---

Related

---

---

Translate

---

---

Advertisements *

---

---

Elsewhere

---

---

---

---

Get RNB via RSS

---

RNB's RSS feed What is this?

---

Get RNB via Email

---

Subscribe by Email What is this?

---

Follow: Twitter

---

---

Most Popular

---

This Week:

Now scores of young men and women, older single women and retired couples serve the church as full-time missionaries for 18 months to two years. They are assigned in pairs to proselytize, perform humanitarian service, help people trace their genealogy or anything else church leaders ask them to do. They pay about $400 per month for the privilege; those who cannot afford it can be subsidized by the church.

"They face rejection and sometimes verbal abuse, but they soldier on," Ballard said. "It's a marvelous thing what these young men and women and couples do."

Today, nearly 54,000 missionaries work in 145 nations, speaking and teaching in 164 languages. They learn the assigned languages in one of 16 training centers across the globe.

One-third of the missionaries are from outside the United States and Canada, a percentage that has risen steadily in the past two decades. Some are sent a world away, while many do their evangelizing close to home.

Now, about 90 percent of Nigerian missionaries are Africans, for example, and nearly 60 percent of those working in Brazil are Brazilian-born. This is the fulfillment, Ballard said, of a vision by the late LDS President Spencer W. Kimball, who saw a need to enlist more missionaries native to their countries.

Of the total missionaries, nearly 400,000 - or 40 percent - have served since 1995, when Gordon B. Hinckley became the church's "prophet, seer and revelator."

Largely due to the efforts of these full-time volunteers, the LDS Church has achieved another milestone – 13 million members, with more members outside the United States than in. Hinckley announced the membership figure this past weekend at a meeting of 112 newly assigned mission presidents.

Not everyone on the membership rolls is in the pews on Sunday, however.

Ballard declined Monday to say what percentage of the 13 million are “active,” but Brigham Young University demographer Tim Heaton noted in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism that attendance at weekly sacrament meetings in the early 1990s was between 40 percent and 50 percent in Canada, the South Pacific, and the United States. In Europe and Africa, the average was 35 percent. Attendance in Asia and Latin America hovered around 25 percent.

Still, the church has consistently reported the total number of baptized members and makes no distinction between “active” and “inactive.”

For the past 12 years at the church’s helm, Hinckley has repeatedly urged members to do more to retain the new converts. Much of that falls to the church’s ambassadors to the world.

“We have made great progress in our missionary work in recent years,” Hinckley told the assembled mission presidents. “We have more missionaries and more effective missionaries.”

---

What You Can Do From Here

---

Read More Articles On These Topics Categories: Mormonism/Mormon Church Share, Blog About, Bookmark, or Email This Article Subscribe Religion News Blog RSS feed [What is this?] RSS by topic: Mormonism/Mormon Church Read Another Article Previous entry: LDS Church says membership now 13 million worldwide Next entry: Hindu Prayer To Open US Senate RNB Homepage with latest headlines Find Related Information Use our custom search engines to find additional research resources on religions and cults Find Related Books Mormonism/Mormon Church Most Popular Today NewsChannel 10 allowed inside self proclaimed messiah’s compound Wanda Barzee pleads guilty to charge in Elizabeth Smart case Judge cancels hearing in case against Warren Jeffs Atheists ‘just as ethical as churchgoers’ research shows

---

Share This Article

---

To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:

• Post a link on your blog or website:
  
• Send in an email or IM:
  
• Post on a forum:
  

Search for information about (religious) cults, cult-like organizations, -- as well as paranormal-, New Age, and pseudoscientific claims -- across 260+ websites, blogs and forums dedicated to cult research, spiritual abuse, ex-cult counseling & support.

Note: results are listed on another domain -- CounterCultSearch.com -- from which you can easily return here.

Search for apologetics articles, books, videos, and other research resources across 135 Christian apologetics websites and blogs.

Note: results are listed on another domain -- ApologeticsSearch.com -- from which you can easily return here.