Which US States Grew the Most (and Least) in Membership in 2024?

Congregation and membership data from churchofjesuschrist.org

Photo by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash

Introduction

Last week: We looked at how membership and congregations in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints increased and decreased across the countries of the world.

Church Growth In 2024 Plotted: Which Countries Grew? Which Declined?

This week: In a similar fashion to last week, we analyze how individual US states changed from 2023 to 2024 in membership.and congregations.

TLDR: Read my conclusion 👇👇

Next week: What factors are correlated with a country growing in LDS membership in 2024? How are a country’s birthrate, regime, religiosity, and other factors related to LDS growth?

Charts

Last week, we saw the US ranked #6 on the bottom 10 countries for growth losing a net of 15 congregations and showing only a 0.9% year over year growth rate.

So what states are pulling it up and down?

Looking at the overall change in membership, the chart is mostly green and yellow - just like our country map! Membership is growing in every state except Wyoming (-0.3%). In California(+0.01%) and New Mexico(+0.03%), they about broke even.

Missouri(+3.4%), Kentucky(+3.5%), New York(+3.5%), and South Dakota(+3.3%) saw the most membership growth in 2024.

You can’t help but notice that one side of the US is more green than the other. We are seeing healthier membership increases on the east side of the US compared to the west side.

The New York number definitely surprised me. But, it isn’t the first time its surprised me recently with NY being fairly close to a red state in the latest presidential election 😂. I’d love if anyone had any insight into why NY might be growing at one of the fastest rates while other states that I might compare it to do not show the same patterns…

Now let’s look at congregation changes.

We see a similar trend in congregations: the west has decreased in congregations in most states (with the notable exception of Idaho) while the east has stayed mostly the same or increased.

Idaho gained 46 congregations, but only increased 1% in membership. Personally, I believe the increase in congregations/membership in Idaho is (at least partially) due to interstate immigration as Idaho has been a popular state to move to in recent years.

I won’t comment much on this chart, but just wanted to show some smaller differences that were harder to detect in the previous chart. For example, Kentucky(-2), Illinois(+2), and Indiana(no change) all looked the around the same color in the previous chart, but in this chart we can see categorical increases or decreases.

There are plenty of red states in the east that have lost congregations, but most are only losing a few if any. The congregation declines are higher and the growth rates are slower in the west (as seen in the two previous charts).

Also, the northern midwest (?) Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas all increased their number of congregations, so perhaps these states aren’t as affected as the other more western states.

Now let’s look at the top 10 growth state rankings…

Missouri, Florida, Arkansas, and New York are the top 4 spots. All show increases in congregations and among the strongest Year over Year membership increases.

The District of Columbia had the highest Year over Year change at 3.8%, but only represented an increase of ~100 members which is not as practically significant.

Now looking at the 10 worst performing states…

The only state to show both negative percent change and loss in membership was Wyoming.

A clear pattern emerges in the worst performing states, like I mentioned above, they are all in the west and previous latter-day saint strongholds!

It is important to keep in mind Latter-day Saint population sizes when analyzing these charts. For example, Utah lost 31 congregations and only grew 0.7% in 2024, but this 0.7% growth of 2 million+ people adds 14,524 members which is 24% of the total growth of Latter-day Saints in the US.

The most interesting thing to me about the table above is that while Utah and Idaho still contribute about 1/3 of the total growth in the US, most all the other states on the list are on the east coast or the south. More than ever US growth is driven outside the Latter-day Saint corridor despite the majority of members living there…

Look at the two charts below…

This first chart shows how members are currently distributed across states…

• 71% live in the Western US

• 18% live in the South

• 7% in the Midwest

• 4% in the Northeast

Now let’s look at where the growth came from…

• The West accounts for 39% of membership growth

• South: 36%

• Midwest: 15%

• Northeast: 10%

So, more than 60% of the church’s growth in the US came from outside the West despite only 29% of latter-day saints living outside the West!

OR (in other words)

71% of Latter-day Saints live in the West; however the West only accounted for 39% of membership growth.

If you think about it, we should see the most growth where there are the most members for two reasons:

1. Members have kids (which is growth!)

2. Members help with missionary work

So assuming across the US that each member has the same number of kids and helps convert the same amount of unique people, 71% of the growth should be where 71% of the members are. That’s why these numbers are significant. 29% of the members are generating over 60% of the growth.

It is more nuanced than this, of course. The total number of missionaries will likely be higher outside the west, and missionaries help generate growth. Also, if you didn’t know birth rates have decreased a lot in the west in recent years which also contributes to this trend. And, this data is just a one year snapshot. I don’t have access to previous years (if you know someone willing to share this data, please let me know!), so maybe this year was weird and the other years look differently.

So what does this mean for the future of the church?

Well, I’m not sure. Nothing will likely happen soon, but if the growth rates continue as we see this year for next 50 or 100 years or more, perhaps the future and mass of the Church in the US will be outside the so called Jell-O belt (Idaho, Utah, Arizona) and the West.

Perhaps it's possible that the church relocates its headquarters east to say, Missouri, this year’s #1 growth state. If I remember correctly, there are some scriptures about Missouri and the future of the church 👀.

Conclusion

So my takeaways for this analysis?

1. With the exception of Wyoming which decreased 0.3%, every state showed an increase in membership from a fraction of a percent to 4% increase.

2. There wasn’t a strong pattern among high performing states which were found in the South, Midwest, and Northeast. But, the lowest performing states were mostly in the West.

3. 71% of Latter-day Saints live in the West; however the West only accounted for 39% of membership growth. To me this begs the question… Is the future of the church in the US outside the Jell-O belt? What do you think?

Code available here. Data repository available here which was scraped on Monday April 28th 2025 from here.