I get where he's coming from. He's undoubtedly talking about how the church reports total membership (as opposed to active membership, or even "people who claim LDS as their religion). If you look at the numbers I posted here,
https://www.physics.byu.edu/faculty/colton/personal/lds/membership statistics.html, you'd infer from the total membership numbers the church reports that the church's growth rate has been 2.2 - 2.4% over the past decade. In actuality, the growth in number of
active members has very likely been much less than that.
It is more often a number, 15 million is the latest, and not a % but that is readily available. If you want to debate that number this thread is the place. Some good info on all sides so far.
Total membership is a pretty straight-forward and universally understood statistic. It also has certain specific criteria (i.e. one is baptized and confirmed a member of the church after passing through some type of standardized interview process). Obviously the numbers can be dissected and investigated from numerous -- perhaps unlimited -- angles, none of which have as easily defined criteria and accessibility of data.
The claim was made that the growth isn't the same as what the membership is being led to believe. My inquiry was what exactly the membership is being led to believe. If you look at this thread it started with a simple blurb from President Monson about membership being 15 million and from there exploded. So what are people being led to believe, exactly? I think what's happening is we're seeing the claim amongst some everyday members about inflated membership growth (in an urban legend kind of way) and we're conflating it with church leaders stating comments like "15 million" or "the church is growing" and assume that the church must be perpetuating some kind of church growth myth. So do we have things coming from the top or do we have statements about growth coming from the top in light of what's occasionally said by regular members?
With regard to the 15 million statistic, it's rather silly the offense taken from this claim. I don't think it would be much too different than someone being upset about Bolerjack coming over the airwaves and stating that the game was a sell-out. You could make numerous qualifications to this statement that could include:
-Just because the game's a sellout doesn't mean the seats are filled
-There are a lot of people who on paper bought tickets but in reality were never in the arena
-At least a decent percentage of the people at the game were rooting for the visiting team
-Despite the two teams, a lot of them are probably Lakers fans, anyway
-At least a few hundred seats went to members of the media who cover the game as part of their job
-Another few dozen were scouts from other teams
-A lot of people at the game probably got free tickets from a LHM dealership purchase and have no interest in basketball
-Lots of people are bringing dates who have no interest in the Jazz
You could infer all these things, and perhaps Bolerjack could take a few minutes to qualify his statements so that nobody feels misled about coming to perhaps an erroneous conclusion that there was a sellout, but in the end...
15 million is a blurb. The church could use other metrics, such as self-identification, but the church isn't conducting the census in every country. It does, however, hold rolls of all those who have been baptized and confirmed into the church. Total membership, regardless of the organization, is pretty well understood. I also think people understand that it's understood and very few people, if any, would take that to mean that the total membership of the church is active.
As an aside, doesn't the church receive criticism for not allowing diversity of thought and belief? Wouldn't total membership be the most inclusive statistic?
Anyway, neither here nor there. As mentioned, 15 million is a blurb. There's more to those numbers, obviously. But everyone, follower and critic alike, understood that.
). Yesp I admit that the Church is still growing, I don't believe I've ever said anything to the contrary. My larger point is that the Church's claims about its actual growth rate are overstated--it is not growing nearly as fast as members are led to believe. Certainly not at the rate that would fulfill any prophecy about a stone cut without hand filling the earth, unless we agree than .002 of the world's population constitutes 'filling the earth.' Of course, since the Church is not transparent about its membership attrition rate, we are left to do a lot of guess work and inferences based on other data. 
