There's all sorts of reasons why conversion rates may have dropped:
1. Market saturation. Maybe that's not quite the right term. What I mean is that areas that have had missionaries working in them for a long time have already been worked over and so the expected returns will diminish over time.
2. Quotas put in place for higher producing areas. In the late 1980s, Ghana was capped at 300 baptisms per month, with around 60 missionaries. They could have easily surpassed that number by a substantial margin if there were no quotas and if their mission had the normal amount of 150 to 200 missionaries in it. The quotas were designed to help the existing membership to get leadership training without being too overwhelmed with integrating floods of new members.
3. Changes in requirements for baptism. This varies from mission to mission, but in general it's harder to get baptized now than a few decades ago. This is personal observation and I don't necessarily have anything to back that up.
4. Increased proselyting competition. (?) Are there more churches actively recruiting converts now than in the past?
5. Increased secularization of society. (?) Europe is becoming a spiritual wilderness where religious identity is more of a family heritage than actually representing a set of beliefs.
Anyway, just some thoughts off the top of my head.
|