[AlexanderX]

Yeah, THAT is common knowledge, at least in my crowd. But that's not what you claimed, originally, is it? ...and I might add that the subjective term "dramatically" will vary widely, depending on whom you are speaking to.

I joined the Church in 1989. The hoopla at the time was that the Church was the fastest growing Church in the world. With somewhere around 30,000 missionaries there were more than 400,000 baptisms the next year. I served a mission two years later and the number of missionaries went up, eventually peaking around 60,000, while the number of convert baptisms dropped and then leveled off, fluxuating between 270-350,000 a year.
The average missionary baptized more than 13 people in the late 80's. It is less than 6 now.

That's a dramatic decrease by anyone's standard.

Bologna. What a stupid thing to say.

It is a factual thing to say. Missionaries cannot continue a discussion unless they have the environment controlled. This is common kowledge to anyone who has actually served a mission. If critics are there with an investigator, ready to test missionary claims, the missionaries are instructed to reschedule for another day. Of course, their explanation is that the "spirit" isn't around when "anti-mormonism" is around. However you want to look at it, the principle is the same. The game is rigged from the start. Missionaries never win "Bible bash" debates and win over investigators. Ever.

As to the rest of your post, you are confirming what *I* said.

No, you said I was wrong to say there are more ex-Mormons than Mormons. But I am right about that, and the statistics support this. Most people who get baptized end up leaving the Church, usually sooner than later. Of the 40+ people I baptized, I know of only 7 who are still active.

It's essentially limited to central & south America, and the Church has been addressing the problem there for some time.

Addressing the problem how?

The problem is that missionaries rush investigators through the process as quickly as possible. They presume to know what an investigator should and shouldn't know before making an educated decision. So they feel justified in neglecting to share information that would otherwise dissuade them. For instance, most African American investigators are not told about the previous priesthood ban. The Elders think that since it doesn't change their own testimonies, then it shouldn't have an effect on the investigator either. The problem is that Mormons cannot continue to control the environment after the person walks outside into the real world, no matter how hard they try. The new member will eventually find out the information ("anti-Mormon propaganda" as most LDS are conditioned to call it) on his own and then rebel against the institution for neglecting to inform him about it before he made his decision to be baptized. This is why so many ex-LDS are frustrated. For most people, hard facts like these do more to prove the Church is false, than a fuzzy feeling does to prove it is true. But missionaries aren't interested in sharing all the information; only information that makes the church sound good.

And yes, investigators are rushed through the process.

Even though there are six discussions, missionaries are instructed to get a baptismal "commitment" after the second discussion! This means that a person is pushed to commit long before they hear anything about the restoration, temple's, tithes, law of chastity, etc. And of course after they commit, it makes it difficult for them to back down if they learn something they don't like in the last four discussions. Why? Because the missionaries make them feel badly by saying, "But you said God already told you it was true... remember your feelings when we prayed together"? This is why missionaries are told to constantly ask them how they feel, usually after the missionary shares a tear-jerking story. Naturally the person says he feels "good." At that point the missionary breaks out Galatians 5:22 and uses that to argue God is using emotion in telling him the Church is true.

So yes, controlling the environment is the first thing we learned at the MTC.

And Central and South America represent a huge chunk of the Church. The activity rate in North America is an abysmal 35-40%. In Central and S. America it is only slightly worse at about 20-25%. Taken both continents together, we are talking about roughly 85% of the global Church with an activity rate well below 50%.

The country with the highest activity rate (60%) is Khazakstan, but it only has 61 active members in the entire country! In fact there are only nine countries with an activity rate above 50%, and none of them have more than 10,000 members. So yes, my statement is well grounded in fact. There are far more ex-Mormons in the world today than their are Mormons. In fact, if they were so inclined to organize themselves, they could be considered one of the fastest growing churches in the world.

In reality, the LDS Church has probably 4-5 million members that could be considered "active" in any real sense. Considering it is a Church that's been around for more than 170 years, this isn't very impressive. The SDA Church is kicking our butts.