Fueled by an unprecedented volume of convert baptisms, global membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints surged last year to over 17.8 million members.
In total, the church added 385,490 converts to its membership rolls in 2025, according to statistics the faith released Saturday during its 196th Annual General Conference, eclipsing the previous record of 330,877 set in 1990. It also represents a nearly 25% leap over the 308,682 recorded in 2024.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Overall church membership in 2025 increased by 377,431 to 17,887,212, almost 2.2% higher than the 17,509,781 reported the previous year. The fact that convert baptism numbers exceeded the total church growth figures is due to the loss of Latter-day Saints through death, resignation or church discipline, according to independent researcher Matt Martinich.
Even so, Martinich said that does not take the luster of what amounts to a phenomenal year for church growth.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) The number of Latter-day Saints on the church's rolls in 2025 grew closer to 18 million.
An all-time high
“The significance of the number of converts baptized in 2025 can’t be overstated,” Martinich, who monitors the church’s annual growth and retention around the world and reports his findings at ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com, said in an interview Saturday. “It blew the previous record out of the water.”
Last year’s membership numbers continue the church’s forward momentum from 2024 and represent an ongoing rebound from the lackluster growth percentages of slightly above or below 1% recorded between 2010 and the early 2020s, according to Martinich.
Another major plus in the researcher’s view is the nearly 78,600 proselytizing missionaries who labored in the mission field at year’s end, which is an all-time high when adjusted for the anomaly represented by the “double cohort” years in 2013 and 2014 when the age requirement for full-time missionaries was lowered from 19 to 18 for men and 21 to 19 for women. (The minimum age for female missionaries was lowered to 18 as well this past November.)
Not only were there more missionaries in the field, according to the report, but they were more efficient. By Martinich’s calculations, the average number of converts per missionary in 2025 reached nearly five, far outpacing the 3.1 recorded just before the COVID-19 pandemic and highest since 2011.
But that ratio remains well below the average number of converts baptized per missionary from the 1970s through the ′90s, he noted, when it ranged from six to eight converts baptized per missionary.
While the church has not yet to break down the convert baptism numbers for 2025 by country and region, Martinich said anecdotal evidence from the reports he is hearing suggests the growth is widespread and is not limited to high-growth countries like the Philippines or continents like Africa. He doesn’t attribute the surge in converts to any major change in missionary tactics or approaches.
“It seems to be more related to receptivity,” Martinich said. “It might be a combination of where things are in the world now. There is a lot more uncertainty … and people are more interested in religion again and are trying to identify with their spiritual side.”
In addition to proselytizing missionaries, there were 31,613 senior service missionaries in 2025, a 1.6% uptick from 2024, according to the church’s report. Young service missionaries last year totaled 4,518, up a more robust 7.8% over the previous year.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Missionaries from the Ghana Missionary Training Center gather to hear apostle Quentin L. Cook at a devotional in February.
Concerns remain
Still, there is a dark cloud to the 2025 statistics’ silver linings. The number of children of record — infants added to the faith’s membership totals — was a dismal 91,835. This figure was only 218 higher than the 91,617 recorded in 2024, and significantly below the 124,000 reported in 1982.
To show how far underwater recent numbers are, Martinich noted the church in the early 1980s — despite having only about 5 million members — routinely added between 110,000 and 120,000 children of record to the rolls each year.
Martinich chalks up the ongoing slide in the numbers of children of record to several factors, including members opting for smaller families, higher divorce rates or members delaying or choosing not to marry.
“If the birthrate were constant,” he said, “we would be expecting 300,000 to 350,000 [children of record] per year.”
Martinich said the stagnant numbers with respect to children of record indicate the church is having difficulty with establishing a culture of people getting married, having children and staying active in the faith. He said “it’s not happening like it should on the global scale.”
Other notable stats for 2025:
• 3,695 stakes (clusters of congregations similar to dioceses).
• 32,046 congregations, up 370 from 2024.
Martinich said the jump in stakes was the largest net increase in a decade.
“The church reported a net increase of 87 stakes during 2025, as there were 94 new stakes organized and seven stakes discontinued,” he wrote at ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com. “This means that there were roughly 13 new stakes organized for every stake discontinued.”