership and congregation maybe just go down the line. Let's talk about the different metrics and what they're saying about the growth of the church overall.

Matt Martinich [00:37:54] Sure, sure. Membership growth is unfortunately not a great indicator of the actual growth of the church just because it includes people who have been baptized. There's a lot of people who've been baptized who are not active today. So it's one of those measures where, yeah, we look at that a lot because it does give us information on how many total people have been baptized, but it doesn't really give us a lot of information on how many people are active because it has nothing to do with whether they're active or not. In terms of membership growth worldwide, the church has been growing at about a rate of 2.5 to 2.3% a year. And so that's only not even a percentage above the worldwide population growth rate. So it's pretty small. And a lot of that is weight is the reason why it's so low is because a lot of the countries with the most members have such low growth rates. So in the United States, for example, membership growth has been about 1.5% a year and just a little less than half of total church memberships. In the United States. So that's a really strong influence on what that percent is, what that annual percentage growth rate is.

Scott Holley [00:39:15] Where there's large number of membership, membership growth has slowed. That makes sense. So where are we seeing the growth in the church today?

Matt Martinich [00:39:26] The areas of the church or the areas of the world where the church has been growing most rapidly have been in Africa, some areas of south and Central America, and also some areas in East Asia and in Oceania. So almost every world region has a few places where the church is growing very well. It just kind of depends on how many of those those places there are. So, like, I think one place, so where we'd say, you know, the church isn't really growing there much at all, or, you know, it's just been stagnant growth overall, as in Eastern Europe right now. So. And that's been a place where nothing has really changed over the past five years or so.

Regional Struggles: Eastern Europe and Cultural Barriers

Scott Holley [00:40:09] So let's talk Eastern Europe for a second, then, you know, maybe come back to it in the discussion of the different areas. But just to that point, why is it that the church in Eastern Europe isn't growing? Because we do hear Denmark, Scandinavia, that those countries are basically becoming a religious and that it's a bigger secular trend. And so I think people kind of have an intuitive sense in some of those Western countries. Is that the case in Eastern Europe? Are these countries not becoming religious, or are we in a sense losing in the religious marketplace in those countries?

Matt Martinich [00:40:52] Yeah, and I think what you're hinting at there with Eastern Europe is the secular transition. And in Eastern Europe, it's kind of a different story than Western Europe, because in Eastern Europe, those countries were all communist, and religious freedom was restricted pretty severely until the early 90s. And a lot of times it's still restricted today. So I would identify that just the absence of a lot of strong leaders of the church in Eastern Europe has probably been the biggest blow to church growth prospects there. There's been a lot of frustrations in many Eastern European countries with baptizing male members, training them to be branch presidents, district presidents, and just having them stay active going forward. That's been a major frustration and setback for the church in Russia and a lot of other Eastern European countries as well.

Scott Holley [00:41:46] So relative to other proselyting faiths, is that something that other faiths are seeing as well, or are other groups finding a different way to approach that leadership issue?

Matt Martinich [00:42:01] A lot of other of the proselytic Christian denominations in Eastern Europe do not have that same issue that the church has that the LDS Church has. And a lot of the reason why is because they have had established presence for decades longer than the LDS Church. Oftentimes the Seventh Day Adventist Church operated in most Eastern European countries well before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Scott Holley [00:42:27] So how is it able, how are they able to do that?

Matt Martinich [00:42:33] And that's a good question. And I think it goes back to just the difference in how missionary work is conducted in the LDS Church versus other faiths. In other faiths there tends to be less stress on becoming a legally recognized religion in those countries in order to proselyte. They don't tend to see that as a necessary qualification for them to work in those places. So I think that's one piece of it. Another is that they've just been very proactive and it's all done through member missionary work oftentimes. So you know, it's a lot easier to member missionary work under religious restrictions than it is to do missionary work with foreign missionaries who have to have visas to proselyte there.

Scott Holley [00:43:17] And that was actually something, I'll read a quote from something on the Camorra foundation that gets to that and get your response. While the LDS Church has grown internationally, it has experienced difficulty in leveraging its affluent high missionary, sending US population into committed international members on a level comparable with other outreach oriented faiths. Or when I read that basically say 19 year old Mormon boys from Sandy, Utah have a more difficult time proselyting in Bulgaria than native Bulgarians do, is that an accurate way of reading that? And I don't know even if Bulgaria is an accurate representation there.

Scott Holley [00:44:01] But,

Matt Martinich [00:44:04] and I get what. Yeah, and I think that is an accurate way. And I don't necessarily, I don't think it'd be appropriate to say that, you know, don't even bother sending North American missionaries to these places. But what it goes back to is that hey, 20 years ago we had to do that as a church because there were no, there were very, very few Bulgarian members of the church in Bulgaria. And so we had to do that. But 20 years later, you know, yeah, there's been handful of Bulgarians that are serving, that have served missions really, but we still strongly rely on North American missionaries. And that goes back to self sustainability issues. There's been a lot of countries where the church has really struggled to be able to be self sufficient in meeting its own missionary needs. And those countries that do achieve that are the ones where we see the most impressive growth today. So if you look at Africa for example, not to try to speed things along the way from Eastern Europe. But if you look at Africa and look at countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congolese missionaries constitute almost the entire missionary force there. And so what has happened in places like the Congo and also in Nigeria is that you have native members who are serving missions. You know, they return from their missions to the country where they, where they're from, which is oftentimes the country where they also served. And they're able to provide leadership, support and resources and they're really able to develop an LDS community. And those are the places where the church grows the most is because it's self sufficient, they're able to take care of their own needs and they have leadership that's trained and is willing to do all those things.

Scott Holley [00:45:54] So if I'm sitting in church headquarters, I'm thinking to myself, this is great strong growth in Africa, boys up areas of the church where potentially we're stagnant, in risk of being in decline. But gosh, I'm scared if I have first generation Congolese missionaries out there bringing in, you know, new congans into the church. You know, I'm thinking of and apologize to the listeners who have not seen or listened to the soundtrack of the Book of Mormon musical. But basically missionaries in Africa convert Africans to the church who then customize the stories in somewhat, I guess what Western Mormons would call slightly vulgar ways. And that the church then starts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the congregation Congo starts to over time look a lot more different than the church in Sandy, Utah without that kind of cultural imprimatur and the experience of a well correlated Utah Mormon bringing that to bear in the administration of the church in the Congo.

Matt Martinich [00:47:15] Yeah. And believe it or not, I actually have very, I've seen very few instances of that occurring. And a lot of these countries that are self sufficient tend to be some of the most resistant to a lot of those, you know, we call apostasy. Right. Like it's still an issue and it's still a concern. But you look at other countries like Pakistan, where the church has grown there tremendously in the past decade, and you look at other countries like Belarus, where, you know, you can't, if you go on the church's meeting house locator site, you can't find any information on the branches in Belarus because of the status of the church there with the government legally. But you know, those countries that have those religious freedom restrictions tend to be among the most resilient and among the most productive for the church. If you look at you know, the number of members and a number of missionaries they produce and the number of congregations they have and the amount of growth that they've experienced. And a lot of those places where we see issues with apostasy, you know, they do happen in Africa, but they're in other places where the missionary forces there are not self sufficient. So like in Sierra Leone and Liberia, those have been two countries where the church has had struggles with maintaining doctrinal purity and making sure that church leaders are handling church finances correctly and appropriately. And so, you know, I don't really think that that claim is supported, that if you have native members who are serving missions in their countries and they kind of like become their own area of the church in the sense of being self sufficient, that we tend to see more changes to the church culturally and maybe even doctrinally. I just don't see that with the research that I've done.

Scott Holley [00:49:04] Would you say though, that that that concern is something that's prevalent and potentially is that a worldview that is informing the church's decisions from what you can see on the ground in terms of whether or not to take away kind of that crutch of North American missionary support?

Matt Martinich [00:49:29] Yeah, and I think a lot of that goes back to entering new areas because that's a process that can be very tedious, it can be very difficult, and it can also be very frustrating. There's a city right now in Mozambique where senior missionaries are teaching several groups of self organized members of the church. And I say members of the church loosely because they're not baptized members of the church. And many of them have had very little, if all, if any contact with the church formerly at all. But they've somehow come across LDS literature and they've self organized themselves into their own congregations. And in Mozambique right now there's, you know, there's a bit of a challenge there and a bit of a difficult decision to make because the church has to say, okay, why are these people wanting to join a church? First of all, are these sincere? Is this a sincere interest? Second of all, they have to say, all right, you know, a lot of times these groups have their own appointed leaders. How are they going to take having us say, well, you know, this is the leader that we've received for the revelation should lead this area of the church as congregation. And so, you know, I see that as a concern and that tends to be over dramatized to the church avoiding making greater inroads in areas without a presence. Because, you know, this phenomenon happens fairly often where the Church has to step in. And maybe there's some cultural practices that interfere with doctrinal teachings or just that are just kind of strange. Like, for example, in one city in the Republic of Congo, the men and the women would sit segregated from each other, and only the men would do the sustainings in church, and the women would not do that because they're assimilating their culture into that. But at the same time, though, these are places where the church had been established, though, for many years, and North American missionaries have been assigned these places for many years as well. So it's difficult to say.

Scott Holley [00:51:35] So what about those cultural elements, though, that are not doctrinal, as per. If you define doctrine as the standard works, but maybe don't agree with Church Handbook of Instructions one and two. And for instance, I'm thinking in Africa, you know, I can't think of a doctrinal justification, you know, maybe for not allowing drums in worship service. But obviously that's something that, you know, if you were to try and pull in Sandy, Utah, you'd probably find yourself, you know, escorted from the chapel fairly quickly. Do you think that that is an inhibition to membership growth in places where there is more cultural distinctions from Western society and certainly from the church in Sandy, Utah?

Matt Martinich [00:52:29] And, you know, I think that's something that really depends on the country. So, for instance, in Korea, one of the things that is a cultural aspect of Korean culture, not to say culture too many times, but that they do. They've assimilated into worship there, is that to be respectful? Well, first of all, you hold things with your right hand. So all of the deacons or whoever was administering the sacrament would hold the sacrament trays with their right hand, and then they would take their left arm and they would hold their elbow or put it underneath their arm of their. Of their right hand or their right arm. And this was done as a. As a respectful gesture in Korean culture. And that's what's expected to be done. And so, you know, there are times when the church does make those accommodations. Another good example is how in Nepal and in Israel, church services are held on Saturday, not Sunday, because of the culture in those two places being dictated by Judaism and Buddhism in Nepal. I'm sorry, and Hinduism in Nepal, where. Where the holy day is Saturday there. And then in Muslim nations, church services are usually held on Fridays. So, you know, I think it just kind of depends on, you know, what it is and what the purpose of that cultural tradition is in that country or location.

Scott Holley [00:53:52] So I have to say that that's Fascinating, because I think that there is a perception within the US that the church outside of the US Necessarily looks exactly like it does. I don't know why I keep going back to Sandy, Utah, but to Draper, Utah, and that, you know, among certain people, they say, yes, they say it is exactly the same and they say it with approval. And others say, yes, it's exactly the same and they say it with disapproval. But what I'm hearing is that, you know, on what some people would conceive as very fundamental levels, I mean, you know, certainly the day of rest being a fairly important doctrinal point, as many Mormons would conceive it being something where local leaders have made local accommodations to culture, is that fair to say that those instances do exist?

Matt Martinich [00:54:55] Absolutely. And just kind of based on my observations in different places and how these cultural considerations are handled, I don't think that there's any really major doctrinal changes at all. You know, these are, you know, we have a culture of how we do things in the church here in the United States. And one of the things I thought was very interesting that the Elder Boyd K. Packer in the quorum of the 12 stated a few years ago in a Training for the Mission President seminar in Provo, Utah, was that we are not trying to duplicate the wasash front everywhere where we're sending you mission presidents. That's not the goal here. Our goal is not to have all of the church programs in all these places. We're not trying to duplicate the American culture of the LDS Church into the LDS Church wherever else it may be. The goals here are what's in the scriptures with faith and repentance and so forth. So I thought that was a very interesting and a very important thing that he stressed there because I really think that there's a lot of members of the church that have connected a lot of American cultural aspects of the church into missionary work and spreading the church throughout the world.

Scott Holley [00:56:11] You know, when you say that my conscience is pricked at times on my mission where I would do things like correct the way that a certain hymn was sung, if the notes were sung incorrectly. And you know, my more adult Mormon self kind of hangs my head in shame at some of those things that I did. Is the water getting to the end of the trough in Mormon parlances? You know, is the 19 year old from Draper, Utah getting that message that, hey, you're not in Draper anymore and that's okay and that's a good thing? Or do you think that this is something that the rank and file of the church that's sent overseas to build the church still struggles with.

Matt Martinich [00:57:04] One of the primary ways that we get a lot of our data is through missionary blogs and through missionary reports. And one of the things that I love doing is going through hundreds upon hundreds of blogs every week as I, as I catalog and really search for developments in the church. And a lot of these blogs provide just fascinating information that I couldn't get anywhere else, even from returned missionaries because that information on their mission would be seen through the returned missionary lens. Not in the moment. Like I read these accounts and I see that, like what you're just saying about, you know, are these young missionaries seeing, you know, the difference in culture versus the difference in doctrine and just how the church is done administratively? And some of them definitely see it and they're able to just say, oh wow, this is kind of an American thing, but hey, you know, we can, you know, this is how we do it here and this doesn't interfere with the teachings of the church. And I just need to really focus on those key doctrinal issues that I'm here for as a missionary and not to get tied up on whether or not my investigator starts breastfeeding and sacrament meeting. But then there's other missionaries and this is just part of being a 19 year old being from the United States. There's other missionaries that I've read accounts from and they're just so frustrated with, man, this country is just hopeless in terms of establishing the church there and having it grow and kind of seeing kind of the strength of church in this country as I would see it back home.

Scott Holley [00:58:39] That's really interesting. And again, I'm just thinking about my 19 year old self and pricked in the conscience of. I'm just replaying in my mind those occasions where I've felt desire or did engage in making fun of certain elements. Well, do you think, what about the direction? I mean the world's a smaller place now. Internet, social media, 24, 7, cable news, television. Do you think it's getting better? Are 19 year olds that are getting sent out into the world a little bit more world wise or, or is it too hard to say? Or what do you think about how that might be changing over time?

Matt Martinich [00:59:30] I think that young missionaries are becoming more prepared, that's for sure, than even a decade before. I mean, there's a big difference from the accounts I've heard and what I've seen between a decade ago and now in terms of the quality of the missionaries and their preparedness. I Still feel, though, that there is definitely an overemphasis put on. You know, let's reach this goal for the number of baptisms. And if we do that, then, you know, everyone's going to be so happy. It's going to be great. These people are going to become wonderful members of the church, and the church here will grow even faster if we just reach this baptismal goal by the end of the month or the end of the year.

Scott Holley [01:00:15] So I know that if John Dehlin were on the podcast right now, he would be jumping out of his seat. And I imagine when he listens to this, he will be as well. John Dillon, the founder of Mormon Stories, as I'm sure most listeners will know, his original podcast was on his mission experience in Guatemala, where he was there during kind of the heyday in South America where there was a huge emphasis put on numbers. I actually served in Chile kind of at the tail end of that big boom in that country where there was, you know, perhaps less a focus of numbers at the expense of. Of retention. But I guess a few questions on that one. Is that still the modus operandi in missionary work among missions at large in the church? Is it still kind of numbers, numbers, numbers, goals, goals, goals, or has there been a shift there?

Matt Martinich [01:01:16] And, you know, one thing I want to put out there too, is I don't think that goals are bad. Goals are very important to have in this area in missionary work and expanding the church, new areas and growing the church, goals are very important. But the issue that I've seen that has dropped convert retention rates and that has really frustrated and set back the growth of the church in many areas of the world is just that there's so much emphasis placed on the baptism of the convert as opposed to other things that I would see as really more meaningful to prepare them for baptism. So, for instance, regular church attendance. I mean, that's just a very basic, elementary part of becoming a member of the church. And unfortunately, when you have those goals for baptisms, the emphasis is placed on, all right, we get them to church two or three times and they're baptized, and then that's it, you know. And really, that's like, well, yeah, that's kind of if everything is ideal and this person is totally ready and everything, then, yeah, that could happen. But usually, you know, if you see a pattern of church attendance maybe over several months that's been consistent, that's going to ensure that convert stays active in the church after they're baptized. So. And that goes back kind of to what I was saying earlier about the church being self sufficient in countries. If you look at countries like Pakistan, like India, you look at countries like just countries that tend to have restrictions on religious freedom. There tends to be much higher convert retention rates there. And one of the reasons why is because these members or these converts, prospective converts, really think about joining a church before they do it. It's not just done on a whim. They attend church for oftentimes several months and they really kind of think of what they're going to do. And the missionaries that baptize these converts, they're from those countries and they know, hey, if this person doesn't stay active, I might be visiting this person in five years from now trying to help teach them. So there's a lot more accountability when you have local members serving as missions in their own countries.

Scott Holley [01:03:33] And that makes a lot of sense. Just I think intuitively to me, and I imagine would to our listeners that if you have to spend, if you are forced to spend more time thinking about a decision, you will necessarily be more committed to that decision afterwards.

Matt Martinich [01:03:51] Yeah. And I don't even think it would decrease the number of baptisms you would have necessarily. It might actually increase it because you would have more committed members who are sharing the gospel with their family and friends. So this is really just kind of, hey, let's, you know, and I'm not there to, you know, tell the church what to do, but, you know, if that process is handled more carefully and to make sure that these converts really or these investigators really develop a testimony that will carry them through the good times and the bad after they're baptized, then I think we'd see a significant improvement.

World Tour: North America, Central and South America

Scott Holley [01:04:33] Well, let's take just a quick tour around the world and this has been really fascinating. We've already done a few vignettes of different parts of the world. But for our average listener who tends to be us, I think we have certainly from all over the world there are listeners, but the vast majority being in the US let's just go kind of continent by continent and talk a little bit about what's going on at a high level. And then, you know, if necessary, dig into a couple examples. And let's start with the US And Canada. Obviously, the bulk of the membership of the church still in the US And Canada. What is the state of church growth and membership retention and activity and what are the big things that are influencing those trends?

Matt Martinich [01:05:38] Yeah, in North America and Canada, I would say growth is very varied. There are some places in Canada and United States where there hasn't been new wards or branches created in a decade. And, you know, just a handful of converts are baptized and retention is fairly poor, you know. And so a lot of those places tend to be maybe some areas of the south, like Mississippi, some areas like Louisiana. And then there's other places in the United States where you have a lot of members of the church moving there. And so it appears like the church is growing there tremendously, like Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, you know, places like that. And oftentimes it's a combination of events. You know, there's some missions in the church in the United States that experience, you know, a lot of baptisms, and they have pretty good retention of converts. And it's just there's a lot of variability, I would say, in the United States and just, you know, a lot of cultural differences from, from east to west and from rural to urban and also from ethnic group to ethnic group. So it's kind of hard to sort of give a broad overview because of all that variability. But just to kind of sum it all up, you know, I'd say, you know, just kind of my gut would say maybe two thirds of the increase we see in North America comes from members of the church who have been members their whole lives. So from natural increase of children born to the church. And I'd say maybe about a third of that is from converts joining the church. But like I said, that'd just be my gut feeling about just kind of how growth looks there. But, you know, there are a few places in the past year that have had their very first LDS wards or branches organized in cities that were quite distant from the nearest LDS congregation. There's been a couple instances of that, particularly in the south and also in places like Oklahoma. So there's been encouragement. But then again, in the past year, there's been about almost an equal number of cities where their only water branch has been discontinued in the past year. So the rate at which national outreach has grown or dissipated in the United States and Canada over the past year, I'd say is probably about stagnant. So we're not really making headway and we're not really shrinking in terms of our outreach potential. But we do continue to see the number of congregations going up year to year. And that's gone down quite a bit, though, last year due to a lot of consolidations of young single adult units in the Salt Lake area in preparation for forming YSA Stakes. So that reshuffling really dropped the number of congregations created last year as a whole. As A sum of all of, of the units throughout that area.

Scott Holley [01:08:34] Okay, so let me just rattle off a few major kind of watershed, you know, people are talking about the Mormon moment now, so let me just rattle off a few things and then let you kind of speak freeform about what you're saying as far as how this is impacting the church. Proposition 8, Mitt Romney, book of Mormon, musical social media and Mormon themed blogs, podcasts, etc. That are taking, you know, maybe a more liberal and or critical stance towards elements of church doctrine and history. What are you seeing in terms of how all of that's playing into what's happening right now as it relates to church growth?

Matt Martinich [01:09:27] And that's a complicated.

Scott Holley [01:09:30] Yeah, if you could give me a percentage attribution to each of those, that would be great.

Matt Martinich [01:09:35] Okay. I think with opposition 8 that it hurt the church's image primarily with more of the politically liberal population in the United States, while at the same time, I think for more conservative Americans, it may have actually improved their take on the church and say, wow, they share a lot of beliefs that I do too. So, you know, I'd say that that's mixed. You know, I know there's a lot of very emotional stories about it from both sides of the debate in California that I've come across from members and non members there. In terms of Mitt Romney, you know, I think that's, that's been more of a political issue and I don't really know if it's, it's really going to change growth in the United States. I might, you know, I have a feeling it might just make people say, well, you know, it makes you guys less, less interesting. If there's more talk of the church in mainstream media because it's just out more and that's kind of the way people behave is if there's something that's there more, they tend to just kind of take it for granted and say, yeah, yeah, we know about you Mormons, so it might actually hurt growth because of that. But at the same time though, it's a big benefit to members of the church because they have so many opportunities to share the gospel with people around them. And members of the church are pretty lousy at just starting gospel conversations. They tend to say, hey, I'll be there to answer a question. If someone asks me something, I'll be there to do my thing. But you know, we tend to be very timid about actually starting a gospel conversation. So this is kind of a way to, you know, and also going along with the Mormon ads. That's kind of what the church has been taking that angle from my view, is they're just giving just regular people more opportunities to ask their Mormon friends, hey, you're a Mormon, what do you guys believe? And provide more opportunities for that to happen.

Scott Holley [01:11:37] So are you seeing evidence from the blogs and the other research that you're doing that it's working?

Matt Martinich [01:11:44] You know, in Colorado Springs, we're one of the trial cities for those Mormon ads, and they came out last year. And I've heard of some success stories just within my stake of people have joined the church as a result of those ads. But, you know, I think it's really more of a public affairs method as opposed to kind of saying, all right, we're going to run these ads, we're going to have a flood of converts immediately. I think this is really kind of more tempering that closed off standoffish feeling a lot of Americans have towards the LDS Church because it's weird.

Scott Holley [01:12:22] Okay. And I can't let you off the hook before I go back to the last thing that I mentioned. Knowledge of historical issues surrounding Joseph Smith polygamy, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, historicity, impact on church membership, activity rates, retention, new membership. Yes, no, maybe. What's your thought there?

Matt Martinich [01:12:50] And I think this goes back to kind of thinking about, okay, is this goes back to kind of the Internet in general and saying, is the Internet hindering or is it accelerating the growth of the church? And I would say it's doing both. I mean, I've ran across people who initially found the church because they were taking more of an anti stance on it, but over time they end up joining the church and becoming very active members of it. And so I would say it's kind of both, just kind of. Overall, I think it's. It does make more of a negative public image on the church because there is so much out there. But at the same time too, though, there is when it comes to, you know, Internet and also some of the historical things you're talking about, there's also positive things as well. So, you know, I'd say it does both. The combination of influence there with those two things is pretty complex. And I'd be, I don't know if I could dissect that to say, you know, what's doing what. So it's pretty complicated, in my opinion.

Scott Holley [01:13:55] Yeah. But that's helpful to have kind of those different vignettes of what's going on in both cases. Well, let's go ahead. Let's continue our world Tour South America. You know, I think people have vision, at least those who are kind of stuck in the past like I am. I won't tell our listeners how long ago it's been since I was in South America, but I'm sure enterprising people would be able to figure that out. You know, a huge growth period, you know, in the 1990s, you know, late 80s, early 90s, tapered off some.

Matt Martinich [01:14:46] Yeah, yeah. And most of those countries, that church was established there about 50, 60 years ago. And believe it or not, in the early days in almost all those countries, growth was painstakingly slow. I mean, you know, it took like a decade for the first thousand members to be baptized and just lot a lot of problems. But starting about in the 1970s is where growth was really took off in Central and South America. And in the 80s and 90s is where we saw a lot of that congregational and stake growth, where we saw the number of stakes go from just a couple in some countries to as many as 50, 60, 70 just two decades later. And considering a stake requires a certain number of active members, a certain number of priesthood holders who are active, and a lot of other qualifications that mandate certain aspects of member activity. You know, we can be confident to say there's been a lot of tremendous growth has occurred there. However, during that time period, as we've hinted earlier in this discussion, there's also been very low member activity at carbon retention rate, as those unattained members have just been accumulating and accumulating over that period in early 2000s. So about a decade ago, the church really reformed and transformed a lot of aspects of missionary work in South America. We stopped seeing new areas open to missionary work. We saw congregation upon congregation close. In Chile, There were over 300 congregations closed just in a matter of five years. As the church said, we need to make larger congregations with more active members. Unfortunately, as a part of that process, many of those active members were also lost on that reshuffle. So, you know, we really saw mixed results during that period. And it was a pretty, pretty sad, difficult time for the church. Between 2000, 2005 in South America, as you know, most countries saw a decline in number of congregations, and they saw stakes that were discontinued. Since 2005, though, we've seen a big rebound in growth. A couple countries, namely Brazil and Peru, and also within the last year, Ecuador and Venezuela. So that's been encouraging. A lot of the same issues are still apparent. And that goes back to some of the cultural issues in Latin America, where there's not a very strong sense of dedication and loyalty to particular Christian denomination. It's this kind of, you know, not really. Religion isn't necessarily seen as something that you participate in every day or that you hold a calling in and you fulfill a responsibility without being paid. So over the past few years there's been a big change in the growth of the church in Central and South America. But there have still been some new setbacks. Like for example, in Mexico over the past two years, the number of congregations really hasn't increased at all. And that's very concerning considering the church has added about 100,000 members that time period. So I'm not sure what's really up with Mexico. I've been looking into that. And you know, one of the things that can happen when that occurs is that the qualifications for branches and wards to be organized is increased to require more active members so that those units are considered to be more self sufficient and less demanding on mission and area resources. So, you know, there's been some great progress within the past five years in certain countries, like I said Venezuela, in Peru and in Brazil, and also within the past couple years in Honduras and El Salvador. But we still haven't fully come out of that rut that we went into about five, 10 years ago in South America. And it might be a little bit longer. And as those countries become more secular in the next decade, two, we might miss a lot of opportunities to expand into new areas.

Scott Holley [01:18:50] So, and you and I have talked about this in my experience in Chile, I guess I will come out of the bag on my age serving there, 97 to 99, kind of at the tail end of the growth period. Was actually there when President Hinckley came and gave I guess what's now a somewhat well known speech to the missionaries in Chile saying that the days are over. You know, the days are no longer here when missionaries will baptize people only to watch them leave out the back door. And basically from that time forward, growth slowed to, I guess it looks like it's at least even by official numbers, less than a percent growth, like 0.5% growth or less.

Matt Martinich [01:19:40] Yeah, the only country in Latin America that experienced less than a percent growth during that time period was Chile. From what I can remember right now, most countries that went from between 5 and 10% a year, which is tremendous for a country with 100,000 members to now being about between 2% and 4% is really what it ranges between now.

World Tour: Europe, Asia, and Africa

Scott Holley [01:20:03] Okay, well, let's go ahead and move on our world tour. And before I do that. Just reading again from the Comora website. 10% of Latter Day Saints live in island nations. 85% of the LDS Church membership lives in the Western Hemisphere. Only 5% of all LDS members live in the continuous continental land mass of Europe, Asia and Africa. That is home to 80% of the world's population. So let's start up in Europe. Is it the same story as the US Is it the caricature of. It's a secularizing area. No one's really growing. Everyone's just kind of becoming more a religious. We're probably stuck where we are with what we've got in Europe. Is that caricature accurate for what's going on in Europe?

Matt Martinich [01:21:04] Yeah. And that also kind of like again, with all the places we've been talking about, kind of depends from location to location. But Europe as a whole, growth has been very slow over the past two decades. And the church has closed a number of the missions that it once operated there, like in, particularly in Germany, the UK In France, and also in Italy. A lot of those missions have been closed there. In some countries, there's less than 50% of the number of missionaries that used to be there 10 years ago, like in Spain. One of the things that's been interesting, that has changed over the past couple years in Europe has been that there's been a lot more emphasis put on local leaders for doing missionary work. And that's, that's a great policy to have because it encourages local accountability and involvement in missionary work. And many of the most successful missionary groups, Christians who are missionary groups tend to experience, they have a very localized approach to doing missionary work. So one of the things that the Europe Area Presidency put out last year was they have a lofty goal of doubling the number of active members in Europe in the next 10 years, I believe is the time frame they put for that. And they're really working towards this goal because, you know, they've, they've realized a lot of those converts they baptized over the past 10 years have not stayed active, even though there hasn't been very many converts in many of these places. But just to kind of generalize how things are going in Europe, populations there are very stable leadership is, is very developed. And because of that, we don't see really an increase in the number of congregations or a decrease. The number of congregations in Denmark, for example, has been the same for over a decade at least. And, you know, active membership oftentimes inches a little bit upward in many of these nations. But it isn't to the point that it necessitates the organization of new congregations. One interesting development in the UK is that in the past year there have been a few new wards created in England, which is interesting because that has not been the case for the past 10, 15 years. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see what happens the next five, ten years to see if those goals come close to fruition with, you know, having a really solid activity measure like increasing the number of members of number of people attending church a week and keeping them active and so forth.

Scott Holley [01:23:45] Great. Well, let's go ahead and move on then to Asia. And you know, I think when everyone thinks about Asia and they think about future growth of the church, they think, you know, 1 billion people in China, 1.3 billion people in India. Do you see anything like that on the horizon? You know, I remember when I was on my mission again, the rumors abounding that China was about to be opened and missions were going to be extended by 12 months so that we could call a bunch of new missionaries to China. And that was obviously a long time ago as we've already established something that seems like it's always just around the corner. Are you seeing any signs of that, that there is something just around the corner in Asia or what do you see happening in Asia?

Matt Martinich [01:24:45] Asia is a very fascinating part of the world right now. The church in India has grown very steadily and very healthily over the past decade. And we've seen that as manifested by the number of districts increasing from three to seven just in the past few years. Also a large number of branches were also recently organized in India and most of the missionaries that serve in India are Indian. So that's really created a lot of great self sustainability. And hopefully within the next year or two we'll see the first stake organized in Hyderabad. But in terms of your thoughts about your question about China and that opening the missionary work, this is going to sound kind of odd, but I hope that we never send full time missionaries to China. The reason why I say that is because right now member missionary work in China has been going very, very well and we're seeing great results. And that's all done legally through Chinese law, with family members, teaching family members, and also the segregation of Chinese citizens from foreigners. And that segregation, believe it or not, has been one of the precipitating factors towards this amazing growth we're experiencing there today. And just to kind of give you an idea of what kind of growth, I'm talking about the first male member of the church from mainland China, who served as mission, ended his mission in 2006. And as of last year, we had over 100 missionaries serve from mainland China. And to think of that tremendous growth in such a short period of time is very exciting and gratifying. Particularly keeping in mind, there are no full time missionaries in China, and this is all done through members doing the work. And so I really hope that, like I said, we don't assign full time missionaries there because I think we would really see a lot of setbacks in terms of the number of males who are ordained to the priesthood and stay active, and also just the prolific growth of the church in China into new areas. And one of the things that's made that possible is the large number of Chinese converts who are baptized abroad returning back to mainland China. And it's amazing to think that within the past five years, the growth of the church in China has really trumped that in Russia over the first 20 years. Although there is no stake in China, unlike in Russia, where there is a stake now in Moscow and several prospective stakes in the horizon for a few other cities in Russia. But in China, there has not been thousands upon thousands of missionaries assigned to serve there. And this work has all been done through the local members. They're doing it all in accordance with the law, and it's done very quietly. And so there's very little information about it because, you know, the church is being very respectful to comply with the law there.

Scott Holley [01:27:45] Matt. So what I hear you say is that missionary works best when missionaries get

Matt Martinich [01:27:49] out of the way, you know, and that I would say in a lot of situations that is true. But when we look at the purpose of missionaries that is defined by the church, it's really to teach, right? It's, it's the teaching and to baptize. But even when they baptize, they encourage missionaries to have other members baptized. So a lot of the role missionaries have really is to teach. And so my concern being, you know, if there were full time missionaries assigned to China, they'd be doing a lot more than just teaching, right? Because, you know, hey, we have these North American missionaries. They're very, you know, compared to a lot of us, they're very experienced and church administration and doctrine, and they've been the church their whole lives. And many of us have just been members for a matter of a few years. And so I think that would lead to a lot of setbacks if that were to happen in China. But I'm not necessarily saying we shouldn't have missionaries. One of the greatest things That I was talking about there with China is a number of members there who have been serving missions. And these members have been serving missions primarily in the United States, Australia and Canada. And one of the great things about having members serve as missionaries is that they become great resources for growth later on. So, you know, it's almost like, well, it might be a better benefit to them personally and the church's investment in them as a lifelong member as opposed to them and what benefits they might give by going on a mission and baptizing other people, if you know what I mean.

Scott Holley [01:29:26] And more local missionaries means perhaps less loud American speaking English in white suits and ties, getting their pictures taken at the Great Wall and in Tiananmen Square. Is it fair to say that in certain cases that kind of loudly American association with the church has been a hindrance to missionary work?

Matt Martinich [01:29:58] I think in some places it has. It's hurt the church's image, you know, in other places it's really enhanced it because they're curious. People are curious. Who are all these white guys that speak our language? I mean, no one learns our language usually. I mean, that's, I know, like in Cambodia and a lot of countries in Asia, that's kind of a draw to people say, wow, this means something. This person, this, this person has left their very affluent, wealthy country to come to my poor, humble country and to speak our language. And that usually means a lot to people. So, you know, there's, there's definitely benefits to having foreign full time missionaries in other countries. It's just a matter of, well, are they totally reliant on them for missionary work to happen or is it a, is it a good mix between North Americans and local members serving?

Scott Holley [01:30:51] Great. Well, do you have time for Africa?

Matt Martinich [01:30:55] Yeah, I have a little bit of time for Africa.

Scott Holley [01:30:57] All right, great. I'm going to read a couple of statistics here. Pentecostal Christianity originated in Topeka, Kansas in 1901. Pentecostal groups now claim over 150 million adherents on the continent of Africa. You know, we like to think about our fast growth as Mormons going from 0 or 6 to 14 million in a couple hundred years. And this is 0 to 150 million on a single continent in a small fraction of that time. So what gives? How did they do it? And is that something that's in Mormonism's future as we get a toehold in Africa?

Matt Martinich [01:31:45] Yeah, and I really think that it is in the church's future. One of the things that's really delayed growth in Africa has been the centers of strength policy the church has heavily enacted there, where the church will restrict itself to just one or a couple cities in a country and really want to work on just those few areas to, to develop a center of strength for that country to be an area where there's a lot of resources that can be distributed maybe to other areas or really to kind of develop self sufficiency. Unfortunately, that's really compromised some of the ideal conditions that exist in many African countries right now where you have a population that's very receptive to the LDS Church or in just a missionary focused Christianity altogether. And a lot of these countries have, you know, they have very accommodating laws for the church to work around. And so one of the really exciting things that's happened over the past few years is that there's been a big change in how missionary work has been done in Africa to grant a lot more leeway to open up additional areas. So for instance, in Uganda, there were only four cities that were open to missionary work just five years ago. And now there are 10 cities open to missionary work. And out of those six new cities that have opened within the past few years, almost all of us have opened with this in the past 18 to 24 months. And one of the things that's been going on, and this is something that some notable sociologists have noticed in studying Christian denominations that put a heavy emphasis on missionary work, is that a lot of these countries are ripe in terms of they're not secularized and that there's a lot of opportunities to move into new areas and to experience strong growth. So one of the things that these researchers that are sociology researchers, so this includes people like Ryan T. Cragan from the University of Tampa and Ronald Lawson from Queens College, is that you have to have oftentimes a critical mass and membership. But I know this is something that can be used to sort of kind of downplay why the church isn't growing in places and kind of used as an excuse. But what can oftentimes happens in African countries is the church will reach a certain level of membership where there's a lot of converts in a particular area that maybe have joined the church from, from living in other places of that country and they relocate to other places and they're in active involvement in spreading the church into those new locations. So we've seen that happen in places like Madagascar, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia and other places where, you know, there's a certain number of members that are joining a church in a certain period of time and, and those members go out to where they came from and then mission leadership takes advantage of their enthusiasm and willingness to participate in starting church in their area and then growth really starts to happen. So that's one of the things that's been really exciting to see in Africa within the past few years. And you know, I don't see any sign of that, of that trend going away. And it's probably going to intensify as the church has been really making greater progress and opening additional nations to missionary as well. In Africa, like Burundi, just at the end of 2010 and just within a matter of 18 months, the church membership and Burundi grew from just a matter of less than 10 members to over 200 today and two branches that are led entirely by local members. So there's a lot of great potential that's there. And the church has been redistributing a lot of those missionary resources in terms of North American missionaries from other places to Africa to take advantage of those conditions.

The Future of the Church and Recommendations for Leaders

Scott Holley [01:35:57] Well, Matt, this has been absolutely spectacular and I really appreciate you taking us on this tour of the church throughout the world. I know that I've had some of my preconceptions kind of shattered as you've talked about both the challenges and the successes and the opportunities for church growth. If it's alright with you, I have a couple of last questions and the first one that I have is if you could get out your crystal ball for a minute and talk about what the church looks like in 20 years. Maybe just give us a quick vignette of what you see as what the church could potentially be 20 years from now.

Matt Martinich [01:36:39] Okay. I think within the next 20 years, we'll see countries like India and China become some of the major countries we associate with having a large number of members of the church. And that's due to some of the cultural conditions, the strength of local leadership and their involvement in missionary work, and also the government restrictions that really encourage converts to be strong when they join the church. So I see a lot of really strong growth happening in those two countries in particular also in Africa. I think it's foreseeable that all of the countries in sub Saharan Africa will have a church presence by that time. I think that also in South America and Central America that every city with over 50,000 people will likely have a congregation of the church in it by that time. In terms of the United States, I think we'll continue to see a lot of new temples being built as membership continues to sort of redistribute itself across the United States. And it might be possible by 2030 that we'll see a temple of the church in almost every state, with the exception of maybe like Rhode island or Delaware. You know, we'll probably see a temple in every state by that time. I think it's quite possible the number of temples will be about 300 by that time. You know, kind of depending on what the pace is for temple construction. I think that we'll start seeing some of the first stakes being organized in places like Burma and in places like Nepal and some of those places that right now there's only one branch and not very many members, but there's a lot of really strong receptivity in those places. And there's also been some increasing numbers of members serving missions in those places. So that might be a possibility in 30 years. But it's very difficult to say because I think if we look back 20 years ago, I think we would have said that, you know, the church in Russia would have a temple. There'd be a temple there now, and there'd be tons of stakes. But, you know, that. That really hasn't happened, unfortunately. And so it's. It's very difficult to predict kind of how things are going to look in the church too far in the future.

Scott Holley [01:39:08] So the next question that I would ask, as you are an active and attending Latter Day Saint, I won't ask you the question of what you would do if you were a prophet for the day, but. But I will ask you the question of what you would do if you were head of the church's missionary department, which, as we know, is a paid role and not a sustained officer of the church. And hopefully you won't find that question objectionable. But if you were put in charge of the whole kit and caboodle of missionary work, what would be your top three marching orders or top two, or what would you like to see done?

Matt Martinich [01:39:51] I think the first thing would be the organization of additional missionary training centers, particularly ones that are flexible, that could just, you know, when they start out, maybe they're just meeting in a district center or a large church building that, you know, during. On Sunday it's used for worship services, but during the week, just maybe for some activities. But, you know, remodeling one of those buildings and retrofitting it so it could function as a miniature missionary training center for places like Papua New Guinea, a lot of African countries, where visa issues make it very difficult for missionaries to go to the mtc. So that'd be one aspect that I would do if I was in that position. Another one that I'd really stress is really coordinating with the different area presidencies and working with with them to make sure that programs like seminary and institute are very well provided for in the different countries of the church and making sure that those classes are available because they're important for convert retention. They provide a lot of education to members and they help solidify testimonies and connections within the church socially. So I think those are the two big ones that I'd really stress. And then the third one that I think would be very valuable and something that David Stewart once commented to me about and says, well, there's a full time missionary manual. Why isn't there a member missionary manual that we have in the church? And so I think the third thing would be to have to be organized or to be in coordination with general authorities in the organization of a. The formation of a member missionary handbook that would, you know, kind of teach members in kr. I think members of church don't really know how to do missionary work and they see it as answering a question and maybe extending an invitation to do something. But you know, just having, you know, a lot of resources like that I think would be particularly valuable.

Scott Holley [01:41:58] That makes a lot of sense. And if it ever comes up to a vote, I'll make sure that you get the job at least for a couple of days. If you need any references, I'm sure some Mormon stories listeners will be supportive of what you just mentioned. Would you potentially, if I gave you a fourth or a fifth, add into that increased cultural flexibility for modifying church service as far as doctrinally appropriate for local areas?

Matt Martinich [01:42:31] You know, I don't really know if that would necessarily change anything. You know, I think that those accommodations the church has made already have been sufficient based on what I've seen. But I think something that would be very valuable would be to develop teaching resources that are tailored to the cultural conditions of particular countries. So for example, one of the struggles we had in the North Asia area or the Asia north area when I was serving my mission in Korea is that in Korea a lot of the people there are Christian. And so our resources, which tend to be directed towards those who have a Christian background, fit fairly well. But in Japan that was a big struggle because in Japan Christians are very small, tiny percentage of the population. And so what the area presidency did there is they put together a video that really just kind of explained some basic church teachings and put sort of a Taoist Buddhist kind of spin on it, Shinto kind of spent on it to, to sort of present that in a way that'd be culturally appropriate for them. And there was actually one made for Taiwan as well on this dvd, and it was called, I think it's called Finding Happiness, and I can't remember the exact title of it off the top of my head. But just the development of resources like that, I think would be very valuable, particularly in countries where there's a very strong tie between culture and religion and ethnicity. So like in Greece, where the Greek Orthodox Church is very strong culturally, there could be some great resources developed that would kind of explain things to potential members, to converts or to investigators, just kind of, you know, okay, this is a way we can present the material that makes most sense to you based on your cultural background and also the difficulties you'd encounter. Because in some of those countries, like in Greece, if you're a Greek who joins the church there, you know, you'll probably lose most of your friends, most of your family, you'll probably lose your job because it is seen as you're really disgracing your Greek identity by leaving by joining a non traditional Christian church like the LDS Church. And so I think those kind of resources developed for those cultural conditions would be. Would be very valuable.

Scott Holley [01:44:58] That makes a lot of sense. What type of responses have you received from the work that you've done, either from members of the church or from local or general leadership?

Matt Martinich [01:45:11] Most of the response has been very positive and they've been appreciative of the resources that we provide. And like I said, we're not as part of the Camorra Foundation. And also with my blog, I do, we don't do any proselytism. We're just providing resources and education. And so I feel like a lot of that has been taken very well. You know, there's been some great criticisms that we've received from members who live in these countries that, you know, maybe view their country profile after we posted it on a Camorra site and say, well, there's a couple things on here that need to be tweaked. Or they, you know, they confirm a lot of the things that we've maybe had to infer because of the lack of information on some of these countries. And they're able to say, yeah, that's exactly what's going on here. So, you know, it's been great, it's been a great experience to receive a lot of that feedback from general members of the church around the world. And also we've had some feedback from mission presidents as well. And it's also been very positive.

Faith, Doubt, and Closing Reflections

Scott Holley [01:46:15] So I've got one last question for you and then I'll let you wrap up with your thoughts. You've spent as part of your research a lot of time on the Internet. I'm sure that the, that the challenges that I've mentioned to you that, you know, a lot of listeners to Mormon stories have come across are that you would not be a stranger to those issues. Things such as Book of Mormon historicity, Joseph Smith and polygamy, Book of Abraham. How has your research not into necessarily even those issues, but including those issues, but also just seeing, you know, really behind the curtain at how the church operates and functions throughout the structure. How has that, has that created challenges to your faith or not? And if so, how have you dealt with those?

Matt Martinich [01:47:17] You know, I don't think it's created any challenges to my faith. If anything, it's kind of helped me kind of redefine some things I wasn't clear about maybe and kind of make me a little more educated and informed about just kind of other people's experiences and what they've had happen to them, you know, and just kind of based on my own testimony and the research that I do, you know, I see it as, you know, it's part of everybody's role to do missionary work and to further the work of, of the Lord. And so, you know, that's kind of the way that I see it, you know, and I'm not exactly sure why I have this undying desire to do this kind of, you know, my wife is, you know, she comments a lot of times about how she's just amazed that I have so much interest in it and that it's just undying because, you know, there's other subjects where, yeah, I can, I can do that and then I'm done with it, you know, and, you know, and I get tired of doing it. But this is something that hasn't been like that at all. So, you know, I just, like I said, you know, I just want to be able to provide some of the most accurate and high quality information that's available for people to have. And really just to raise awareness of, you know, kind of, you know, what the growth of the church really looks like and what we need to do to, to fulfill what's in the scripture is about taking the gospel to every nation, kindred and tongue. And right now, a project that I'm working on with the Cumorah foundation is mapping all of the world's languages and pinpointing them on a Google map where the traditional area they're spoken in and number of speakers and the status of LDS outreach and whether there's any materials translated in that language. And. And one of the things that is very telling to me with that is, you know, there's thousands of languages and ethnic groups that are totally unreached by the church. And so, you know, we have a long ways to go towards meeting that mandate that's in the scriptures. So, you know, but, you know, I've seen a lot of great stories out there. I've read, and, you know, it's just kind of a testimony to me about. About many things that the church leaders have said about how, you know, really what makes a church what it is, is the individual members. And, you know, that's my experience with the research I've done and come across is really, it just comes down to the individual and the family with what they're willing to provide. And, you know, it's exciting to see, you know, just kind of what's out there. So.

Scott Holley [01:50:05] Well, Matt, that's fantastic. And I really appreciate you taking the time to come on to Mormon Stories to share your abundant knowledge and experience of the church and membership growth and activity throughout the world. I think we've been on a really interesting journey. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Matt Martinich [01:50:31] I think I'm about done after talking for so long.

Scott Holley [01:50:33] Yeah, I think we're going to have to cut this one in half a little bit, and hopefully people will be able to put it on high speed and get through it. But I think that our listeners are really going to enjoy this. Matt, on behalf of the Mormon Stories podcast community, thank you so much for attending. As always, the the conversation continues on mormonstories.org Please come on and post your thoughts. And Matt, thanks so much for being on the show.

Matt Martinich [01:51:08] Oh, sure. Thank you for inviting me, Scott.

Scott Holley [01:51:10] All right, take care.

Matt Martinich [01:51:11] Sure.

Scott Holley [01:51:15] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Scott Holley [01:51:31] Come, come, ye saints no toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way Though hard to use, this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to this endure your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your lo? Fresh courage? Take our guard? God will never us forsake? Soon we'll have tail and tell? Oh, all is well? All is well? Oh, all is well? All is well? Sa? Sam? And should we die before our journey is through Happy day? All is well? We then are free from toil and sorrow too? With the just we shall dwell? But if our lives are spared again to see the saints the rest obtain? I will make this car. Is so well? Oh, all is well? All is well? All is well? All is well? All is well? Oh, is well, well? All is well?

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