Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
A BRIEF REPORT CONCERNING THE LORD’S MOVE IN EUROPE, DECEMBER, 2014
Increase in Europe
In the past fifteen years, the Lord has gained a significant increase throughout Europe:
In 2000, there were 32 lampstands in 12 countries. There were approximately 750 saints in
the Lord’s recovery throughout Europe. Now in 2014, there are 85 lampstands in 23 countries. There are now approximately 3,000 saints in the Lord’s recovery throughout Europe.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cassidy
Igzy>Well, you have a point. But that doesn't help LSM's problem of declining interest in Lee at all, does it?
What decline? Post 28 from Unregistered shows a 4X increase over a 14 year period in membership in Europe. Even if those direct stats are ignored (there is no reason to ignore it but some people will anyway) it does not change my challenge to Tome's use of an internet search engine to draw his conclusion about interest/disinterest or membership in the local churches..... Google Trend is a single data point.
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Those numbers do represent an increase in LC membership, however, some questions come to mind (none of which I have a good answer for):
1) What about the massive disassociation of LC's in Europe from LSM in the late 80's? How many members were there in Europe before that happened, how many after?
2) How do these numbers compare to LC membership in America during that same time period?
The reason I think those questions are important is firstly because 750 is a rather small number. 3000 is still a small number. There are mega churches that have membership numbers that will blow those numbers out of the water. And those numbers are for all of Europe. If the pre-split membership was anything close to the current 3000, then no, that's not an increase, it's just making up for all they lost.
Secondly, if a single congregation were to increase membership from 750 to 3000 over 15 years, that would be impressive. When considering that increase happened all over Europe (current population of 742 million), it's hardly worth mentioning. Yes, those numbers represent an increase, but in the larger scheme of things it's not significant to anyone besides LSM.
Lastly, if you were to compare those numbers against membership change in the U.S., or any other country for that matter, I think you would find a big variance in the trends. What is happening in Europe is not necessarily indicative of what's happening in the U.S.