How Many Churches of Scientology in the World?

[Reyne Mayer]

I've heard it can be better in other countries but in the US the mission network is effectively dead, they don't produce anything.

i think the US has 65-70 orgs, but only about 30 missions even still listed, only around 10 of which really have the sort of public-facing presence such as a storefront with regular business hours, that was the standard.

what countries are doing better? i gather that in some places where they have actually expanded in recent decades like Taiwan and Hungary there were more missions than orgs, following the initial pattern of expansion in the US around half a century ago -- but i have not heard enough out of them lately, that i'd be sure they are actually doing much better than in the US, and even if missions are i think it may be more because there has never been enough demand there to drive the creation of orgs (not to mention the accidents of history of missions that never should have been made into orgs but were, like Long Island, Battle Creek, and Plymouth in the UK).

 

[onceuponatime]

i think the US has 65-70 orgs, but only about 30 missions even still listed, only around 10 of which really have the sort of public-facing presence such as a storefront with regular business hours, that was the standard.

what countries are doing better? i gather that in some places where they have actually expanded in recent decades like Taiwan and Hungary there were more missions than orgs, following the initial pattern of expansion in the US around half a century ago -- but i have not heard enough out of them lately, that i'd be sure they are actually doing much better than in the US, and even if missions are i think it may be more because there has never been enough demand there to drive the creation of orgs (not to mention the accidents of history of missions that never should have been made into orgs but were, like Long Island, Battle Creek, and Plymouth in the UK).

Taiwan, Hungary, Italy are the three that come to my mind. Maybe somewhere in South America. Of those the only one that I'm sure of is Taiwan as far as actually expanding. For missions 20 staff is really big. I'd be surprised if there were more than 10-20 missions worldwide that had 20+ staff.

We don't hear much about missions because there isn't anything to hear.

I would've put Russia on the list but from some rumors I've heard Scientology in Russia isn't really a thing anymore. I knew they'd been going through some legal battles but I usually assume Scientology will weasel its way out of it. From what I've been hearing the Russian orgs are closed and if they shut those down I'd think they shut everything down in Russia. Maybe there was some info about Scientology in Russia that I missed but I'm only learning of it now.

 

[Supreme Rular]

Latest count I've heard is 135 Class V orgs with about half located in the US. This is after getting rid of the CC network and no longer double counting day and foundation. If you split them into D & F you'd double the number but it's just fluff. Every org is supposed to have some supporting missions around it but in the US this isn't the case. Many orgs don't have any missions around them at all and for those that do the missions don't do anything significant. I've heard it can be better in other countries but in the US the mission network is effectively dead, they don't produce anything. I think there are two missions in the US that do anything of significance, Belleair and South Coast. The SO delivery orgs are CC Int, AOLA, ASHO, AOSHEU, St. Hill, AOSH ANZO, AOSH Africa, FSO and FSSO. If Class V orgs already barely produce anything then missions produce an order of magnitude less. Not quite the numbers they claim, but I'm sure this FEBC evolution will solve everything.

A never-in has made an interactive map with every scientology building, including all their front groups and even some scn owned businesses. It adds up to one thousand and something..very far from the 11,000 orgs and missions they claim to have!

 

[The_Fixer]

thanks for that insight. there are reports from the shrinking 'dog org' Plymouth in the UK that sound sort of similar, that staff recognize scn may be failing now but figure that's how they'll run out this lifetime.

some of the orgs still have quite a few staff and do a fair bit of business as discussed on some of the other threads here, though a lot seem to be pretty shrunken and down to a hard core of dead-enders.

is there any info on just how many staff there really are in St. Louis now? i think the last reports were of something like 8-12 cars in the parking lot at times, one maybe semi-abandoned. it's still something of a mystery whether places like this are down to a couple, or 6 or even 12 covering all shifts, and just how the low the ratio to active members is -- even some larger orgs seem like they could be around 1 staff to every 2 really active members.

eta: also, multiple checks on the Plymouth org show them no longer keeping full hours,

They could go back to he old traditional British recruitment model, I'm sure it was practised in Plymouth back in the day. .. Press ganging.

 

[onceuponatime]

A never-in has made an interactive map with every scientology building, including all their front groups and even some scn owned businesses. It adds up to one thousand and something..very far from the 11,000 orgs and missions they claim to have!

I think 1000 is even a stretch... Must be counting tons of Scientologist owned businesses, WISE groups, etc. If you were to just count buildings where Scientology delivers services in any meaningful capacity you'd probably be around 200 at most. If you add in all of the SO support/admin buildings you can add a few hundred more. To get to 1000 you have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel and I'd be willing to bet many of those only exist on paper.