Current Composition and Demographics of Area Seventies Quorums (Third-Eighth)

Hello again, everyone! Although it took around 10 hours for me to complete the process, I finished making all of the necessary updates to my personal list of current area seventies. As of August 1 of last year, each of the six Area Seventies Quorums (Third-Eighth) were comprised of those living in the following areas of the Church:

Third Quorum: Africa Southeast, Africa West, Europe, Europe East, and Middle East/Africa North
Fourth Quorum: Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and South America Northwest
Fifth Quorum: Idaho, North America Northwest, North America West, and Utah (which either had a single area or was divided between the Utah North, Utah Salt Lake City and Utah South Areas)
Sixth Quorum: North America Central, Noth America Northeast, North America Southeast, and North America Southwest
Seventh Quorum: Brazil and South America South
Eighth Quorum: Asia, Asia North, Pacific, and Philippines

With the changes that took place last April (7 current area seventies released, and 55 others sustained), the Church now has a grand total of 306 men who currently serve in areas of the Church throughout the world. This may be the first instance since area seventies were first called in the late 1990s where the total number of those serving as such has exceeded 300.

I have kept a running total of of the currently-serving area seventies for a while now. I do so first by adding the individual totals for each area within a quorum to get a subtotal, then have kept a running grand total. Based on the current composition of each Quorum, I arrived at the following totals:

Quorum	Totals within each Area	Quorum Total	Running Total
Third	15+15+16+5+1	52	52
Fourth	6+15+22+21	64	116
Fifth	10+5+11+29	55	171
Sixth	7+13+7+18	45	216
Seventh	23+21	44	260
Eighth	9+12+12+13	46	306

Note that while the last 3 Quorums still have less than 50 members each, the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Quorums are 18, 6, and 15 members away respectively from the doctrinally-defined maximum total of 70. While any releases which may be presented in October will lower these numbers, based on the high number of members in the first three quorums vs. the last three, I could see the Church moving to perhaps redistribute the geographical makeup of these areas.

It is also worth noting that, if, as conjectured in my previous post, the number of North American areas goes down to 6, depending on how those 6 areas are redistributed between the Fifth and Sixth Quorums, the two could potentially be evened out somehow. And if the composition of the other 4 Quorums was also adjusted (whether or not a Ninth Quorum is established), that could even out the distribution of those numbers as well.

Either way, it will be interesting to see what happens in that respect. I am assuming that any change to the number of areas in the Church and the way the membership of these six Area Seventies Quorums is distributed will be announced with the changes in area leadership, which, as I have previously noted, should be occurring within the next week or two, if not sooner than that. Whenever it does occur, you can count on my covering those developments here.

In the meantime, that does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated, on any post at any time, as long as such comments are made in accordance with the established guidelines. Thank you for the privilege of your time. If you enjoyed what you read here and would like to stay informed of newly-added content, please feel free to subscribe. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.