Do I Still Count as a Member?

In my quest to verify the information from my previous post about whether or not my records still count toward that total membership statistic, as well as whether or not people are counted in that total until they're 110 years old, I searched long and hard on the internet.  Here is what I was able to find.

The Church started announcing its growth statistics in General Conference in 1971 (with data from 1970), and in looking at the data some people became suspicious of the membership total when there was an unexplained spike in the numbers in 1990.  This article has quite a few charts showing the growth rates: http://roundelmike.com/2013/05/lds-church-growth-statistics-anomalies-since-1970/

People have looked at those stats and gone, "Whoa, what's with that spike?!  They must have changed the way they do their counting."  Some theorize that they started including excommunicated members and those who had their records removed, and that they started including everyone who was ever a member between 8 years old and 110 years old.  Unfortunately, further searching on the internet to verify those theories yielded results from ex-Mormon sites but none of them give any official references by the Church on this, the people on these sites just mention it like it's common knowledge and a fact.  But I need to know the facts, I'm not content to just accept and spread rumors.  So I kept looking, and I found some more useful information.

I found a rule on lds.org for temple work called the "110 Year Rule" which says,

"Before you perform ordinances for a deceased person born within the last 110 years, obtain permission from the closest living relative. Relatives may not want the ordinances performed or may want to perform the ordinances themselves. The closest living relatives are, in this order: a spouse, then children, then parents, then siblings."

(Update: the link where I found this quote no longer brings up the article, so I've removed the link.  However, I found this explanation in the Introduction to Family History student manual, 7.4.3: "In all other cases of missing persons, the temple ordinances may not be performed until after 110 years have passed from the time of a person’s birth (an assumption that if the person was missing but alive, he or she would have died within 110 years)."  And here is the link for that: https://www.lds.org/manual/introduction-to-family-history-student-manual/chapter-7?lang=eng )

I took a brief detour to find out why 110 is a mile-marker, and I found this explanation from someone who works at FamilySearch,

"These policies help to ensure that living people are not accidentally submitted and also that the closest living relatives have the first opportunity to perform proxy work.  They also help to ensure that the feelings of others are considered and relationships are not damaged by the work we do."  (reference: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/LDS-WARD-CONSULTANT/2009-06/1245112145 ).

That's far different from what I heard, that members are kept on record until they would be 110 years old and thus (possibly) added to the total membership number each year, and that excommunicated members and those who had their records removed count as well.  I kept looking.

There is something called "address unknown" files, and here is an article talking all about it: http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=590&cat_id=35
I will summarize here with quotes from the article's first paragraph:

"The address unknown file consists of the membership records of individuals whose whereabouts and activity status are unknown to church leaders... The Church retains unaccounted members on the address unknown file until age 110 unless proof of death can be obtained.  As a result the address unknown file likely contains thousands of members who have died considering life expectancy in most countries with significant LDS populations is less than 80 years."

These things together help me understand the 110 number, and it sounds like that only applies to members whose whereabouts and activity status are unknown.  Now, the article above also says that a lot of effort is going into finding out where these people are and whether or not they're alive, and I can appreciate their desire for accuracy.  But I still don't know for sure if excommunicated members or those who had their records removed are still counted in the total figure.  I still haven't found anything official to explain that membership growth spike in 1990, and I'll probably never know because the Church's internal audit department isn't required to make their methods public—the guy you hear giving the statistics in General Conference is an external auditor, and they know only a small portion of the information that the internal auditors do (Mc used to be an external auditor and he explained to me how it works).

Mc has asked me a few times why the Church would do that, why they would inflate their numbers.  They don't get any tax benefits from larger numbers, they're not getting any monetary benefit from it.  My response remains what I stated in my last post: they want their numbers to look large to convince the members that this is The True Church.  The Church is all about controlling its members (I'll cover this is an upcoming post), and this is a way to justify how they're doing things, because if the Church is fulfilling prophesy and if people continue to join the Church despite all the negative things said about it, then all those people who have spoken against the Church are wrong because "we're still here and growing!"

Here is a General Conference talk from President Gordon B. Hinckley from 2007, illustrating exactly what I'm talking about:  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/the-stone-cut-out-of-the-mountain?lang=eng

That says it all.  That is what the Church wants their members to believe.  And to do that, it will count everyone in their Address Unknown file until the people would be 110 years old.  It's leaders will spout off statistics of how many stakes are around the world to show that Mormonism is a global religion that anyone can follow regardless of their country and their culture, and thus validating the extensive missionary program (one of their favorite sayings in recent years is, "There are more members outside the United States than inside the United States.").  And the leaders will use those growth statistics as "proof" that the people who say the Church is a fraud are wrong (because how could so many millions of people be so gullible into joining a church that isn't true?).

I'm going to give the Church the benefit of the doubt and say that because I formally left the Church then I am not counted in that total membership number; if I had just stopped attending, then I would still count.  I have no solid proof either way and I probably never will because those answers reside within the internal audit department, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt.  And if I find out for sure, I will write about it and give the sources.