Do you remember the last mission added to the church. I am not talking about a mission like “Antartic McMurdo Station Mission.” I am talking about the major missions or purposes of the church. Growing up in the church one of the “Sunday school answers” that I remember memorizing was the missions of the church:
- to proclaim the gospel
- to perfect the Saints
- to redeem the dead
I can still recall when on my mission hearing President Kimball outline this with a bit more detailed description:
I stated that the mission of the Church is threefold:
• First, to proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people;
• Secondly, to perfect the Saints by preparing them to receive the ordinances of the gospel and by instruction and discipline to gain exaltation;
• Thirdly, to redeem the dead by performing vicarious ordinances of the gospel for those who have lived on the earth.
The origins of the 3 missions of the church apparently goes back at least to 1939 and the Apostle John A. Widtsoe where he states essentially the same 3 missions.
Then about 7 decades later around 2009 there seems to be a new mission added, that of “caring for the poor and needy.” This additional mission of the church seems to be significantly less emphasized, at least so far. I do think that the church is well known for “taking care of their own” as long as the individual is in reasonable standing with the church. I am not sure if the membership doing so well in this area allows some to mentally and emotionally check the “care for the poor and needy” box and go back to focusing on the other three areas.
Credit does need to be given for the church in giving resources such as food and items such as hygiene kits in time of need, especially in cases of natural disasters. Every bit helps. And on occasion the church will really marshal thousands of weekend warriors to go help hurricane, flood, earthquake, and other areas of need. Having participated in quite a few of these, it is great to see the effort. I also have heard many comment that after spending several weeks without a 3 hour block that they feel spiritually great! I for one don’t object to wearing the yellow shirts, but I don’t much care for seeing pictures of it on paid ads pushing, “look how great we are!” And to me it puts a bad taste in my mouth when I hear others describe it as “a great missionary opportunity.” I do like that the church encouraged service under the “justserve.org” and at least in our ward the 
rollout included an admonition that this is not a missionary activity – it is about giving pure Christ-like service. I have used this as a way to find out about service opportunities and it is great. A good choice by the church if you ask me.
But if we look at the overall continuous allocations of time, money, and people – the “caring for the poor and needy” gets the short end of the stick. Missionary work certainly tops the “people” side with many of the young men and women dedicating almost every waking hour for 18-24 hard months. Certainly lots of time and certainly lots of money are spent on the temples and temple work. I have not yet read it, but I have heard that “The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power Hardcover” by D. Michael Quinn does shed a bit of light on the amount of assistance in cash might be small in comparison to the value of food and other items of assistance the LDS church contributes, especially in natural disasters.
Most will remember the conference talk, “Refuge from the Storm” By Elder Patrick Kearon in the April 2016 conference. Around that time President Linda K. Burton talked about, “I was a Stranger” with the same theme of helping refugees.
Since then I have only seen a small number of references on this topic such as the address in the last conference by Elder John C. Pingree Jr. titled “I Have a Work for Thee.” But reading this I get more of an emphasis on giving service as part of missionary work. More of “give the service in hopes they will join the church.” I have not seen any efforts by any member to assist in the refugee crisis.
I have seen a fellow member that I have seen bend over backwards to help other people in a very Christ-like manner tell their kids when seeing a homeless person, “Don’t give them any money. They made the choices that led them to be where they are.” This is a person that had to rely on welfare for a while between jobs. This bothered me for quite a while as I know this person is so good, but they clearly looked down on the poor and homeless. I came to think that some of this was the logical corollary of the property gospel. If living right and being righteous brings on prosperity, then not living right and being unrighteous brings on the opposite of prosperity.
It seems to me that the “caring for the poor and needy” mandate is in need of care!
- In your experience is this new mission of the church is the less emphasized of the missions of the church?
- If so, why? Is just that it is new and this will change over time? Is it just that members are SO busy with everything else that they just can’t get around to doing anything more?
Wheat & Tares 
“I have not seen any efforts by any member to assist in the refugee crisis.”
A woman who was in one of my student wards at BYU several years ago created a non-profit organization to assist refugees just shortly before Elder Kearon’s talk, and her organization has done some massive things to help refugees. They furnish apartments for refugees coming into Arizona, and they are on the ground in refugee camps in places like Greece, providing basic necessities, teaching English and German classes, and things like that. Much if not most of her support comes from LDS church members. As you can imagine, her non-profit experienced a big boost due to Elder Kearon’s talk.
Elder Holland has stated that “governments today are not responding to the refugee problem urgently enough, nor on a large enough scale.” That statement was made before Trump was elected, and in the U.S., our government’s efforts to assist refugees has plummeted since then. So our government may be actively keeping refugees out, but we still have the ability to send needed supplies to immigrants in countries that are doing more to respond to the refugee problem.
Wow I totally disagree; my feeling is that emphasis on caring for the poor and needy and redeeming the dead have greatly surpassed proclaiming the gospel and perfecting the saints, which seemed to be the primary emphases when I was younger. I feel that is where the attention and energy is and I see a lot of activity in those areas.
Tim and E – I am glad to hear that there are efforts by members to help the poor and needy. I just don’t see much of it near me. I am so glad that my area isn’t the norm.
Thanks for enlightening me (plus you made my day a bit with this great news).
Great post, Happy Hubby. I think it’s easy to be snarky and point out the variety of ways the church is failing at this or that of its missions, so I don’t want to do that. Generally, although I disagree with a fair amount of what our leaders say regarding the more controversial issues, I feel that they are good people who are trying to do the best they can. And I don’t think the solution here is ONLY to throw money at the problem. I do think, though, that the church could, if it chose to, use a lot more of its resources to help the poor and needy. It raised my eyebrows when the church gave out the number of dollars it had given to relief efforts across the globe (I think the number was about 1.5 billion over the last 25 years? Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken) and I realized that that was less than five percent (closer to one percent, I think) of what the church takes in in terms of donations, never mind its for-profit entities.
I think the big problem is one of both resources and time. In terms of resources, a lot of money that the church takes in goes to supporting its already existing infrastructure: building maintenance, new construction, etc. In terms of time, individual members are very busy in their personal, professional, and church lives (in part because the church likes it that way; idle hands are the devil’s playthings, that sort of idea) and often don’t have the time to volunteer, etc. And of course, poverty is not a problem that can be solved on only the individual level. The church would need to commit much more of its time and effort to make a significant dent in things. And it’s obviously not just the church’s responsibility to end poverty. Many large institutions would have to give a concerted, long term effort in order to make serious progress.
I think the reason why this mission is less emphasized is twofold: One, the church contains a fair amount, including leadership, of contemporary American conservatives and as a group (there are, of course, many exceptions), they tend to see peoples’ problems as their own fault, especially when it comes to poverty and homelessness. They are far more likely to preach about personal responsibility than to want to lend a helping hand, especially if it means any kind of personal sacrifice. And I’m absolutely all for personal responsibility, but I’m also for realizing the many ways in which, in this country anyway, survival itself is criminalized and the deck really is stacked against the impoverished. It’s often not just a matter of “well, you need to work harder and not be lazy.”
Two, I think the church struggles to enact some of the core principles of the gospel due to its peculiar brand of spiritual myopia. It’s a sad fact that this church would be rocked to its very foundation by the practical applications of Christ’s teachings. Hypothetical: If Jesus came back tomorrow and showed up at the church office building and was ushered in and given a tour of the building and of City Creek Mall and of cattle ranches and of Deseret Digital Media, do you think he would say, “Wow, this is awesome” or do you think he’d say “Why are you wasting your time and money on this crap when nine million of my children die every year because they don’t have access to food?”
Perhaps how much emphasis is placed on helping the needy varies by ward depending on where you live…? In our area, which is a mix of money and migrant farm works (65% of the population is hispanic) we do a lot in the community. We have a wonderful community rep endlessly pointing out opportunities with other churchs. The RS does tons of collection for the local women’s shelter and children’s group home. We do an annual clean-up, maintenance, improvements to the group home center. We cook for the homeless shelter all winter (most ward organizations take at least one turn, including seminary and youth Sunday school classes (it’s a small homeless shelter making this doable). I could go on and on.
But if you aren’t living in a community of people where need is all around you, I can totally see how this might not make it to the agenda. It is time consuming. But when you do see poverty around you, it just isn’t possible to be a Christian and not do something. Some individuals are uncomfortable getting involved, but overall our ward does a great job. And I’m skipping over our biggest form of service which is caring for the elderly / mentally ill ward members who require a ton of help and watching over on a daily/weekly basis.
I think the effort towards caring for the needy varies from area to area, and I think a lot happens behind the scenes that nobody knows about. It seems like in every ward, there’s the two or three people who are just fantastic at family history, or fired up about member missionary work. Well, there’s also a cadre of people who are doing some amazing things to succor individuals. I could name about 5 people in my ward who fall in this category, and most people in the ward have no idea.
It’s true we’re generally better at taking care of our own, but “we” are more diverse than you’d think looking at the pews on Sunday. Taking care of our own includes a lot of people you don’t see at church.
In my area, our stake has regular shifts at the resource center/food bank, we partner with a coalition of churches who take rotating shifts housing the homeless in their buildings, and we’ve had periodic opportunities to help Sudanese refugees downtown. We don’t run any programs and we can’t house the homeless in our building (it would require extensive remodeling to include a commercial kitchen to get the necessary permits), but we provide very reliable and hard working volunteers.
I do agree that caring for the poor and needy needs to be emphasized more, but it is also a lot harder to do than, say, family history work, much of which can be done at your convenience in your own home these days.
BrotherSky – your last comment reminds me of the objection of Judas to the woman who anointed Jesus. I think His reaction would be (and likely is currently), “Good work maintaining you resources, and while you already know what you should be doing to prepare, you could cut a little closer to the bone”.
The report of relief efforts is misleading, as it misses the great amount of money spent via storehouses and cash through Fast Offerings, as exampled in the previous post (not limited to members). Publishing the data from this, at any level of detail, would only feed the fires of people believing we give too much to the poor and increase complaints of areas getting “too much” compared to others (no matter what the level of granularity). There is also the great amount of service and funds that are given that only happen because of the Church communities,
Could we all be doing more? Almost always certainly, at every level and grouping of people, We’re not perfect, but we are trying to do better. The Church’s new classes (which originated outside the US) are good evidence of this. I remain optimistic,
Sharon Eubank gave a really good presentation at BYU back in 2008 talking about all the various efforts LDS charities is involved in, different from the fast offering/local aid Frank mentioned: https://youtu.be/kVqCpWeCK-A
The video explains why those bright yellow helping hands shirts are used – to advertise our services as a humanitarian organization so that other governments or organizations know they can rely on the church for help. She also pointed out how problematic it is to tie any sort of proselytizing/missionary work to any of their service/humanitarian work, as it becomes “tainted.” People won’t trust the church if they think it’s only doing service to convert people. She mentioned this is an incredibly difficult concept for a lot of members to grasp, and every time they describe these service/humanitarian projects as “missionary opportunities,” they actually undermine the church’s position.
My parents’ mission gives me a little window into an aspect of the Church’s humanitarian spending. They’ve served for over a decade as part-time missionaries (based at home, but traveling one-third to one-half of the year), setting up training programs around the world in neonatal resuscitation and prevention of maternal hemorrhage. The program’s administration–salaries of FT staff, etc.–is part of general Church administration and is thus funded by tithing, rather than by contributions to the humanitarian fund. My folks are not compensated for their time and considerable expertise, and they pay part of their own hotel and meal expenses under a sort of co-pay arrangement. I’m not sure which pots of money fund their airfare, remaining travel expenses, and the training equipment donated to hospitals in developing countries; but it’s clear that if their program is typical, any published numbers on LDS humanitarian spending reflect a small fraction of the real value of the services provided.
Brother Sky – I look forward to your comments as you are a GREAT echo chamber for me! 🙂 I don’t think I have ever disagreed with any of your comments on any of the posts here on W&T.
ReTx – Glad to hear things are going well in your ward. It was odd to hear that you cook at a homeless shelter. I have read about individuals asking their bishops/SP if they could sign up to do rotations at a “soup kitchen” and were told that the church does not want “long term commitments” such as these. These members then went ahead and did it themselves, but then were given the stink eye when they couldn’t accept some “heavy” callings at the church given their other charitable work. I hope the church is moving towards allowing this.
Frank – I wrote this about 2 weeks ago. Since that time I have listened to a few interviews of D. Michael Quinn talking about his new book on church finances. I have learned a bit from those and probably should have updated this to reflect some of that.
Mary Ann – I was glad that when they introduced the justserve.org in our ward, they said, “this is not a missionary tool”. I agree I have seen way to many (majority) of times where service is given not to be like Christ, but because it is a possible conversion tool. I realize that many members see that as one in the same, but I am sure the vast majority of those outside the church don’t view it that way.
sba – Thanks for the info. I am glad to hear about.
And I just thought of one item I probably should have included. I had a son of mine on an international mission. One of the branches of the US military brought in one of the big hospital ships to the country he was serving to offer medical services to the poor in the country. They asked the MP to send missionaries to help translate. My son was able to do this I think for 1 or 2 weeks and really enjoyed it – and enjoyed the change of pace from everyday missionary work. I do recall him saying it was great experience. Great except one case. The very blunt medical provider told my son to translate, “You are way way too fat and it is going to kill you in just a few years if you don’t do something about it!” I think my son hesitated and was told, “You have to be that blunt or the message won’t get through!” I hope my son had more tact on his mission than that!
We don’t seem to be as strong on the fourth mission, I think, because it is still fairly new, and not an ingrained part of our culture. The Salvation Army, for example, is a church founded on the principle of caring for the poor, and that has been a central part of their mission for their entire history. They have fewer members, a smaller budget, and haven’t been around as long as the LDS Church, but they do a much better job than we do at ministering to those on the margins of society.
Another problem is the culture of affluenza in the Church, which I have seen in wards all over the U.S. It seems to be common for the Church to call wealthy, successful people to leadership positions, which has the unfortunate effect of intertwining spiritual aspiration with monetary aspiration. In Sunday School in my ward just last week, the lesson wandered far from it’s intended topic and ended up extolling prosperity gospel for 25 minutes, going way over the allotted time, and with enthusiastic audience participation. Focusing on taking care of the needy forces affluent (and affluence-aspiring) people to come to terms with the uncomfortable facts that (1) poor people exist, and; (2) perhaps your pursuit of wealth and status is contributing to someone else’s poverty in some way. As much as we like the idea of helping the less fortunate, deep down we really connect with the notion that individual prosperity is a direct result of being favored by God, or of our own “righteous” life choices.
A couple years ago, our stake was reorganized and the wards were significantly realigned. Our ward was redrawn in such a way that it included more low-income neighborhoods than it did previously, and all of the affluent areas were removed into another ward. Whether this was intentional or not, I don’t know, but the result was that a core group of middle class members (my family included) were unfairly burdened with the problems of a disproportionately large population of impoverished members, while the wealthy members were able to go on with life ignoring these problems. Our poor bishop spent HOURS after church every Sunday dealing with welfare issues. We were constantly being asked to give people rides, go pick up food orders from the storehouse (about 1 hour each way), or randomly help Brother So-and-so out with some small task that most of us would take for granted. We helped where we could, but it took a toll. We moved away a few months ago, but we were on a fast track for burnout, and it gave me a dim view of the church experience in general. Caregiver fatigue and compassion fatigue are very real.
In many ways, I see a lot more LDS outreach to needy people now than I did, say, 10 years ago, which is good, but as the income gap grows, there are also more barriers to serving those who need the most help. Some of those barriers we create ourselves.
I think judging how well we do in this area is tricky because of cultural idiosyncrasies. For example, my wife and I lived in a Utah County ward that was for the most part affluent baby boomers or young rich entrepreneurial types. As not as well off newlyweds, we had a hard time fitting in because of the implied prosperity gospel commentary that popped up and hard right conservatism (the neighborhood caucus overwhelming rejected Trump for Cruz).
But when the stake announced that they were going to help local refugees, the ward went out of its way to collect furniture, supplies, and funds to help. It was surprising and made me more cautious on making assumptions based on what was said in Gospel Doctrine.
Additional things could Church could do to better accomplish mission 4 include: (1) allocate a higher percentage of tithing and profits to helping the poor; (2) put more emphasis on service missions (as opposed proselytizing mission); (3) add relevant courses at the Church universities; (4) emphasize the living over the dead (soon over 1/2 of Church members will be living in developing countries); (5) use Church time to coordinate and teach related to helping the poor; (5) deemphasize the prosperity gospel and emphasize mission 4; and (6) provide better educational opportunities for the global poor. And I’m sure there many more things.
I’m involved with some non-LDS churches that do a lot of humanitarian work. Generally they don’t talk about in terms of “helping the poor and needy” because that makes it sound like you are helping somebody “out there” who isn’t one of us. In many churches they refer to this type of work as “social justice”. I know lots of people don’t like that term, but I like it. It’s a recognition that we have poverty and homelessness because our system is unjust and unfair. “Doing justice” is to make sure that everybody in society is taken care of, because every person deserves the dignity of having their basic needs taken care of. Social justice is not something we talk about in the LDS church, in part because the church focuses a lot on personal sin and not very much on societal sin. If we understood the concept of collective sin better in the church we would do a better job of not blaming (or patronizing) individuals for being poor. Instead we would recognize that all of us are accountable for fixing our broken system.
rogerdhansen – I like your list. It reminded me that I have seen posters for the Liahona fund on the builiten boards in the stake. I have contributed for years to this, but I also think every time I do contribute, “if my church is so wealthy, why is this organization even need to exist to help feed starving LDS kids?”
Phil – I like that personal/societal sin description and it does seem like the church does not tell us to worry much about fixing any societal sin (but they sure do lay it thick on the personal sin – IMHO)
Please don’t forget the Perpetual Education Fund. Education and industry are a key component to ending generational poverty. Capitalism and free markets provide the best alternative to help lift the most people out of poverty. The Church has many programs that teach people provident living. Handouts don’t really help except for emergency disaster situations. Africa is suffering from an abundance of “free” commodities which undercut market prices that local producers could earn if they were allowed to compete in a fair market.
The family should be the focus to build a strong society. When families are healthy and strong, the whole society benefits.
“In your experience is this new mission of the church is the less emphasized of the missions of the church?”
Generally speaking where I live, I would say yes. I remember when caring for the poor and needy was added, yet people continued to just mention the other 3. Up until a year ago our ward was participating with other denominations in feeding the homeless. Another denomination had put its church kitchen to use in providing supper every night(?) to the homeless. Our ward (Relief Society) participated once every 6 weeks. The kitchen was small–on par with the kitchens in most of our ward buildings. The food was generally prepared at home and served from the church kitchen. There was a small room which served as the dining room. About a year ago, it stopped, though I don’t know why. Did it stop because the individual organizing and running it “retire?” or? I don’t know.
I think burnout is a common problem.. In every ward there are a handful of families which get involved in everything–callings, activities, etc. while the rest of us are less involved. We are so busy carrying out our calling, attending meetings/activities within our wards there is little time and energy to expend on others outside our ward families.
JackHughes wrote:
“As much as we like the idea of helping the less fortunate, deep down we really connect with the notion that individual prosperity is a direct result of being favored by God, or of our own “righteous” life choices.”
I would agree.
In my well off salt lake county ward, I frequently hear about the 3 fold mission of the church. When it is brought up in a class, I raise my hand and bring up the 4th, but I don’t think anyone has taken note that there really IS another mission.
We came to this ward from a very poor East Coast city. When each Christmas this ward collects money for the “poor” within our ward boundaries, my heart hurts.
I can’t remember hearing any talks during sacrament meetings about caring for the poor and needy while the other 3 are regularly talked about.
Jack Hughes–same thing happened here a few years ago. As a result there are two very dysfunctional wards with inexperienced and overwhelmed leadership and a lot of unhappy people.
People in my ward often still speak of the three-fold mission of the church, and manuals have not been updated to I include the new mission. We might have more talks about helping the poor and needy, but that would require a ziff-style statistical analysis to determine.
I heard once a unofficially, that tithing monies could not be used for humanitarian or charity efforts because it wasn’t part of the three-fold mission. It was my hope that this would change when the fourth mission was announced, but due to lack of financial transparency we have no way to know.
The announcement of the fourth mission was near the beginning of Monson’s tenure, so when it happened I was also hoping it would be his legacy as president of the church, just as Bensen was known for emphasizing the BoM. I didn’t see that happen. I don’t know if that is because Monson decided not to do it or because his dementia prevented him from doing anything beyond repeating his stories from past talks.
In my stake in Australia there is little teference to a fourth mission. We have reduced things to an annual helping hands day at a local state primary school.
Mark L says above “Capitalism and free markets provide the best alternative to help lift the most people out of poverty”. This is asserted as if it is fact. The following article https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/map-how-35-countries-compare-on-child-poverty-the-u-s-is-ranked-34th/?utm_term=.b5ae5b49f559 lists countries by child poverty rates. It shows the best countries are northern european. Usa (which I assume is the capitalism and free market ideal) is rated 34 from the top and some of those above it (Australia) are not listed.
So yes the best way to address poverty is to elect a government that can help. But the political systems with a track record of success are social democracies, not capitalist? The market has to be controlled, not free.
I am aware that the LDS theologian can dig up long forgotten references to just about anything including the three mission of the church. But the three missions feels like a new angle to me and the fourth an after thought. I can remember a time when the mission of the church was to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We didn’t have these guilt-laced three missions to distract us from the core gospel principles.
Geoff -Aus:
False dichotomy. Our economies are all tied together in complex and unfair ways. Europe is generations further away (feudal system) than the US from a partial dependency on a plantation based slave economy, a brutal civil war and the ramifications of that for generations including the impoverishment of the societies of the former slave holders. Europe doesn’t have 10% of its population having recently fled economic despair illegally. (Try sneaking into a European country or even Canada.) Europe never rebuilt our country like we did them after WWII and your prosperity was made possible by that. Most of the children in the US in poverty are from families that never integrated very well into the US economy, one way or another. So I think we are all interdependent on each other in various ways.
See how fast the European socialist safety network comes unraveled when the US economy fails. Especially if the Russian tanks roll and a neo-Soviet style social “democracy” is installed. Or an Islamic jihad burns across the continent and has y’all praying to Allah 7 times a day. Not saying it is gonna happen, but offer it as a thought experiment.
“Try sneaking into a European country or even Canada.” I had an investigator in Germany who helped smuggle in undocumented immigrants. Other investigators in other areas were undocumented immigrants. It’s only easy to pretend it’s not widespread in Europe when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Plus there’s the fact that a flood of refugees has entered Western Europe during the past couple of years. Germany had over one million enter in just one year. That would be the equivalent of four million immigrants entering the U.S. in one year’s time. Many other European countries are also welcoming refugees.
And then there’s the problem of what happens to the U.S. when you cut off the hard workers coming in from south of the border. Your dairy farms in Idaho, for example, would utterly fail without undocumented immigrants. Immigrants in the U.S., including those who have “recently fled economic despair,” put more into our economy than they take out, primarily due to the fact that they are extremely hard workers.
We can fix poverty without falsely blaming immigrants for it.
So you want to site personal experience? I tried to sneak into Canada and….. Therefore that proves what???
I welcome hard working immigrants. They are NOT the ones dragging the poverty rate down. They will save us because they have more children; especially more than post-modern Europeans with their average 1 or less child.
Europe has not over the last 20-30 years let in so many illegal immigrants that they make up millions and millions. But as immigration increases, and with Europe’s low birth rate, soon these people will have the majority of the children and then when some percent of them don’t integrate into the strict requirements of decent employment there (literacy for starters) we will see their children in poverty at rates far exceeding the more established Europeans.
One of my relatives is married to a really hard working Mexican guy. He is a US citizen but his non-citizen friends and relatives move across the US-Mexican border as easily as those Idaho farmers drive to General Conference in Utah and back. The problem isn’t that all of them are lazy bums. They work like slaves but don’t follow any govt regulations like minimum wages, OSHA, EPA, pensions, income taxes, etc. so they easily underbid the over-regulated established businesses who rely on US citizen workers. But the illegal immigrants are all one step away from personal disaster because they have nothing monetarily and lack generations of networks and resources and the skills /mindset to save and invest. When anything bad happens to them, their children suffer. Since the Mexican welfare system offers so little, their children stay here if at all possible.
What really drives poverty in Mexico is their govt corruption and the violence. And one huge factor driving both of these problems is billions of US dollars in drug money crossing the borders and landing into the filthy hands of the drug cartels who pay no taxes and build no schools or hospitals and make life a living hell for children and women and kill too many men. Drug use in the US has always been a bigger problem among minorities who have little economic hope. But now the greatest increase in drug use is among white males in the bottom half of the economic scale. This is the group who has been hurt the most by socialistic govt policies that destroy their jobs and make their schools into leftist social ax-grinding factories instead of preparing them for meaningful work. The black community has fared no better with 8 years of failed socialist US govt policies under a black president and the anemic economic growth from excessive govt spending and higher taxes.
The vastly different demographics of the US magnify the failed govt policies that drive these statistical differences.
The church is beginning to roll out a new program relating to the 4th mission of the church which will be helping people out of poverty at the ward and community level. After reviewing the materials, I can tell that the church spent many years working on this program and in my estimation, it’s pretty comprehensive in its scope and details. You can get a sense of the new program here: https://www.lds.org/topics/pef-self-reliance?lang=eng&old=true
My guess is that people in church headquarters have been working on this curriculum since the announcement of the addition of the 4th mission. They have also taken the time to translate the curriculum into more than a dozen languages before it was even announced so this a wide scale, church wide program that has the potential to reach and lift people around the world.
Like the author of this post and many others in the comments have expressed, I too was wondering when there would be a defined and coordinated effort to address caring for the poor and the needy. I am relieved that they have released this program and I am anxious to see how it will be implemented and how effective it will be in the lives of individual and families.
My stake is a test stake for this program. I looked into signing up, but the commitment was too great for my current work schedule. It’s a great idea, but I’m iffy about it solving problems on a large scale.