How many are they retaining?
Reuters: ...census data from some foreign countries...show that the retention rate for their [Mormon] converts is as low as 25 percent. (2012 Source #3 below)
That add up to about 5% growth a year. There may be people leaving the Mormons but there are a lot more joining.
Sorry...that wasn't the spin put on Mormon stats by the 16th-ranked Lds general authority earlier this year...[he was so frank, the Mormon hierarchy forced him into early retirement]
Here's three 2012 sources [your 5% is already outdated]:
2012 Source #1: Number of faithful Mormons rapidly declining
2012 Source #2: Mormons opening up in an Internet world [& Losing members accordingly]
2012 Source #3: Special report -Mormonism besieged by the modern age [Lds church is hemorrhaging in member losses]
Quotes from Mormon General Authority Marlin K. Jensen, who was #16-ranked General Authority when he said them earlier this year – but was booted into retirement because of these disclosures:
1. Did the leaders...know that members are "leaving in droves?" a woman asked. "We are aware," said Jensen, according to a tape recording of his unscripted remarks. "And I'm speaking of the 15 men that are above me in the hierarchy of the church."... (2012 Source #3 above)
2. “Attrition has ACCELERATED in the last five years” (2012 Source #1 above) He told Reuters there have been MORE attrition over the last five or ten years..."I think we are at a time of challenge," he told Reuters... (2012 Source #2 above)
3. How serious is this "attrition?" Not since...the 1837 failure of a church bank in Kirtland, Ohio, have so many left the church, Jensen said. "Maybe since Kirtland, we've never had a period of - I'll call it apostasy, like we're having NOW," he told the group in Logan. (2012 Source #3 above)
4. John Dehlin...executive director of the Open Stories Foundation. The foundation conducted a survey that Dehlin said suggests disaffections have trended upward the last three to six years...like Peterson and Bushman, Dehlin said the number of people contacting him about having doubts has "grown exponentially." (2012 Source #2 above)
Face it, JA: %-wise, More Mormons have apostasized in the last 3-6/5-10 years than over the previous 175 years!
When I was a little boy about 3 or 4 years old my father asked me if I did something. I told him no, I lied, I did it and he knew I did it. Dads always seem to know that kind of stuff when you are little. Anyway, my father told me that telling a lie was a really stupid thing. He said that no matter how many times I told the truth when someone caught me lying they would always think of me as a liar.
Based upon the above -- your indirect labeling of Reaganaut as a "liar" -- be a man and apologize. Based upon the sources, you're not only wrong, but now you're falsely slandering and castigating others in public...which is a sin. Repent!
Great links, Colo. You know as well as I do that there is a great stake in the LDS repeating the same misinformation and getting their members to believe and repeat it. If Mormons start to research and think for themselves, they leave.