Scientology's Membership

Is Scientology's claimed membership of 8 million another false statistic? According to a 1987 internal Scientology memo, there were then 25,000 active members. FACTNet estimates that the number of ex-members has grown to 1-2 million while there are at most 50,000 active members.

Scientology appears to have an 80-95% turnover rate of new members every 3-5 years. That's why they are so focused on recruiting. Go into any Scientology organization and estimate the percentage of public people who have been there since Scientology began. How many have been there for 25 years? Or 15 years? Or 10 years? When you lose public people at this rate, you have to make a huge amount of money on each one before they leave. Most people would consider the organization's near complete inability to retain lifelong members a signal of its total failure as a meaningful religious movement. Staff, Sea Org ,and OSA have a higher retention rate but, even with all the pressure designed to lock them in, this rate is very poor when looked at over the long haul.