When I worked for large real estate firms in the apartment management business the commonly agreed upon standard was that one out of every three people inquiring about your apartments should end up renting an apartment if you are doing your job right.  Although things didn’t always work out that well, over time working at multiple properties and for multiple companies I found this to be a fairly reasonable and achievable standard, or at least it was realistic enough to work towards.  I think we called it our conversion rate.

Recently I realized that the average worldwide conversion rate for Mormon missionary work is extremely low by comparison – most likely less than two percent.

In other words, by my speculative estimation less than two out of every one hundred people who are invited in some way to learn more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actually end up joining the church.  If the church’s message is as true and as powerful as it claims to be, and if the church has the most powerful beings in the universe, namely Heavenly Father, our Savior Jesus Christ, and The Holy Ghost as uniquely in its corner as it claims, then why in the world is it so hard to get people to join up?  I think the leaders of the church would attribute the church’s low conversion rate to failures on the part of the members and the missionaries, attacks from Satan and his minions, and that the people of the world are not using their free agency to choose the right.  If the leaders blame themselves in any way at all, most likely the members will never know, because, as Dallin H. Oaks famously said (quoting himself) in Helen Whitney’s 2007 documentary The Mormons, “It’s wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even if the criticism is true.”

Although the church is responsible for how it shares its message with the world, the low conversion rate of its missionary work is actually nobody’s fault.  It is what it is.  But if a surprisingly low number of people are truly interested in a particular message in any lasting and meaningful way, what does that say about the message itself?  At some point, doesn’t the message itself have to bear some of the responsibility for its failure to inspire conversion in the lives of any significant percentage of those who hear it?  And who is ultimately responsible for the message itself?  If the church’s claims are all true, isn’t God himself ultimately responsible for the message itself? 

Or what if there is nothing wrong with the message or the messengers and it’s all just as true as the church claims?  Won’t the celestial kingdom be a  relatively strange and lonely place if less than two percent of God’s children manage to qualify?  This gets into all sorts of questions involving church doctrines (or lack thereof) around the different kingdoms of heaven and interaction and progression between them, baptisms for the dead, free agency, etc. – all subjects for another day.

What should the conversion rate be? I don’t know for sure, but I feel comfortable saying that if the message is as great as it’s supposed to be, then it should be higher. Ten percent? Higher? It seems like if everybody’s eternal life and salvation is at stake, and if the message is the most important message in the world and it truly comes from God himself, then it would sure be nice if he could bring home at least one in ten, but ideally even more than that.

Isn’t God. the Father directing the work of his one true church through his son Jesus Christ and The Holy Ghost? If so, why is he having so much trouble reaching his children through his Mormon missionaries? Missionaries who have special access to the omniscient creator of the universe should have some of the best conversion rates around – shouldn’t they?

Ideally, if God is perfect, maybe he should have a perfect record in the conversion department as well, that is, if one must be converted to his “one true church” in order to be “saved,” which in Mormonism is often confused or conflated with gaining “eternal life,” a.k.a. exaltation, the highest degree of the celestial kingdom.

Some might say that God is perfect but because he has gifted us with our free agency it’s our fault and not God’s if we choose to not be converted to his one true church. But why do we choose what we choose? We might think we know, and we might even be right, but do any of us have any idea why we choose to choose what we choose? At some point, the cause/effect structure of our chain of choices leads back into the unknown, into a realm that we can’t access or control but that an all-knowing, all-powerful God presumably can.

For the year 2019, the last full year unaffected by a worldwide pandemic, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 67,021 full-time missionaries and 248,835 convert baptisms.

Full-time Mormon missionaries typically work in “companionships” of two and most often invite and teach the same people together, so I will estimate that there were approximately 33,511 full-time missionary companionships in 2019.

I believe it’s relatively safe to estimate that on average each missionary companionship invited at least one person per day to learn about the church, for a total of 12,231,515 invitations (33,511 companionships x 1 invitation per day x 365 days in the year). Any attempt to share the message of the church with someone counts as an invitation, with the idea being that each convert baptized had to start somewhere and so each one was prompted somehow, at some point, by a missionary or a member of the church.

Church membership for 2019 was reported as 16,565,036.  If we estimate that approximately 1/3 of total membership was fully active and faithful (4,969,511) and that 1/3 of those members invited at least one person per year to learn about the church, we can add an additional 1,490,853 invitations, for a total of 13,722,186.

Of course we do not know for sure how many invitations were made in 2019. I am intentionally trying to underestimate (perhaps even vastly underestimate) the number of invitations in the church’s favor because I would prefer to question critically from a position that is puffed up in my opponent’s favor than my own.

We can now divide the total number of convert baptisms by the estimated number of invitations to get a rough estimate of the conversion rate:

248,835 / 13,722,186 = 0.01813377, or 1.8 percent.

Or, in other words, less than two percent of invitations to learn more about the church result in conversion and baptism.

Think about that.

Now, I realize I’m speculating.  It’s a rough estimate.  I’m guesstimating really.  But I think it’s a fairly educated and reasonably polite guess because the invitations are most likely underestimated in the church’s favor and the rest of the numbers are the church’s own and are presumed to be accurate.  And if the missionaries are not averaging at least one invitation per day per companionship and the church membership is not averaging at least 1 invitation per year for 1/9 of their membership, then why aren’t they?  Again, surely I’ve underestimated the number of invitations and the actual number is greater – isn’t it?  When I was a Spanish-speaking missionary in Boston in 1999-2000, each week we had to keep track of and report how many “Golden Questions” we asked people in order to try and stimulate a gospel discussion (and hopefully an appointment to teach again and eventually baptize).  An example of a Golden Question might be if I walked up to someone on the street and asked them if they had ever heard of The Book of Mormon.  The total number of Golden Questions asked by my companion and I was sometimes in the 200-300 range per week if I remember right. 

Now that we’ve looked at some numbers for 2019 because it was the last full year unaffected by the pandemic, let’s see how those same numbers compare to other years in the period 2015-2020.

2020

Total membership: 16,663,663

Converts baptized during 2020: 125,930

Full-time missionaries: 51,819

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 25,910

25,910 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year = 9,457,150 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 5,554,554

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,851,518 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 11,308,668

125,930 convert baptisms / 11,308,668 invitations = 0.01113571, or 1.1 percent

2019

Total membership: 16,565,036

Converts baptized during 2019: 248,835

Full-time missionaries: 67,021

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 33,511

33,511 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year = 12,231,515 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 4,969,511

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,490,853 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 13,722,186

248,835 convert baptisms / 13,722,186 invitiations = 0.01813377, or 1.8 percent.

2018

Total membership: 16,313,735

Converts baptized during 2018: 234,332

Full-time missionaries: 65,137

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 32,569

32,569 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year = 11,887,685 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 5,437,912

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,812,637 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 13,700,322

234,332 convert baptisms / 13,700,322 invitations = 0.01710412, or 1.7 percent conversion rate

2017

Total membership: 16,118,169

Converts baptized during 2017: 233,729

Full-time missionaries: 67,049

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 33,525

33,525 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  12,236,625 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 5,372,723

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,790,908 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 14,027,533

233,729 convert baptisms /  14,027,533 invitations = 0.01666216, or 1.6 percent conversion rate

2016

Total membership: 15,882,417

Converts baptized during 2016: 240,131

Full-time missionaries: 70,946

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 35,473

35,473 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  12,947,645 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 5,294,139

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,764,713 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 14,712,358

240,131 convert baptisms / 14,712,358 invitations = 0.01632172, or 1.6 percent conversion rate

2015

Total membership: 15,634,199

Converts baptized during 2015: 257,402

Full-time missionaries: 74,079

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 37,040

37,040 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  13,519,600 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 5,211,400

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,737,133 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 15,256,733

257,402 convert baptisms /  15,256,733 invitations = 0.1687137, or 1.7 percent conversion rate

Now let’s skip back even further in time.  Here are the same stats and calculations for the five years with the highest number of convert baptisms in church history.  This will give us an idea of the range of conversion rates from the five most recent years versus the five highest baptizing years.

1999

Total membership: 10,752,984

Converts baptized during  1999:  306,171

Full-time missionaries: 58,593

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 29,297

29,297 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  10,693,405 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 3,584,328

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,194,776 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 11,888,181

306,171 convert baptisms /  11,888,181 invitations = 0.02575423, or 2.5 percent conversion rate

1997

Total membership: 10,071,783

Converts baptized during  1997: 317,798

Full-time missionaries: 56,531

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 28,266

28,266 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  10,317,090 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 3,357,261

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,119,087 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 11,436,177317,798 convert baptisms /  11,436,177 invitations = 0.02778883, or 2.8 percent conversion rate

1996

Total membership: 9,692,441

Converts baptized during  1996: 321,385

Full-time missionaries: 52,938

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 26,469

26,469 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  9,661,185 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 3,230,813

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 1,076,938 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 10,738,123

321,385 convert baptisms /  10,738,123 invitations = 0.02992934, or 2.9 percent conversion rate

1990

Total membership: 7,761,207

Converts baptized during  1990: 330,877

Full-time missionaries: 43,651

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 21,826

21,826 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  7,966,490 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 2,587,069

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 862,356 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 8,828,846

330,877 convert baptisms /  8,828,846 invitations = 0.03747681, or 3.7 percent conversion rate

1989

Total membership: 7,308,444

Converts baptized during  1989: 318,940

Full-time missionaries: 39,739

Approximate number of missionary companionships: 19,870

19,870 companionships (making 1 invitation per day) x 365 days per year =  7,252,550 invitations

1/3 of total church membership = 2,436,148

1/3 of 1/3 of total membership (making 1 invitation per year) = 812,049 invitations

Total estimated invitations = 8,064,599

318,940 convert baptisms / 8,064,599 invitations = 0.03954815, or 3.9 percent conversion rate

Looks like the church had a higher conversion rate during the all-time top baptizing years of 1989-1990, 1996-1997, and 1999. Good for them. It still wasn’t as high as it should have been, given the supposed marvelousness of the message. I mean, it’s “a marvelous work and a wonder” isn’t it? And we haven’t mentioned an elephant in the room yet – retention rates. Once they are converted, how many of God’s children stay faithful and stick around in his one true church? The future population of the celestial kingdom seems to be slipping away like so much sand in an hourglass.

*Statistics for the years 2015-2020 were taken from the church’s statistical reports on its website at http://www.churchofjesuschrist.org. Statistics for the years 1989-1990, 1996-1997, and 1999 were taken from the “Raw Data and Calculations” spreadsheet on http://www.fullerconsideration.org.