The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently broke its record for the number of full-time missionaries, prompting the question of whether the historic 88,500 volunteers represent a much-celebrated anomaly or a sign of things to come.

That number, inclusive of proselytizing and service missionaries young and old, is a smidge higher than the previous high of 88,000 in 2014. And, as the global faith’s announcement pointed out, it is helped by the first cohort of 18-year-old women beginning their service after the church shaved a year off the minimum age requirement.

The church also brought 55 new missions on line this summer, a little more than a 10% increase, suggesting confidence to some degree of sustained increases. Church President Dallin H. Oaks heralded the achievement by declaring that “missionary work is soaring to new heights.”

Is that growth a blip or the start of a real trend?

The Utah-based faith of 17.8 million members is selective about the data it shares on missionaries. For instance, when asked by The Salt Lake Tribune for the number of missionaries originating from each continent, headquarters demurred. The same was true for the percentage of young adult Latter-day Saints who serve missions.

Still, there is some data out there on the matter. The church did previously give out more figures on the topic, and the annually updated totals of new children of record (infants added to the faith’s membership rolls), missionary counts and total members give us some information with which to work. The Tribune also sought input from independent researchers who track church growth and demographics on the trajectory of the faith’s one-of-a-kind missionary force.

Here’s what we know about the church’s proselytizing troops, and what may be coming next.

A growing number of missionaries

The church’s new high-water mark for missionaries is based on summing up three disparate kinds of missionaries: full-time young teaching missionaries, full-time young service missionaries, and full-time senior missionaries.

That tally hasn’t always been reported that way in the church’s annual reports, making it a bit difficult to compare apples to apples. From 1977 to 2009, the church reported only the number of full-time missionaries. From 2010 forward, the church started separately reporting the number of teaching missionaries and service missionaries. More recently, service missionaries have been split into young and senior categories, and the church has added full-time service missionaries into the headline numbers in news releases.

Perhaps our best shot at consistency is showing the number of reported full-time teaching missionaries on a graph since 1977:

As you’d expect, the number of missionaries has risen over time as more Latter-day Saints joined the faith.

But the biggest shocks to the trends have been as new missionary policies have been unveiled. Between 1982 and 1985, the mission length was shortened for young men from 24 months to 18 months, which had a cutting impact on total missionary counts. The “raising the bar” missionary standards initiative introduced in 2002 increased expectations for missiongoers, reducing totals.

Restrictions and unease during the COVID-19 pandemic certainly created a drop in full-time missionaries from 2020 to ’22, but a plea from then-President Russell M. Nelson for more missionaries spurred a jump.

Policy changes in the minimum ages for missionaries have played huge roles. In 2012, when the minimum age was lowered to 18 for men and 19 for women, the church saw a boom in missionaries. A similar surge occurred when the church moved the mission-eligible age for women to 18 in late 2025.

“We see the record being broken because the 19-year-old female missionaries (who would have gone anyway) and the new 18-year-old female missionaries who just graduated high school are entering the field together right now,” explained data scientist Alex Bass, who studies church statistics at Mormon Metrics.

What will declining birthrates mean?

The increase in missionaries has taken place during a period of significant demographic change, however. Overall, birthrates are decreasing: 18 years ago, there were 14 births per 1,000 people in the United States. From there, the graph resembles the side of Mount Timpanogos — a hard, downward turn. It now stands at 11 per 1,000.

Birthrates also are falling in Latin America, another region with high Latter-day Saint membership. Globally, a study recently published in The Lancet estimated that the average woman will have 1.59 children in her lifetime by 2100, a number well lower than replacement rates.

That trend rears its head in church data, too. Bass compared the number of Latter-day Saint births (as measured by the church’s children of record statistic) per 1,000 members, and found that rates are currently roughly a fifth of what they were in 1980.

Despite the faith’s membership growth during the past 50 years, the number of children of record has stayed relatively flat.

The high point in the graph came in 2008 — and there is some thinking that the new missionary record has been driven by the fact we’re 18 years after that jump today.

“We did see a jump in the annual increase of children of record in 2008, but this would not account for the [missionary] increase we have seen in the last one to two years because these children would not have been old enough to serve missions until this year,” said independent researcher Matt Martinich, who tracks church stats at cumorah.com and ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com.

Across the dataset, there is only a small correlation between the children of record in a given year and the number of missionaries 18 years later. Other factors simply play a bigger role.

What will the future bring?

So will this missionary record stand for a long time, or will the number of Latter-day Saint missionaries continue to swell?

The researchers The Tribune spoke to highlighted just how hard this question is to answer, given the lack of contextual data.

For example, one important statistic in predicting the number of future missionaries would be the percentage of Latter-day Saint youth who end up going on missions. In the mid-20th century, that was a more widely understood figure, thanks to a Priesthood Executive Committee survey that asked members about their religious activity.

“Researchers found that, in the early 1940s, approximately 5% of young men served missions and that this statistic increased to 20% in the late 1940s and 30% in the early 1960s,” Martinich reported at cumorah.org. “Between the early 1960s and early 1980s, the percentage of young men serving missions varied from 25% to 35% and was 32% in 1981.”

Recently, though, we know less about that figure. Officials at the church didn’t reveal a percentage when The Tribune asked. A 2011 Pew survey indicated 27% of all adult Latter-day Saints had served a mission. The 2016 Next Mormons survey showed 28% of Latter-day Saint respondents who self-identified as baby boomers or in the Silent Generation completed a mission, while 55% of millennials in their sample said they had served one.

The decline in birthrates may also be counterbalanced by an increase in converts. For example, the faith added 385,490 converts in 2025, the most ever.

“Outside of the United States, it is quite common for most missions to have converts comprise a significant minority of the missionaries in the mission,” Martinich said. “As far as converts comprising a majority of missionaries in some missions, this is true in some missions in Africa as well as in Asia and Latin America.”

Still, count Bass among those who feel that the birthrate decrease will be the overriding factor in years to come and that the trend of increasing numbers of missionaries may end soon.

“It’s pretty safe to assume that, on average, the birthrate has declined and that in the next several years, we should expect to see flat or decreasing missionary numbers mirroring the continually decreasing birthrates,” Bass said. “But, of course, we can never perfectly predict the future.”

That’s always true — but especially so, given that church policies seem to drive missionary count as much as, or more than, demographic factors.

And time will tell if those policies change again.