Church membership reaches 15 million, but active members...drop? grow?

In the last General Conference we were told that membership had reached 15 million.  This figure doesn’t really mean much – people who stop attending the church don’t necessarily ask for their names to be removed from the system – hence they are members, just not active.  What would be really interesting to hear is what the total active membership is.  

Ward clerks collect these figures weekly, they are the guys who walk up and down the aisles during sacrament meeting, counting and scribbling figures in a note book. The numbers are then fed into quarterly reports, and ultimately end up on a desk in SLC. 

Total active membership is known to the Brethren, so there is nothing stopping them from disseminating the figures.  Let us not forget the words of Church historian Elder Marlin K. Jensen who said the Church is facing the greatest period of apostasy since Kirtland.  What that really means is probably up for debate. But one can reasonably assume, therefore, that the membership figure noted above does not fairly represent the number of active members.  Moreover, the Church may actually be shrinking in terms of active participation. We just don’t know, because we are kept in the dark.  Sure, there are spiritual reasons for being on the 'record' as a member of the Church, but what of those who have walked away for one or another reason? Ought we be ignoring them? All are important to the Lord - what ever we do to the 'least' we do to the Lord.  So I take the announced figures with a grain of salt – and they (the Brethren) well know they are largely meaningless.