I had picked up the impression that they were putting on an additional 8,000 missionaries, did I get that wrong?
They lowered the age to 18 for the boys...
and 19 for the girls...
there was a reason or 2 ...
possible draft, keeping them busy and marriagable etc..
I had picked up the impression that they were putting on an additional 8,000 missionaries, did I get that wrong?
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At General Conference this last October (2012), the LDS church officially lowered the age for missionaries to 18 (from 19) for men and to 19 (from 21) for women. The number of additional missionaries varies but 8k isn’t unreasonable. There are several reasons for this...
First, probably expecting a Mitt win and to use it to further Mormonism.
Second, the number of missionaries has been steadily declining over the last decade
Third, Women are taught that it is better to get married than go on a mission (when I was LDS you only went on a mission to make you more ‘marriageable’ if you were a woman and it was basically an admission that at age 21 you were an old maid). This solves that problem.
Fourth, many LDS are chosing to go to state or secular schools rather than BYU and after a year or two ‘in the world’ are less likely to want to go on a mission and are more likely to leave.
Fifth, the rate of returned missionaries leaving is pretty high (about 50% for men). I think SLC expects that if they get them younger, they are less likely to ‘think’ on their mission.
Six, it is harder to leave once you have been through the LDS temple and a mission call is usually the first time you go through the Endowment, so by lowering the age the leadership expects less people to leave or go ‘inactive’.
Even the LDS leadership admits people are leaving in droves and while they do not release number of those leaving if you crunch the numbers they lose OFFICIALLY (resignation,excommunication and death) about 200,000 per year and that is not counting those who just leave and don’t take their names off church records (these people are still counted in the numbers until they are 110).
When I was in grad school we had a support group of ex-LDS and of the 2 dozen who showed up every week, I was the ONLY one who went through the name removal process and no one had been excommunicated. Extrapolating that out and even allowing for the small sample, the LDS activity (tithing paying and attending) is WAY down.
Also, someone told me recently that they are not excommunicating nearly as much as they used to or for the things they used to (homosexuality, and fornication and adultery) which also reinforces the fact that they are losing people.