By The Numbers

My celestial sex partner and I had an interesting discussion the other night after I read an article about how the world’s population will be nearing 7 BILLION in 2011, and is projected to reach 9 BILLION by 2042. Neither of us are great at math and were couldn’t get the calculator to work with those numbers, but we were wondering if there is approx 13 MILLION active LDS by the time the earth’s population reaches 7 BILLION, what percentage of the earth’s inhabitants will be Mormon? Anyone out there able to figure that out? We decided on 13 million LDS as that’s the current number given and we know not all of those are active members.

These numbers gave rise to a few questions we debated:
1- At the rate LDS missionary work is going and the population is growing, approximately how long will it take to reach all of the earth’s inhabitants with the church’s message?
2- If God wants us all to accept Mormonism as the earth’s true faith, then why are so few of the earth inhabitants members?
3- If God is as powerful as they say, then why is it taking so long for his message to get out to people? Why not use a more efficient means than missionaries?
4- We often hear from the pulpit that not all members will make it to the celestial kingdom, so with membership being so small when compared to the earth’s population, why are so few going to make it back to God’s presence if he loves us?

Do you have any of the answers, if so, please share!

Is It Just Me?

As I mentioned in an earlier post I’ve become a Facebook addict and have now reached the milestone of one hundred “friends.” (Somebody toot a horn) Most of these are people I knew over a decade ago while growing up in Utah and back then I was your unoriginal “Molly” and I’d dare say only a handful of people in my peer circle were not Mormon. As you know from this blog, that all changed for me after I started working for the church. So, imagine my surprise when I reconnected with people from the past and started to realize a trend—many of them have also become inactive or left the church all together. Today was the biggest shocker when I was “friended” by a kid who was on seminary council with me and was perhaps the most devout Mormon peer I had, but has now listed himself as “agnostic” on Facebook. Another of my reacquainted friends served a mission but according to his profile/photos, is now a big fan of recreational drugs and alcohol (which was sad to read/see). It also seems that recently my celestial sex partner and I have had several friends who we’ve met as we moved that are “coming out” as no longer being believers in the church.

Now this doesn’t mean the church isn’t true- it could have something to do with my generation and the life stage we’re all at, or the area we all grew up in (small SLC/Ogden suburb), the availability of information on the internet, the world being more evil now, we’re getting close to the last days and people are choosing sides, etc. Or, I could be witnessing a trend in church membership with people who have demographics similar to mine.
What do you think? And if there is a trend, how should the LDS church go about stopping this loss of members? What would bring you back if you’ve left?