I want to believe in miracles.

If you catch me in a thoughtful moment, I’ll probably tell you that I still do, in a way.

Here’s the deal, though. Every time I hold up a miracle to the light and examine it, I’m disappointed. In high school, for example, I remember being interested in near-death experiences (NDEs). I was intrigued by idea of a conscious essence leaving the body, hovering above it, being drawn down a tunnel towards a light, etc. I later read about an interesting experiment. A researcher placed a number of different messages and symbols in several operating rooms and other places where individuals were likely to have these types of experiences. The messages were not visible from the floors of these rooms, but they could be easily viewed by someone floating above it. The researcher reasoned that if even one individual, as part of an NDE, could describe these messages, it would prove that something left the body at death–and that would change everything.

I suspect we all know the outcome: Although several NDEs were reported, no one saw the symbols or the messages. The most likely explanation? Individuals didn’t see them because they didn’t expect to see them, and like dreams, the mind can only manufacter experiences for which it has context and raw material.

After reading about this experiment, my interest in NDEs waned. “I’ll wait until somebody sees those symbols,” I thought to myself. That was 15 years ago.

I’ve been hearing quite a bit about another miracle lately. It’s the recent spike in the number of Mormon missionaries. Here’s a conference talk on the subject: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/its-a-miracle?lang=eng.

Now, if the miracle is that young men and young women serve missions in the numbers they do, I might be able to go along with that. If the “miracle” is the recent spike in the number of missionaries, I’m not so sure.

Here’s what I did. I assumed, as a baseline, that we have 55,000 missionaries in the field (go here or here from some historical data that backs up that assumption). I then asked a basic question: What would happen, assuming nothing else changed, if the missionary age were lowered to 18 for young men and 19 for young women? In the jpg (and spreadsheet) linked below, I assumed that 65% of young men would decide to serve at 18 (instead of 19), and that 75% of young women would elect to serve at 19 (instead of 21).

Here’s what happens. Before the policy change, to keep 55,000 missionaries in the field, 5844 men and 1375 women need to enter the mission field every quarter (or three months). When the change is made, in addition to the young men and women entering the mission field at 19 and 21 (respectively), an additional 34,375 young men and women become available to serve (all the 18-year-old young men waiting to turn 19, and all the 19- and 20-year-old women waiting to turn 21). After a year of the new policy, assuming that 65% and 75%, respectively, of these “additional” young men and women elect to enter the missionary field earlier than initially planned, the total number of missionaries rises to 78,444. At then end of the second year, the number rises to 85,250. By the end of year three, however, once the “extra” missionaries that were moved up in the queue by the policy change begin leaving the field, the number drops to 64,556. By the end of year four, the system has returned to a steady state of 55,000 missionaries. The effect of the policy change is, in effect, like a snake swallowing an elephant.

Here is a large jgp of the entire spreadsheet: http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/?attachment_id=5684

Here is a link to the actual Excel spreadsheet: http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/missionaries.xlsx

Note: The Excel file is dynamic, change the numbers in yellow and everything changes (so you can play with the asusmptions).

A few quick observations:

The basic model, which assumes that nothing changes (i.e. the same percentage of young men and young women elect to serve missions, etc.), predicts nearly 80,000 missionaries in the field one year after lowering the missionary age (and this is almost exactly what has happened). If the model holds, this number should increase to 85,250 over the next year, and than rapidly decline to around 65,000 by the end of the 3rd year (and then drop to the initial number fo 55,000 by the end of the fourth year). So far, reality has confirmed the model.

It’s clear why the church chooses to focus on metrics that create the feeling that the church is an unstoppable movement. It’s because those kinds of feelings can become self-fulfilling prophecies (i.e. if everyone thinks that “everyone” is going on a mission, then individiuals will be more likely to choose to go, and if everyone makes the same decision, then everyone really will go). The church has been very careful about managing the metrics it releases (for a while it was convert baptisms, then when those numbers stalled, we moved on to the number of temples. That was great as long as we were opening 20 or 30 temples a year (after the church moved to a smaller temple format), but since that number has dropped to 3 or 4, we’ve moved on to the number of missionaries.

As I watch the snake swallow an elephant, I think two things.

First, I want to see a miracle. I want to see the missionary numbers keep marching upward in year three (even though spreadsheets everywhere say it shouldn’t happen). I want to see them defy gravity, and instead of returning to the baseline, I want to see them continue to climb. Then I’d buy the “miracle” rhetoric. Until then, every time I hear a church leader use the word “miracle” when talking about the spike in the number of missionaries, I cringe because it seems dishonest (and manipulative).

Second, I think we better find another metric to focus on before we get there (because I think we all know what’s going to happen).