After the announcement of the change or cancellation of multiple church history pageants, I recalled several other instances in my past where decisions seem by church leaders seem to be made more because of cost benefit analyses than what is best spiritually.
Baby Blessing, or Useless Record:
On my mission I met a family that was incredibly upset with the bishop. They were a long term inactive family, but they were at least what we might call cultural Mormons. (Or I guess now its formerly known as a victory for Satan.) This family had a baby and wanted it blessed at the church, but the Bishop wouldn’t allow it. In a meeting some time around the event we were discussing the inactive family and he mentioned what guided his decision. They never come to church and he didn’t see the point of adding one more name to a membership list that was already riddled with errors and, it was implied, more people than he could manage. This is not an exact quote and its from 20 years later, so please take it with a grain of salt. But I got the distinct impression that he gave a good bureaucratic answer. It was so good I remembered it 20 years later in discussion about the pageants. What he seemed to miss in a quest for stream lined paperwork is a special ceremony this family could have had, the importance of having a baby on the records for possible future contact and activation, and if done at church they would at least show up that Sunday! So it seemed like a bean counter decision that missed the spiritual mark.
CYB:
These are initials for covering your butt. My friend from college got divorced and her kids were reaching baptismal age. She is the custodial parent and her boys want to get baptized, but her apostatized and generally angry and drunk husband had to be consulted first. It turns out the church needed written authorization from the other parent. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that on its face. The potential for secret baptisms and using parental inspired religious choices of the kids to get back at exes is a real threat so it’s understandable. I was simply struck with how legalistic they were. This is a church founded upon the teachings of a person that turned over the tables at the temple and had apostles nicknamed the sons of thunder. And now we have moved to cyb. The counter to this argument is that Jesus never lived in a litigious society like this with a 24 hour news cycle so lawyers and a pr spokesmen are necessary additions like clerks and stonemasons were back then. But still, it seemed jarring to me of how beholden they were to the paperwork.
This also dovetails with my time that I was single but still technically married. In my heart I knew I was done, but my paperwork was lagging behind. I was just going to hopefully meet some people and have a fun time that night. Heaven knows I had very few of those in the days leading up to my divorce. I wasn’t planning on fornicating even if I had the je ne sais quoi to pull it off. But the church who had multiple leaders like Joseph Smith and Parley Pratt marry women who were already married, wouldn’t let me walk in the door to a singles dance.
Singles are Too Much of an Investment:
Speaking of singles, the Las Vegas singles conference was cancelled a few years back. The reasons given was that it was just too much investment of volunteer labor and resources for something that was too sparsely attended by local singles. The key to that reasoning is “local.” The conference was one of the largest in the Western US. It was over President’s Day weekend so lots of people would come from surrounding states for the holiday weekend. This is vitally important to singles because there is often a vicious catch 22 that traps singles. This is where nobody comes because there are few attractive options. So they stop coming, and when somebody new shows up they find no attractive options so they stop coming too, and so on until you have the same handful of mutants from table nine at every activity. This conference broke that cycle by bringing a large swath of people here for what had the potential to be a good time. It was hit and miss especially as I soured on the singles scene but overall it was a pretty good time that resulted in good contacts and dates with quality people.
But a bean counter looked at some spread sheets, or got negative feedback from leaders whose congregations felt over volunteered, and thought he should cancel it. I am on the ground floor here and I can say this was a devastating blow to the singles scene. The leadership promised a greater amount of smaller activities catering to local singles but I haven’t seen any. (I was fairly burned out so I treated it like an academic conference and went to the more promising presentations, but even then I felt relaxed and in my natural setting so I still met a surprising amount of people.) I understand people’s time is valuable, and tithing money is sacred, but I really think this was a bureaucratic decision more than one based on needs of the singles community. And it made us feel, in one more way, that we weren’t really valued. Our stake has enough money for their own camp, orchestra, and huge park, I think they could spare some money for the best shot at getting us out of singles hell.
Of Pageants and Paydays:
The final piece is the pageants. I never heard of an official reason, but the conventional Kreminology suggests this was largely due to the investment of time for what was becoming an increasingly members only audience. Ironically, this bean counting failed to account for the negative economic impact on local economies, many of which normally don’t see this kind of traffic without it. This one hurts in particular because I like activities such as road shows and pageants that build a sense of community. I don’t really know my neighbors that well, I work from home, and I’m not really a people person when I leave the house, so having a nice community event where I can do some improv or put on a budget costume while chilling with my ward neighbors sounds really nice and an excellent investment. (I’ve also proposed a block party concept to my HOA but they are too busy acting like it’s Game of Thrones.) Instead of doing that at church I usually attend events at the Sci Fi Center and other local venues. Ironically then, community events like pageants, road shows, and the like would be especially helpful way of “hastening” the work for those that don’t attend regular Sunday services.
Conclusion:
It saddens me that a church founded on the teaching of somebody who said to leave the 99 to go after the 1 would become so driven by what seems like profit. (Bishop Bill used the prophet to profit line before I could write this piece but I think he is on the right track.) I don’t know everything that goes on beyond the scenes, but I’ve observed enough to tell me that decision making is often a cost benefit analysis of budgets and bean counting instead of what should be more of a spiritually driven analysis. I think that can crowd out important spiritual decisions and actually hurt people.
Thanks for reading!
This is one of those cases where I would like to be wrong, so how do you think I may have missed the mark?
What examples of bean counting decisions have you seen? (The small plot of land used for urban farming in New York City might be a good example.)
How many lines into the article did you get before thinking about the mall in downtown Salt Lake? I’m shocked.
Wheat & Tares 
The temples are a massive expense in both construction and upkeep (financially and in volunteer hours). And yet, they are considered a worthwhile expense. The Church spends astounding money on genealogical tools, storage, research, and so forth (and that isn’t counting the incredible amount of donated man-hours). This doesn’t seem to be the canary in the coalmine of a profit-centered Church. What appears to have happened is that someone made a decision you disagree with. You may be right or they may be right as to the decision itself, but you have read into that something that matches a personal bias towards seeing exactly what you are seeing.
Need proof?
“How many lines into the article did you get before thinking about the mall in downtown Salt Lake? I’m shocked. ”
Didn’t think about it until this question. Not everyone shares your concerns about City Creek, and it is a bit telling that you assume everyone who would read this does.
You see the world the way that you want to see the world, and that is also true about the way you want to see the Church. If you look for the worst in the world and the Church, you will find it. If you look for the best you will find that, too. If you look for shortsighted decisions by imperfect leaders, you’ll find them. If you look for inspired decisions by servants doing their very best (and exceeding their capacity through Grace), you’ll find that as well. It is like the old story about the two wolves fighting within us — the one that wins is the one we feed. When we look for the bad and wrong, or when we impute negative motivations absent evidence (or even with what we believe to be evidence, absent all information), we are feeding one wolf over the other.
And, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis — if this Church has one decision inspired by Almighty God, well then that changes everything. We can accept a lot of mistakes from imperfect people once we know that an Omniscient God chose these imperfect people (instead of the imperfect us) to receive His direction for His Church.
Best to you this holiday season.
I know some SA conferences cost money. That they dont get a penny from the church other than volunteer hours. I been some and it was not for me. Despite that if people are willing to organize them I’m all for them.
Looks like somebody’s judgmental wolf needs to go on a diet…
A small example. Years ago, we wanted to do a ward activity that required round tables. Our ward had no such tables but another ward in the same town and stake (this is in Utah), had round tables. We thought “Great! We’ll just borrow them for our activity and return them.” We talked to the building bishop who informed us we would need to get permission from the stake presidency. So we spoke to a member of the stake presidency who said he would get back to us. After a couple of days (of fasting and praying?), he contacted us with the message that we could not borrow the tables because….well, it was never made clear. So we used the rectangular tables and everything turned out okay. But I’ve always wondered why it was such an issue to borrow some round tables from a ward within our own stake. That said, it doesn’t really “shake my faith.” I think the original post was pointing out the discrepancy that seems to exist between an organization who promotes and encourages Christian principles and a bureaucratic organization that wants all the “i’s” dotted and the “t’s” crossed. Such bureaucracy is a necessary evil, I suppose. It doesn’t mean that we can’t point out its absurdity and ask that “it” (the bureaucracy) be a little more thoughtful in the decisions it makes. And how about some round tables?
Sad!
I once lived in an urban ward that had modest weekly attendance, but over 500 members on the books. A full-time senior couple was assigned to the ward to do nothing but spend all day searching for the lost souls and accounting for them, whether inviting them back to activity, or (more commonly) purging them off our rolls into the “whereabouts unknown” file. Being an urban ward, there were lots of transients, and missionaries often tracted among the homeless and mentally unstable populations (low hanging fruit, as they called it), but that’s a complaint for another post. It never really sat well with me that the local leadership was incentivized to purge the ward list of what amounted to metrics that counted against our ward in reports to stake leaders. These were human beings who were being reduced to numbers for the sake of convenience in reporting. Bureaucracy has a way of dehumanizing.
Anyway, the senior missionaries were able to get the ward count down to 300 or so in 6 months. If I were serving a full time mission at my own expense, I would be pretty pissed about having to spend all my time cleaning up the messes made by previous missionaries.
Sometimes the bureaucracy isn’t about money, it’s just having to work with the occasional obsessive/compulsive types. We had one as a ward clerk when I was a counselor in a Bishopric.. One of the members on the rolls hadn’t participated in church since he was a youth. Occasionally his non-member wife would attend a relief society event and his non-member kids attended scouts for a while (our ward consisted of about three streets – everyone knew each other). The clerk informed us we needed to get the wife’s birthday information for our rolls to be compliant with whatever direction he was operating from. The Bishop asked me what he thought the member would do if we asked him for his wife’s birthday. I told him the member of record would most likely ask to have his name removed from our records instead. The bishop agreed with my assessment. To the chagrin of the ward clerk we decided not to ask the member for his wife’s info and left that part of the record incomplete.
I’m a little meh about relying on the church for activities. In the same ward above, I helped organize annual block parties. Non-member neighbors of our mostly LDS neighborhood would help organize it as well. Ward correlation would try to horn into the activity to make it a missionary event, but I had to let them know it wasn’t their event to organize and run. Anyone could come, we just didn’t want it to be a church activity.
The numbers in my mission were down, our mission president was constantly berating us, a member of the 12 came to visit. He looked at the books. He didn’t talk to a single missionary. He didn’t go around the mission to see anything for himself. He just looked at the numbers. He then chewed us out royally for not performing. It was then and remains today the most unChristian experience I’ve ever had.
I’m okay with removing many of the big stuff events that require significant volunteer labor. Pageants, road shows, etc. If it happens naturally then great but I’m getting burned out on the number of things I’m expected to volunteer for. It’s not always dollars and cents. The number of people I’ve heard say the church doesn’t do enough for them is mind boggling. Who do they think does the service.
I’ve read a couple of posts this week dealing with church finances. Both had a comment that used the commitment to building temples as an example of a practice that disproved any “profit motive”. I’m not sure it’s that easy.
I was at a wedding reception for a niece earlier this year. I heard that there were 71 dealings at the Payson temple that Saturday. I was thinking about how nice it was that these couples had the use of the temple to solemnize their marriages – and that it spared them the cost of a venue. Of course those are not the reasons one gets married in the temple – just a little bonus.
Then I thought of the 20 or so family/friend households that attended each ceremony. With a median income of $50,000 or so, that means that those 71 sealings represented upwards of $710,000 in annual tithing income. Extend that out over the year (adding in the other days of the week and other ordinances) and the Payson temple could the focal point of over $300 million in tithing.
With temple ordinances representing the pinnacle of church life and the means of sealing family members (living and dead) together, the tithing requirement for temple admission cannot be ignored as part of the equation. Temples are intricately tied to church finances.
Of course, how often one attends the temple and how much income one has goes into how much you “pay” for the privilege of attending the temple. Is it $100 a visit? $1,000? $10,000?
BeenThere asks “…how much you “pay” for the privilege of attending the temple. Is it $100 a visit? $1,000? $10,000?”
Only you know how much you pay to attend temple and only you know how much it is worth to you. But you are right that the per-visit cost will vary enormously based on income and frequency. A person with little or no income could attend every day for free where on the other hand I presume Mitt Romney pays dearly.
BeenThere “I heard that there were 71 dealings at the Payson temple that Saturday.”
And twice that many at Mesquite! Eventually I realized it was probably “sealings”.
Definitely “sealings”
A money making powerhouse, real estate and business development divisions, 32 billion in stock holdings = the “one and only true church on the face of the earth”…..Nah, I just don’t buy it. I compare what Sister Teresa did, over a lifetime in Calcutta, with what our well-fed leaders do….and I think it’s pretty unseemly.
From Business Insider:
“Globally, Mormon temples and meetinghouses are worth an estimated $35 billion, reported Reuters in 2012. They represent the most outward show of wealth for an organization whose finances are secret but thought to be extensive.” That kind of money would sure feed a great many of God’s children.
For me, as I think about the Christ of the New Testament – the Carpenter’s Son, I just have a really hard time wrapping my head around the possibility that this divine being would be concerned (one wit) about Italian marble, crystal chandeliers, $17,000.00 rugs, muti-million dollar business towers, shopping malls, luxury apartments and “the finest materials”. I think these things are nothing more than an ostentatious display of wealth. When Christ returns, I personally don’t believe that these will be the places where he goes……rather, I believe that he will go to care for those who are hurting, homeless, hungry and in need. I believe he will want to heal rather than impress. At least this is the God I can still believe in.
Lefthandloafer,
You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought, as you’ve scripted a pretentious response that you’ve now used multiple times.
The fact of the matter is that the same Jesus who was the son of a carpenter chastised the apostles who complained that the woman anointing Him with perfume could have sold the perfume to feed the poor. The same Jesus revered the temple, which was constructed with the finest materials. That same Jesus declared that He was the same Being who commanded a gilded ark to be built.
Part of accepting God is finding harmony in seemingly conflicting attributes. It is the same for God’s wrath and mercy.
Dsc: with due respect, you know no more about the mind and will of God than anyone else. All we have is our own hearts, heads and perceptions. So, please don’t presume to preach to me; for it simply smacks of arrogant presumption. I express my views – because they are mine alone. I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything. But, I simply enjoy the discussion. Perhaps you’ll enjoy the following as much as I do. (While crass, there’s some real wisdom here)
“When I go to church, I can’t get past the fact that I’m just listening to some f**king guy. Do you ever think of that shit when you go there? That’s just some dude. And people are like “No! That’s a special guy!” No it isn’t! It isn’t! No, he didn’t levitate down from the ceiling with this white light around him.
Why would you listen to another human being tell you where you’re gonna go when you die? It’s just like “Dude, have you ever been dead? No. Great. So, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that you wouldn’t have the slightest f**king idea what you’re talking about? Yeah, you’re making it up! You’re making the shit up! You’re not fooling me with the robes and the candles, speaking in old English, “he saideth unto you-eth”. “Shut the f**k up, you don’t talk like that!” “You’re just some guy, your name’s Jerry, you play Soccer, and you got your ass kicked in gym class, and now you’re doing this”
Bill Burr
Dsc: How do you reconcile the fact that we have “money changers” in our modern – day temples? This reality seems so incongruent with Christ cleansing the temple in Biblical times.
Lefthandloafer,
“So, please don’t presume to preach to me; for it simply smacks of arrogant presumption.” You seem to be pretending to know an awful lot about the will of God and seem perfectly content to preach about it here, so your pretended offense at my blunt tone strikes me as shallow.
And you can’t possibly be serious in pretending that the fact that some temples allow patrons to rent clothes for the cost of laundering is in any way equivalent to the commercial profiteering Jesus drove out of the temple, can you?
Dsc: In my opinion there’s a HUGE difference between expressing a personally held opinion and soapbox preaching! I perceive that it’s a fairly common behavior driven into the minds of Mormon’s to (when challenged) immediately shift into the preaching gear. I used to do the same thing. I don’t presume to know God’s will…all I have is my own life experience and my own feelings and perceptions. As to your blunt tone: it kinda/sorta makes you appear somewhat petulant and scared. But, I acknowledge that this is your right and perogative to do so.
Lefthandloafer,
There probably is a difference, but you are clearly soapbox preaching. You are using the Internet comment section equivalent to a rehearsed speech. It doesn’t get more soapbox than that.
Think of me what you will. The truth is that I lost patience with trying to be polite with belligerent people a long time ago.
Dsc: Right back at cha. You know nothing about me, my heart, my belief in God, my love of family and yet…you presume to preach to me.
Dsc and Lefthandloafer: In my view, there is some truth to what you both say. To me, one of the endearing things about the scriptures is the tension held within the text. It more closely aligns with the description of people groping forward for God, with an at times unclear idea of the best way forward, than it does with the idea that it prescribes all the answers.
With that said, Dsc, despite an ostentatious temple built by Herod and a use of expensive ointment (and John’s Gospel isn’t clear as to the precise motivation of Jesus in that episode, given the commentary about Judas’ motivations), the NT, and especially the things Jesus is claimed to have said, paints a pretty dire picture of those who would amass wealth at the expense of the poor – regardless of one’s intentions for that wealth. There is comment after comment, and parable after parable, projecting a dim view of wealth. It is definitely within the bounds of good faith to question whether the LDS institution, or really any institution for that matter, is utilizing its resources in a way congruent with the revelation of God’s image in Jesus Christ. And I’d agree with Lefthandloafer that LDS leadership seems to align more closely with the example of the condemned temple priesthood of Jesus’ time than with the teachings of Jesus regarding the perils of amassing wealth.
Lefthandloafer,
“You know nothing about me, my heart, my belief in God, my love of family and yet…you presume to preach to me.” Stop and ask yourself how this at least doesn’t apply to you. I’m not sure why you appear to be taking my comments so personally, invoking your heart, family, and belief in God. I haven’t questioned those things. What I have done is respond to your criticism of the Church and pointed out that your scripted criticism comes off as pretentious. In other words, I have a pretty negative opinion of what you said, but I have almost no opinion of you personally. I think it speaks volumes that you have chosen to attack me for “preaching” (how my comment is preaching and yours is expressing an opinion is still beyond me) rather than address the substance of my argument (as Cody has done).
Cody,
While I think that by and large, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a prudent steward of its/the members’/the Lord’s resources, I don’t think any criticism of how the Church’s finances is in bad faith. I do think Lefthandloafer’s is because he made an almost identical comment before, and has made no attempt to address or even acknowledge the counter pointeds he was presented with earlier.
Regarding your argument, obviously, I disagree. First, I don’t think the scriptures say that wealth is evil per se. Wealth is nothing more than access to resources, and as such is neither good nor bad. There are numerous passages in the Old Testament that suggest that wealth can be a blessing from God. The problem comes when wealth becomes a distraction or an end into itself.
Second, I think the Church manages its resources consistently with this doctrine. Temples are beautiful and well maintained, but I wouldn’t call them ostentatious. They are certainly less ornate than many Catholic and Anglican cathedrals. Like many other houses of worship, their architecture and adornments evoke godly attributes, and are (in my view) consistent with the ethos of the ancient Tabernacle and Temple. General Church leaders are compensated monetarily for their service at roughly the same rate as an average Rabbi. The Church asks the poor to tithe as well as the rich, but the example of the widow and her mite indicate that’s not a problem, and besides, the Church operates a vast welfare program to care for its members. City Creek and the old Hotel Utah are the only things that even show up on my radar, and I’m not bothered at all by City Creek when I look at it as a real estate investment, and I’ll give the Hotel Utah a pass due to some of the unique historical oddities surrounding its construction.
Dsc: “First, I don’t think the scriptures say that wealth is evil per se.” I didn’t make that claim. I said that the scriptures, especially the NT, are quite consistent in condemning the amassing of wealth at the expense of the poor, widow, etc. Sure, one can find some OT stories or verses that seem to equate wealth as a blessing of righteousness. Those peddling the Prosperity Gospel use them. However, the consistent message of the OT prophets (e.g., Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Jeremiah, etc.) is to condemn the amassing of wealth at the expense of the poor. The NT is even more explicit. Where one draws the line at an adequate amount of wealth and how tolerant one is of poverty, is up for interpretation, I suppose. I see in Jesus’ comments and parables great peril in the amassing of wealth. And human propensity to justify it is seemingly boundless.
Cody,
You said, “There is comment after comment, parable after parable, projecting a dim view of wealth.” I was responding to this statement.
I’m not sure how “at the expense of the poor” entered into this conversation, as Lefthandloafer never mentioned wealth “at the expense of the poor”.
Dsc: I perceive that you’re quite upset that I don’t perceive (nor believe in the LDS Church) the way you do. My only remaining question to you is this. “Is it not possible for you to simply say my belief in the LDS Church (and it’s doctrines) are this?…..and I simply say, I no longer believe these things (even though I’ve been deeply indoctrinated into the LDS Faith since birth)…and I view God and his expectations of his chidren differently than I once did” and simply leave it at that?
I believe in God, I believe in Christ, I believe in humanity being the creator’s children. I believe in the Spirit of Christ. I believe in the responsibilities that one person has to another; regardless of race, sex, birthplace and religious tradition. I simply no longer believe that the LDS Church is the sole embodiment of these qualities – nor are that the “kingdom of God on earth” – are steadily becoming something else.
To your credit, Dsc: our recent discussions have caused me to reflect on the source of my (very strong) feelings regarding the acquisition of, and use of (or not) said wealth for good. When I was a young man, all LDS Chapels (Temples etc.) had paid janitorial employees who were responsible for the regular cleaning and maintenance of the buildings for which they were assigned. I remember the gentlemen (and his family) who took care of our Chapels in my home town, with fondness and respect. Our building was always emaculate in it’s cleanliness, smell and readiness for worship. Also (to my knowledge) this was his career for all of his adult life; and upon which he built the financial well-being of his family. In short, he raised and protected his family through this employment opportunity. Now (as we all know) this practice has mostly been done away with and has been “back-filled” with voluntary labor.
Prior to the market crash of 2008, I had a great career – steadily increasing management responsibilities and income – and our home and family were doing just dandy; with all of us taking care of ourselves and not asking anyone or any organization for anything. We were taking care of ourselves. (As is right). Within six months of the crash we had lost just about everything (with the exception of our Home, which was paid for – Thank God) and I was doing anything I could to find employment, generate some sort of income and keep my family going. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I was truly, remarkably desperate; in every sense of the word. I was willing (and able) to do ANYTHING to keep us fed and cared for.
So, while I freely acknowledge that it’s not entirely fair to lay all of my feelings of this time on the Church’s doorstep, I have to say that the LDS Church DID NOTHING, HAS DONE NOTHING to assist me and my family through these years; aside from encouraging me to pray, read the scriptures and go to the Temple. Sadly, one cannot eat these things – or provide shelter and comfort through them. My wife and I have had to bring ourselves back from the brink of collapse, entirely on our own. And, this after we had dedicated our entire lives to the Church; with thousands of dollars of tithes and offerings.
So, through all of the subsequent years, I’ve watched the Church continue to build multi-million dollar temples (of course out of “the very best materials”) invest in shopping malls, corporate office buildings, commercial real-estate, hunting preserves….and on and on…my feelings for these practices has coalesced into a declaration of disgust; and a desire to scream “why in the hell, don’t you actually invest in practices, in employment, in enterprises which actually help people; instead of being concerned with “the outward appearance” and on-going humble brag for how wealthy we are as a Church.
In 2009, I would have given my right arm to be a paid janitor for the Church……
I think you and I are done with each other…don’t you Dsc? I do, however, wish you and your loved ones a nice holiday and Christmas season.
Lefthandloafer,
I’m not upset or angry; I simply disagree with your argument and have pointed out its weaknesses, both in logic and in tone. I don’t have much interest in what you do or don’t believe; you’re free to believe what you will, but I will point out my disagreement.
Regarding your situation, I don’t know what happened to you specifically, but your experience is far from typical, and frankly, I’m baffled how the Church “did nothing”. The following are things that thousands of members of the church benefit from all the time.
Employment leads from home teachers/ministering brothers/sisters or Ward and stake employment specialists.
Referrals to LDS Employment Resource Services for employment counseling, training, and job leads. Or just walking into LDS ERS.
Housing and/or food assistance from local day offering funds or through an order to the Bishop’s Storehouse and Dessert Industries.
Group employment classes like those the Church recently implemented in inner cities in partnership with the NAACP.
Whether Church buildings should be cleaned by paid staff or the members is a complex question with a lot of arguments for or against, but I will point out that if the Church hired janitors to do that, then that likely wouldn’t have been a job available to you when you were out of work, since someone else would have already had the job. The current program allows bishops to assign fast offering recipients to clean the building (which happens often), allowing them the dignity of working for a living until they get a permanent job.