Convert baptisms surged last year to the highest level seen in nearly three decades, propelling global membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints past 17.5 million.
The Utah-based faith added 308,682 converts to its rolls in 2024, according to statistics released Saturday during the faith’s General Conference, making it the heftiest gain in converts since 1997.
“The increase of nearly 57,000 more convert baptisms compared to 2023 occurred without any single world area being identified as the primary driver, suggesting widespread global momentum,” Matt Martinich, an independent researcher who monitors church growth and retention rates, wrote on his ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com website.
Worldwide church membership swelled by 254,387 last year to 17,509,781. While that represents a 1.47% bump from the 17,255,394 tallied the previous year, it is a smidgen less than the 1.49% growth recorded in 2023.
“Overall it was a great year,” Martinich said in an interview, “but there are definitely some areas of concern that … reflect issues with families and long-term retention.”
Birthrates keep dropping
For starters, the number of children of record (or infants added to the faith’s rolls) remained below 100,000, continuing a downward trend. There were 91,617 children of record in 2024, off 1,977 from the previous year and far below the 124,000 in 1982.
“This decline reflects both falling birthrates among Latter-day Saints (especially in the U.S.) and the church’s limited success in fostering multigenerational families in newer international areas,” Martinich wrote on his blog. “In most countries, even where national fertility rates remain high, the church struggles to retain converts and raise second-generation members.”
Convert baptisms and children of record combined to total 400,299 new members. Martinich attributes the fact that total membership only increased by 254,287 to the removal of at least 145,912 records due to deaths, resignations or Latter-day Saints losing their membership as a result of church discipline.
“This figure surpasses the previous high in 2018 (140,868),” Martinich wrote, “and suggests intensified record updating or a rise in voluntary resignations.”
More missionaries
Even so, those concerns did not take the shine off the jump in converts. What makes that milestone even more impressive, Martinich noted, is it came despite the church’s stepped-up emphasis on better and more significant pre-baptism preparation.
Another positive was the rise in the number of full-time proselytizing missionaries, which shot up by 6,256 to 74,127, a 9.2% leap from the number laboring the year before. Martinich said that’s the most full-time missionaries the church has ever fielded other than the 2013-2014 “double cohort” years after the age requirement for full-time missionary service was lowered from 19 to 18 for men and 21 to 19 for women.
Not only were there more missionaries in the field last year, but they also were more productive. All told, according to Martinich, baptisms per missionary rose from 3.71 in 2023 to 4.16 in 2024, the highest average since 2012 but still far short of the “modern-era peak” of 8.03 in 1989.
There were also 31,120 senior service missionaries in 2024, nearly 12% more than the previous year. Moreover, there were 4,192 young service missionaries, a nearly 8% increase from 2023.
Other key stats for 2024:
• 3,608 stakes (regional clusters of congregations similar to dioceses).
• 450 church missions compared to 414 the previous year.
• 494 districts (smaller versions of stakes), five more than last year and the first such increase in 16 years.
• 31,676 congregations.