I used to live in an area with numbered wards, 5th Ward, 6th Ward, etc. until one day they shuffled the boundaries a bit and renamed all of the wards to actual names instead of numbers.
I was oblivious to it at the time, but in hindsight it's pretty clear they do this to hide shrinkage.
Served in a west coast mission in the late 2000s. My mission has lost 3 stakes, and has sold off 3 buildings (last time I checked). Lots of meetinghouses in that mission now house 1 ward. The other meetinghouses rarely host 2 or more standard English family wards.
I had the pleasure of serving TWICE in the town of Punxsutawney, PA. I first lived there as a zone leader for a frigid winter, halfway through my mission, getting to go to Gobbler's Knob and see the Groundhog festivities on Groundhog Day. Then, a year later, during the last month on mission, I got to go back to "Punxsy" and finish up - again getting to go to the Groundhog Day festivities, just a week before going home. Not to forget about my duties, I also had a baptism that last week I was out in the field. This was in the mid-1980's, well prior to Bill Murray's movie.
What was interesting is that the LDS Meetinghouse sat very near to the park where the city held the Groundhog Day event, and the story was that the church actually owned the land before the city bought it from them. When you were at the Groundhog event, you could look to your left and see the "Stage One" Mormon Church building in the distance, outside the trees and down the hill.
Today? There's no LDS meetinghouse in Punxsutawney - the building sold, whatever members that are left having to drive 30 minutes [up the road to Brookville, PA](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Punxsutawney,+Pennsylvania+15767/Brookville,+Pennsylvania+15825/@41.0516222,-79.2104626,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89cc965a774bf01f:0x9a872230de1dafaf!2m2!1d-78.9708668!2d40.9436753!1m5!1m1!1s0x89ccc23c681b1003:0xcbba185ec4605cde!2m2!1d-79.0830924!2d41.1611746!3e0?entry=ttu) to go to church. If I am not mistaken, [the building now is the home of the JW's in Punxsy.](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.9275693,-78.9696804,3a,75y,136.39h,96.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sTugeKTVnOL7zFqKyaHXXlQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu)
So, in Punxsutawney, we went from a prominent location next to where the entire nation gathers every Groundhog Day, the rumor being we even owned the Groundhog land - to ZILCH and the members having to drive a half hour to another town to go to church.
I served in the UK: 2004-06
2 of the 6 wards I served in have closed. Both had chapels which have been sold.
2 of the remaining wards are hanging on for dear life. Ive heard they both have under 40 attending each week.
That sounds like a realistic number w/o context I live in one of the most dynamic ward in the South which has around 65 people(tops- 40 for a ward in the South makes sense)
I was a problem, so I had many sectors. But in just looking on google maps, I noticed a lot of buildings that only served one ward have now been sold or are up for sale. I was in Chile. There used to be churches everywhere.
I was a missionary in Chile 1988-89. Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people have been baptized into the mormon church in Chile since then. And despite that, there are fewer wards, stakes, church buildings and active attending members now than 35 years ago!
I've spent a lot of time in Chile, and Chileans in general are starting to follow the European model of de-churching. In 20 years the church in Chile is going to be about as robust as the church in Spain or France.
I served in two European countries 1998-2000. One branch has closed in country A since then, and in country B three branches have opened in areas missionaries had never served in previously. Church membership is flat for both countries. Essentially zero growth in 26 years.
Someone should put all the shrinkage information together and give it to news outlets or someone who can get the truth out. Those liars need to be proven liars to all.
Ditto. My companions and others meet and stuff and go back and I couldn’t care less. I did my two years, checked the box, did everything else but didn’t give enough money so F-off
I was in eastern Canada in the early 2000's. I just looked and it seems all, except for one, of the branches/wards I served in are gone. Crazy. They most likely merged with neighboring wards/branches, but one area has its assigned meeting house as more than an hour away from town. We used to meet in town at a rented building.
The thing that really gets me is one area had a brand new building when I got there. It was just finished a few months prior. I can't find that building being used now.
I had the same thing happen with trying to find a meeting house that was basically brand new when I served. The building was probably built in 2004 or 2005 and now it doesn't show up on google maps or the meeting house locater. Based off the info on the locator website it doesn't look like the ward that was in that building was relocated and it did not get turned into a branch either. It is just gone. So it must have been dissolved and whatever membership was left merged with other units.
I served in Barcelona, Spain from 2000-2002. At the time there were 5 missions in Spain. I believe they are down to 2 now.
I am sure several wards/branches have closed in my mission, but I only have personal knowledge of 1. Back in 2002 the Elda branch averaged under 10 people a week, including the missionaries. There was a branch president, but we taught Sunday School and Priesthood. We spoke most Sundays and gave very long testimonies on testimony Sunday.
The branch president was a good dude, but he had been in the calling for like 10 years because there was no one else qualified.
A few years later he apparently went through a nasty divorce and it fully collapsed the branch.
Mormonism was always a hard sell in Japan, but it seems these days they're just over it for good. Nothing but shrivel there, unless you count the mysterious need for new temples.
I wonder how many thousands of missionaries served there over the years. It has to be greater than the total number of active members in the country at present.
I just checked. Two wards are gone and two wards were downgraded to branches. I guess all those prophecies about the church being on the cusp of flourishing and membership numbers shooting up… were also not true.
I don't know how many are closed. But over 30 years later, the branch I served 10 months in with about 50 attending is now a "ward" with 30-35 attending.
Another branch I served in for a few months in a more populous area had 50 or so attending also. Today it is still a branch and in their Christmas party photo there are about 70 people, including a lot of children and youth. 30 years to gain 20 active members in the branch isn't much growth. Furthermore, Christmas parties with free food tend to swell in numbers well above regular meeting attendance.
I didn't notice any shrinkage in my areas in Washington. Surprising, but there weren't that many wards to begin with.
Here's the meetinghouse locator. You can go to each meetinghouse and see which wards meet there:
[https://maps.churchofjesuschrist.org/meetinghouses](https://maps.churchofjesuschrist.org/meetinghouses)
I got home in 2019 so it hasn’t been that long, but looks like no change in either direction, but some of the Spanish wards I served in combined their second hours with the English wards
I served Spanish speaking in the U.S. Digging around a bit on the meeting house locator, of the 6 units I served in, one branch became a ward, and one very rural branch disappeared. The other ones are unchanged. One of the wards I served in was pretty small at the time (rural, English ward), and I'm surprised it's still a ward and not down graded.
Where I live they change names and boundaries every 10 years so you’d never know what still exists or was removed because it’s all changed.
I used to live in an area with numbered wards, 5th Ward, 6th Ward, etc. until one day they shuffled the boundaries a bit and renamed all of the wards to actual names instead of numbers. I was oblivious to it at the time, but in hindsight it's pretty clear they do this to hide shrinkage.
Served in a west coast mission in the late 2000s. My mission has lost 3 stakes, and has sold off 3 buildings (last time I checked). Lots of meetinghouses in that mission now house 1 ward. The other meetinghouses rarely host 2 or more standard English family wards.
I had the pleasure of serving TWICE in the town of Punxsutawney, PA. I first lived there as a zone leader for a frigid winter, halfway through my mission, getting to go to Gobbler's Knob and see the Groundhog festivities on Groundhog Day. Then, a year later, during the last month on mission, I got to go back to "Punxsy" and finish up - again getting to go to the Groundhog Day festivities, just a week before going home. Not to forget about my duties, I also had a baptism that last week I was out in the field. This was in the mid-1980's, well prior to Bill Murray's movie. What was interesting is that the LDS Meetinghouse sat very near to the park where the city held the Groundhog Day event, and the story was that the church actually owned the land before the city bought it from them. When you were at the Groundhog event, you could look to your left and see the "Stage One" Mormon Church building in the distance, outside the trees and down the hill. Today? There's no LDS meetinghouse in Punxsutawney - the building sold, whatever members that are left having to drive 30 minutes [up the road to Brookville, PA](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Punxsutawney,+Pennsylvania+15767/Brookville,+Pennsylvania+15825/@41.0516222,-79.2104626,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89cc965a774bf01f:0x9a872230de1dafaf!2m2!1d-78.9708668!2d40.9436753!1m5!1m1!1s0x89ccc23c681b1003:0xcbba185ec4605cde!2m2!1d-79.0830924!2d41.1611746!3e0?entry=ttu) to go to church. If I am not mistaken, [the building now is the home of the JW's in Punxsy.](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.9275693,-78.9696804,3a,75y,136.39h,96.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sTugeKTVnOL7zFqKyaHXXlQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu) So, in Punxsutawney, we went from a prominent location next to where the entire nation gathers every Groundhog Day, the rumor being we even owned the Groundhog land - to ZILCH and the members having to drive a half hour to another town to go to church.
Imagine if you'd been stuck on a Groundhog Day time loop while on your mission. Now *that* would be a nightmare.
I served in the UK: 2004-06 2 of the 6 wards I served in have closed. Both had chapels which have been sold. 2 of the remaining wards are hanging on for dear life. Ive heard they both have under 40 attending each week.
That sounds like a realistic number w/o context I live in one of the most dynamic ward in the South which has around 65 people(tops- 40 for a ward in the South makes sense)
LOL at the idea that 65 people is a dynamic ward. That was the size of the typical primary in Utah just a couple of decades ago.
I was a problem, so I had many sectors. But in just looking on google maps, I noticed a lot of buildings that only served one ward have now been sold or are up for sale. I was in Chile. There used to be churches everywhere.
I was a missionary in Chile 1988-89. Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people have been baptized into the mormon church in Chile since then. And despite that, there are fewer wards, stakes, church buildings and active attending members now than 35 years ago!
I've spent a lot of time in Chile, and Chileans in general are starting to follow the European model of de-churching. In 20 years the church in Chile is going to be about as robust as the church in Spain or France.
Do you mind sharing what years you were there?
1999-2001, under John Tanner
Ok, I went out there too a couple years after.
I Don’t keep up on my old areas but I did hear my branch merged with the neighboring branch. They were already unofficially doing everything together
I served in two European countries 1998-2000. One branch has closed in country A since then, and in country B three branches have opened in areas missionaries had never served in previously. Church membership is flat for both countries. Essentially zero growth in 26 years.
i served in eastern Ukraine before the war. Not sure how many are still going.
Someone should put all the shrinkage information together and give it to news outlets or someone who can get the truth out. Those liars need to be proven liars to all.
No clue. Don't know. Don't care enough to look.
Ditto. My companions and others meet and stuff and go back and I couldn’t care less. I did my two years, checked the box, did everything else but didn’t give enough money so F-off
I was in eastern Canada in the early 2000's. I just looked and it seems all, except for one, of the branches/wards I served in are gone. Crazy. They most likely merged with neighboring wards/branches, but one area has its assigned meeting house as more than an hour away from town. We used to meet in town at a rented building. The thing that really gets me is one area had a brand new building when I got there. It was just finished a few months prior. I can't find that building being used now.
I had the same thing happen with trying to find a meeting house that was basically brand new when I served. The building was probably built in 2004 or 2005 and now it doesn't show up on google maps or the meeting house locater. Based off the info on the locator website it doesn't look like the ward that was in that building was relocated and it did not get turned into a branch either. It is just gone. So it must have been dissolved and whatever membership was left merged with other units.
Two units have been disbanded.
I was in London south Mission. They recently closed the Maidstone stake that I served in.
I served in Barcelona, Spain from 2000-2002. At the time there were 5 missions in Spain. I believe they are down to 2 now. I am sure several wards/branches have closed in my mission, but I only have personal knowledge of 1. Back in 2002 the Elda branch averaged under 10 people a week, including the missionaries. There was a branch president, but we taught Sunday School and Priesthood. We spoke most Sundays and gave very long testimonies on testimony Sunday. The branch president was a good dude, but he had been in the calling for like 10 years because there was no one else qualified. A few years later he apparently went through a nasty divorce and it fully collapsed the branch.
Mormonism was always a hard sell in Japan, but it seems these days they're just over it for good. Nothing but shrivel there, unless you count the mysterious need for new temples. I wonder how many thousands of missionaries served there over the years. It has to be greater than the total number of active members in the country at present.
All my branches and wards are there but my whole mission is gone if that’s anything
1 detmold Germany maybe another Oberhausen.
I just checked. Two wards are gone and two wards were downgraded to branches. I guess all those prophecies about the church being on the cusp of flourishing and membership numbers shooting up… were also not true.
I don't know how many are closed. But over 30 years later, the branch I served 10 months in with about 50 attending is now a "ward" with 30-35 attending. Another branch I served in for a few months in a more populous area had 50 or so attending also. Today it is still a branch and in their Christmas party photo there are about 70 people, including a lot of children and youth. 30 years to gain 20 active members in the branch isn't much growth. Furthermore, Christmas parties with free food tend to swell in numbers well above regular meeting attendance.
I didn't notice any shrinkage in my areas in Washington. Surprising, but there weren't that many wards to begin with. Here's the meetinghouse locator. You can go to each meetinghouse and see which wards meet there: [https://maps.churchofjesuschrist.org/meetinghouses](https://maps.churchofjesuschrist.org/meetinghouses)
Where's this meeting house locator?
https://maps.churchofjesuschrist.org/
Thanks! Detroit has 3 branches in 3 separate buildings. I swear it's just to hold on to the real estate
Just one branch that I can see but I don't remember them all.
I got home in 2019 so it hasn’t been that long, but looks like no change in either direction, but some of the Spanish wards I served in combined their second hours with the English wards
Argentina, 2010-ish. 4/5 units that I worked in still exist.
I served Spanish speaking in the U.S. Digging around a bit on the meeting house locator, of the 6 units I served in, one branch became a ward, and one very rural branch disappeared. The other ones are unchanged. One of the wards I served in was pretty small at the time (rural, English ward), and I'm surprised it's still a ward and not down graded.