I was born in and lived in Independence, MO and Liberty, MO through high school, places that should be familiar to this group. My family has never been members of LDS or any of it's offshoots.

I am intrigued by local history in general so among many other places across many years, I've been to the Independence temple site, the historic Liberty jail, Far West, the Crooked River battle site, Adam-ondi-Ahman and several others. My HS graduation was in the (then named) RLDS Auditorium.

This is an area full of LDS history to the point one would think the church is heavily involved in the culture of the area. It's not. From the outside, the LDS church is highly insular. The result of being so insular is almost no one in the area cares about the LDS church. Aside from visiting the temple open house as a curiosity, the only church topic I've ever heard discussed in any depth was leaving the Boy Scouts.

When you hear about slowing growth, it's because the church has lost it's way on gaining outside interest in it. It's absolutely turning inward as a community.

For example, there's a notable community festival drawing tens of thousands held yearly one block from the Liberty Jail and across 20 years I can't picture the church ever having a presence at it to do any sort of missionary work. Think about the absurdity of not doing heavy missionary work somewhere that Joseph Smith actually was. The Liberty Jail story is probably the most interesting church history story of all of them. This should be the easiest place ever to preach the faith and it's just not being done.

From my viewpoint the LDS church will start to shrink like most churches in the US, it's only a matter of time. Look at any social program, when your friends stop going you have less interest in going. Churches are no different. The social aspect, is why it grew so fast to begin with. People look for a community as much as a faith.