There’s been a lot of discussion about the slow-down in Church growth, including yesterday’s OP by Dave B. about a Washington Post article connecting the LDS membership decline with eroding support for the GOP. Additionally, Latter-day Struggles podcast has been doing a series of episodes breaking down the data in an essay written by David Stewart of the University of Nevada: The End of Growth? Fading Prospects for Latter-day Saint Expansion.
When I was growing up in the Church, it was common belief, often discussed among members that the Church was the stone cut out of the mountain without hands that would roll forth until it filled the whole earth, and there was a lot of evidence of that exponential growth to back up that idea. But that growth spurt appears to have slowed to almost nil. In 1984, when I was 16, non-LDS sociologist Rodney Stark predicted that the LDS Church was on the verge of becoming “the first major faith to appear on earth” since Islam. His prediction was based on the 4% annual membership growth that was happening at that time, and he also noted that his predictions from 15 years earlier had been surpassed by a million members. His data showed that by 2020, there would be between 36.4 and 121 million LDS church members unless something drastically reduced the Church’s successful conversion rates.
So what happened? The essay by David Stewart explains many factors that resulted in lower growth rates in the subsequent years.
Fertility rates. Stark’s data in 1984 assumed that Mormons would continue to follow the same high birth rates, ignoring that trends in the US were declining. While Mormon families remain higher than national averages, they have followed that downward trend.
Conversion rates. In 1996, two sociologists of religion noted that “the single best predictor of the annual Mormon conversion rate is the size of the LDS missionary force.” In 2013, the decision to lower the age of service to 18 for men and 19 for women resulted in a spike in missionary service, and since that date, the number of converts no longer correlates with the number of missionaries. Was this change a mistake?
Retention.[1] While Stark was looking at the numbers of baptized Church members, a more accurate picture might be found in looking at the formation of congregations. If you have more members, and those members are attending Church, you need more congregations. Since 2000, the number of members appears to rise, while the number of new congregations does not even come close to matching it. We are counting a whole lot of people who don’t consider themselves active Church members. Looking at regional numbers, the picture is even more clear that despite reporting growth in conversions, congregations are closing, and the Mormon footprint is shrinking in many places: Latin America is down 1.3% and Western Europe is down 18.9%! There are some historical causes that may sound familiar:
- Baseball baptisms. Some missions, focused on impressive numbers, encouraged the baptism of children through deceptive tactics. This was particularly a problem in South America in the 80s and 90s.
- “Gathering” mentality. Converts in many non-US regions were encouraged to marry within the faith and this often meant that families would either relocate to the US or would send their kids to BYU to get an education and find a spouse. This saps local congregations of their ability to maintain a base of members.
- Importing leadership. In many areas, the tendency is to view locals as insufficiently strong in the faith (and Mormon culture) to lead their own stakes, districts, wards, and branches, and North American leaders are often brought in to ensure that the local culture does not prevail. This is a particular issue in Africa where the Church has experienced its largest growth. While this growth has been touted as worthy of celebration, it pales in comparison to the success of two other high demand conservative faiths: the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists, both of which have surpassed LDS growth exponentially. SDA Church attendance in Africa alone was 5.27 million in 2013, which was higher than the average LDS Church attendance worldwide! Locals in Africa view the LDS Church with suspicion as the “rich church” which doesn’t respect local culture and customs.
- Missions. In the LDS church, missionaries are sent around the world, which is often a great experience for them, helping them to become adults and often increasing their commitment to the Church as well as their leadership skills. But as those of us who served know, you are in a ward temporarily. You teach, someone gets baptized, and you leave. This doesn’t always result in the type of retention you have when the members of the local congregation are the ones engaging in missionary work. However, let’s be honest, a lot of Mormons feel that once they’ve done their missionary service, thankfully that’s over, and at least we didn’t have to do it somewhere embarrassing where we might actually know people. This is unlike the methods used by the JW and SDA Church members, and both those sects have left Mormonism in the dust. Additionally, some areas of the world (India is cited) restrict foreign missionaries. Faiths that don’t rely on them fare significantly better.
- Statistics. The Church meticulously counts new members added, but doesn’t accurately track or report those who leave. In fact, if your name is still on the records (and most who leave do not take steps to remove their name), the Church will continue to count you as a “member” until age 110, even if you do not self-identify as Mormon, even if you barely remember joining and have never returned since. This practice hides the problem and makes it easier to delay change.
Lawson and Xydias (2020) found that Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses tend to undercount members, whereas the LDS Church overcounts international adherents by a wide margin. They documented from national censuses and sociological surveys a correlation between self-reported LDS Church membership and self-identified religious preference of 90% in the United States, but only 28% internationally. A substantial proportion of members claimed by the LDS Church, including approximately 10% in Utah and 37% in Chile, cannot be located (Canham 2005, Stack 2006). Unless found, their records are maintained in the “Address Unknown File” until age 110 (Phillips 2006), some thirty-eight years longer than the median worldwide life expectancy in 2016 (WHO 2020).
David Stewart’s essay
Gerontocracy. Actions like the 2015 Exclusion Policy may have felt like a good idea to elderly leaders, steeped in the homophobic prejudice of their era, but it alienated many younger Church members, and resignations followed as well as reduced commitment. Additionally, there has at times been a “power vacuum” at the top as pointed out by Greg Prince, that doesn’t exist in other churches where the President is always competent and vigorous, responsive to the needs of members. These times of incapacity (such as experienced during Benson’s and Monson’s years) slows responsiveness to trends as others at the top seek to bring forward their vision, but with deference to an ailing or incapacitated leader.
Utah-centricity. This was an interesting one, but it’s a root cause of the type of missionary service our Church follows; by having a centralized structure in one state, Church members who live elsewhere experience different cultures and needs than a Utah-based Church member would. The first time I heard the term “mission field” used by a Utahn to describe where I lived, I was confused. I had lived there; I wasn’t a missionary there. It’s hard to export Utah culture to other places; culture is full of blind spots and biases that don’t translate well. Additionally, sub-Saharan Africa is just never going to be like the Wasatch front, nor should it be. There is a huge lack of respect for local cultures that I experienced in my own western European mission and my home ward (one of my first blog posts, actually). This lack of buy-in hurts both conversion and retention.
A “Greedy” Church. This description by Van Beek (quoted in the essay) refers to the high demands of lay members in the Church that have contributed to burnout, feelings of inadequacy, and attrition, particularly among international members. It parallels some of the online discussions I’ve seen in which former members decry the Church’s huge nest egg yet relatively little humanitarian efforts, instead assigning a financial value to volunteer hours also provided by the tithe-payers and claiming that dollar value as a contribution to make the Church sound like it gave more money than it did while retaining its amassed wealth.
I’ll stop here. The essay is longer, and concludes with several factors that will likely continue to cause declines. If you haven’t read the essay, it’s worth a read. One final note toward the end is that because of the Church’s approach to missionary work, the cost per convert is exponentially higher than in the two primary competing faiths mentioned (Jehovah’s Witness and Seventh-day Adventist). Since the Church has huge coffers, it can get away with that for a long time, but it won’t yield actual growth without some substantial changes.
- Were any of these findings surprising to you?
- If you had the Church’s resources at your disposal, in light of this data, what would you do to reverse the downward trends in growth? How would you increase new members and reduce attrition?
- What do you think Church leaders will do to address these issues, assuming they agree they are a concern?
Discuss.
[1] The essay goes into great detail about the evolution of the teaching materials missionaries use, concluding;
The LDS Church’s missionary program reforms have rearranged the furniture without remedying core pathologies. After more than a fifty-year retention crisis resulting in the loss of millions of converts and multiple iterations of missionary program “reform,” the LDS Church today presents just four lessons that can be taught in as little as three to five minutes. That this is viewed as satisfying teaching requirements for prospective converts bodes poorly for the faith’s future.
David Stewart
By contrast, my parents, who were baptized in the 1950s, underwent 52 weekly lessons. That’s completely unlike my experience as a missionary. We were taught that the rule that investigators needed to attend at least one Church meeting prior to baptism (perhaps to combat “baseball baptisms” in which the investigator didn’t even know where the Church was) included them going to Church and being immediately baptized after the service.
Stewart also points out that leaders have “downplayed institutional culpability,” referring to Elder Ballard stating in 2019 that “Church leaders don’t know where these practices began,” but then showing that the practices were present in the manuals given to missionaries.
Wheat & Tares 
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation today includes a statement that, I believe, bears directly on this topic : “We either are baptized “into his death” and “resurrection” (Romans 6:3; Philippians 3:10–12), or Christianity is largely a mere belonging system, not a transformational system that will change the world.”
The Restoration movement was founded on the premise of transforming the world with the emergence of the kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” Somewhere along the way the church, in all its iterations and dissenting groups, morphed into a belonging system. The big question is: Can it be restored as a transformation system?
In comparing LDS with the SDA Church, of interest is that only about 1/20 of all SDA members live within America. Compare this with around 1/2 of LDS. The bottom line is that the SDA Church is around 22 million+ in membership and still growing outside of the U.S. (they too are struggling to maintain numbers in America) with even larger numbers attending Saturday-Sabbath services (about 35 million). The LDS Church is around the 15+ million total membership mark.
And keep in mind that the typical home-grown child is baptized into the LDS Church around 8 years of age whereas typical SDA home-grown children start around 12/13 years of age. And last but not least, both denominations lose about 50% of their converts from active membership. But then that’s a whole other story.
There’s always room for improvement. But the primary reason for the seeming downturn is worldliness. As Nephi says (in 1 Nephi 14):
“12 And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw.”
But thankfully, even though the church’s dominions are small they are still large enough to salt the earth. Otherwise the entire earth would be wasted at the Lord’s coming.
What do you think Church leaders will do to address these issues, assuming they agree they are a concern?
I think they’ll just keep papering over them rather than addressing them. They seem to be pretty committed to the idea that whatever they do is right by definition, so if people aren’t getting baptized and those getting baptized aren’t being retained, it’s just a result of wickedness somewhere. They’re not going to dirty their hands with some worldly social science analysis of where things are going wrong. Ewww! Either the missionaries are bad or the converts are bad or the local members are bad. Someone needs to repent, and it for sure isn’t the Q15!
Also, they’ll keep trumpeting the announcements of new temples as the major indicator of Church health, since it’s something they can expand with a wave of their magic moneyed wand, over the convert count or the membership count, which are so much harder to control and they realize are looking less and less good with time.
You know, “if the primary reason for the seeming downturn is worldliness”, then we need to engineer social policy to make the cost of living decrease as a “worldly” concern. We also need to design/re-design/tweak current social supports to be robust enough to actually create situations of “mourning with those that mourn” and ” comforting those that stand in need of comfort”.
Our teacher/counselor/nurse/caregiver shortages during COVID and post-COVID actually support that we do not as a society value those who dare to “mourn with those that mourn” and “comfort those that stand in need of comfort”. There are numerous examples in this them from supply shortages to training and poor training, vacation/recovery human resource shortages due to not paying our professional caregivers enough in funding and respect, I don’t have the resources to cite every one exhaustively here. I think an impressive case is made that any level, people who actually “give a care” about others are punished for doing so (or at least not as well-supported as they could be in terms of social priority).
The frightening thing is that countries that model more socially-forward policies (for pragmatic reasons) are also statistically less religious – so there is a reasonable “fear” that “becoming more people-centric” will increase people “joining the world” and “leaving the gospel (as represented by the church organization)”.
To me this is the consequences of failing to truly follow Jesus Christ and build an inclusive loving community. We have become an exclusive and judgemental community, leaving little or no room for people who don’t automatically conform with our prosperity gospel vision.
In my opinion if we truly focused on following Jesus Christ and loving our fellow members and our neighbors, instead of dividing up politically and culturally into us and them groups, things could be different. The focus can’t be on growth. But growth would likely be the consequence of mourning with those who mourn and comforting those who stand in need of comfort.
Instead we get up on the rameumpton stand monthly and thank God that we are more right than everyone else. We create all kinds of clothing rules to define ourselves as better and different than other people. We create acronyms and language that makes joining our community uncomfortable. We judge others both politically and socially for failures in self reliance when we all are reliant upon Jesus Christ for His grace. We focus on hierarchy instead of consensus in our organizations and only call people who think exactly like our wealthy privileged, healthy cookie cutter selves to leadership callings. Then we live in a bubble and have no one to tell us how our actions hurt people who cannot fit in our mold.
This isn’t just about the Q15. It is about our congregations following after the ways of the world as represented in the Evangelical churches today. We follow after their focus on defining our differences from other people and condemning their “worldliness” in an exclusive and divisive political vision that leaves no room for those who are poor or different.
Yes, the judgements of God are upon us for our worldliness. But not for the reasons most people think of when they say these words.
To retain members as a culture we need to be more accepting of people of all types. We need to make room for people to speak their truth instead of trying to control them to repeat what we think is “true”.
“If ye are not one ye are not mine.” Indeed our divisive, exclusive communities are often not unified in following Christ. Instead we follow another.
“ Also, they’ll keep trumpeting the announcements of new temples ”
Right…….
Like the they need to add another temple in the Bay Area— San Jose?
The Oakland temple is too busy?
Jack’s making one salient point that’s worth calling out, that the Church itself is more worldly (as lws329 points out as well). We’ve got an issue with colonialist attitudes about how to build “successful” congregations that’s baked into our missionary efforts. Recall when Pres. Benson said: “Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment.” He was, as the extremely right-wing politician he was, decrying public systems that helps create more equal opportunity and outcomes, but he was also wedded to a vision of prosperity gospel. That’s a worldly / secular view of the Christian message. The hallmark of success is personal financial success; ergo, the truly converted are more financially successful. The Mormon Church usually does in fact have a more educated and financially successful demographic than both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists, and the price for that is the attrition of those who don’t fit the ambitious / aspiring mold (which is a secular outlook). If you’re in a “rich church” (as these findings found among those in Africa who were turned off), you feel inferior if you aren’t rich. If you’re in a church that views poverty and humble circumstances with a jaundiced eye (we don’t want “takers”–there was an actual push in the 90s to specifically target wealthier converts), and that views those who are established as better than those who are striving, you’re going to turn off a whole lot of people who might otherwise join or stay.
The other point in the data that struck me is that I really really would not want to be a missionary for life like a JW or SDA member is expected to be, and I suspect there are a whole lot of members who would agree with me. But that’s another issue with the financial success our church rewards–who’s got time to spend out there trying to find new converts? We’ve got careers to manage! Clayton Christensen’s missionary book about inviting wealthy friends to do charitable activities with the church was probably the best gambit we’ve got in our model.
I also fully agree that Nelson’s approach at least is to continue to hide this erosion by overcounting (nobody’s going to stop doing that since all their predecessors have done it forever–can you imagine being the leader to finally say “Yeah, those numbers were bullcrap”?), and to mimic growth the one way they can, by building unnecessary temples. This also seems to be a particular thing for him as he seems to be on some personal quest to defeat Hinckley’s legacy. It’s perplexing.
Around the 1980s – 1990s the LDS church had realized something remarkable. It had become an institution that provided something of value to an amazing diversity of people. The church attracted both blue & white collar. It appealed to those with both high and low education. It had a place in urban, rural, and suburban communities. It prevailed in Western, Eastern, Asian and other world cultures. This sweet spot in history did not last. Why things changed could be a dissertation. Below I share some ideas of what changed but as it concerns the OP I offer this stark theory:
The culture and worldview that made the LDS church special and a religious community attractive to others no longer exists in the church. The special thing was organic and came about from the culture the members had built up in church. This special thing has been erased by correlation and top-down control imposed by the leadership who have greatly diluted the Church experience in their belief that doing so makes the Church more efficient and accessible to others. What the leadership has done to the church is akin to what MBA consultants might do to a chocolate bar who believe they can cut costs and grow profits by changing the ingredients and focusing on marketing, rather than quality. Initially the marketing efforts succeed in increasing sales. But people discern the chocolate doesn’t taste as good and consumers conclude that what once was a special bar of chocolate is now generic. It no longer stands for something special but rather competes with all the other mass produced chocolate bars for customers.
Now some ideas:
(1) The 1980s – 1990s was the American moment. The American ideals of liberty and hope and free markets had proven victorious over the Soviet Union. Eastern Europe had been liberated. Mormonism was both a predictor of this victory and its direct religious benefactor – having established footholds in Eastern Europe prior to the wall going down, and then being organizationally ready to build the church in the now open lands. Mormon theology and church operation were perfectly aligned for the post Cold War world. The stone was rolling!
(2) The Church had long emphasized both the importance of education and of work. This priority had, by the late 20th century, produced many accomplished LDS scholars and business leaders. Mormonism produced a culture that valued intellectual curiosity and business success and even artistic expression. Unlike many Protestant and Evangelical religions, Mormonism was supportive of high secular achievement and it attracted people who valued the blending of Faith and Intellect.
(3) The Church had a president in Gordon B Hinckley who was charismatic and who understood the importance of media to influence people. The Church of the 20th century had a balance of organizational power that enabled and encouraged local ingenuity supported by upper leadership.
(1-What Changed) The American moment was fractured. First there was the Iraq War. Then tensions with Russia escalated. The world became a less peaceful place and people became less confident that American ideals were best. In America the politics became extremely divisive, with each presidential election starting with 2000 being contentious and controversial. Then there was the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. The argument that liberty and faith and free markets were good and desirable was challenged and disputed. Then Trump won election and nothing made sense anymore. Americans were angry and confused. The world was in turmoil. And then came the Pandemic and its impact on the Church is a whole other dissertation.
(2-What Changed) Beginning in the early 199os, the Church leadership changed its position on intellectual curiosity. There was the September Six excommunications. Leadership openly criticized Mormon scholarship that was not church approved. It discouraged members from reading or participating in non-LDS approved forums. Pruning of persons perceived to be a threat to the Church has continued ever since. The Internet completely altered the landscape of Mormon discussion. At the same time the academic and corporate spaces have become increasingly politicized, with DEI and ESG and other activism. These social and political movements are making their way into the Church culture. Where once the Church was comfortable inviting and promoting intellectual and secular achievement it is now divided and threatened.
(3-What Changed) President Nelson. What really changed is more decades of consolidation of church control, yielding a rigid, top-down command organization that President Nelson has embraced with enthusiasm, seemingly unaware that the organization is failing to serve the needs of members.
@Hawkgrrl: Thanks for the excellent summation of David Stewart’s essay. Very interesting information.
@A Disciple: Wow! Your theory and ideas resonate with me. Thanks for the insightful analysis.
Another thing that could be hindering church growth is the effect of the missionary program on the missionaries themselves.
In the past, the church’s missionary program has been used as a way to create lifelong committed return missionary members. I wonder if this tool is also eroding for the church? Two of my children who served missions felt disenchanted and wounded by the high pressure sales mentality in their missions. One child left the church after the mission partly due to the harm received via the mission culture. The second child has become a nuanced church member who hopes that positive change will happen in time to stem the flow of young people leaving. The second child also told me that a facebook group was created for return missionaries from their mission who have left the church. This child has been home from their mission for only a little over two years.
Wow. I read the essay, Just, wow. We could talk about this essay for a month. Just a couple of general points not noted above:
(1) It hurts to see the Jehovah’s Witnesses missionary program and methods described as much more effective than the LDS program in so many ways. Our missionary program and our missionaries are, by objective measures, NOT VERY EFFECTIVE at what they are purportedly trying to do (teach and convert and retain).
(2) It’s clear from the essay (and I have been saying it for years now) that THE CHURCH IS NOT WELL MANAGED. The programs are not effective. Those who design and oversee these programs (senior leadership) are doing a poor job. They are not making fact-based decisions. There is little accountability for failure and little or no transparency to make the failures more widely known within the Church. If this were a corporation or a sports team, senior leaders would get fired and replaced.
Here’s a radical suggestion, based on the info in the article suggesting retention of kids born in the Church is much better than for converts but later marriage and fewer births per marriage has depressed that growth avenue for the LDS Church. Cut the missionary program by 80% — allowing many more young LDS to move forward with education, marriage, and having children without the two-year mission delay. Then shift the tens of millions of dollars saved from downsizing the traditional LDS missionary program into financial support for young LDS couples who need insurance and money to pay for expensive childbirth expenses. Leaders might even tap into that $100 Billion Fund to fund such a program. I’ll bet few of the older leaders have any clue how much anxiety couples face about the financial cost of insurance and medical expenses associated with having kids these days.
Dave B: Fantastic suggestion about providing the funds for childbirth, and I would add to that the idea that was also raised here before of providing low-cost childcare at our Churches during the week, subsidizing that with Church funds.
Another thing the Church could do (again, if you’ve got more $$ and less ability to attract and retain) is provide a range of financial benefits to members in a much more generous fashion that would make it harder for them to walk away. For example, one of the reasons people said they didn’t quit the Church even though they wanted to is that they figured that with all the tithing they’ve paid, they might turn to the Church if they suffer a financial setback. Sounds nice, but the actual reality today is that you’re more likely to go through a humiliating process to get very limited financial assistance with a lot of caveats and strings attached. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Right now, contributions to the Church are like the Roach Motel. Dollars donated check in, but they don’t check out. They just get added to the rest of the piles of coin under Smaug’s ass. A person making $150K a year paying tithing on that amount for 30 years will have paid nearly a half million (plus interest) to the Church. If they had put that into a retirement fund or savings account, they’d be in a much better financial situation. Now, obviously, for the investment they’ve made they have some other off-setting benefits, access to the Mormon social network chiefly. Still. You know what I’m saying. That’s been eroded a lot in the last 10 years to the point that it’s just not a substantial benefit to most people, particularly in the case of those inactive members thinking they are going to show up and get help when the chips are down.
Instead we’re pouring money into temples when the existing ones are not at capacity by a long stretch. It’s a pointless vanity project. When I try to think of where the magic of Mormonism happened, it’s the community. It’s always the community. We’ve eroded that and continue to erode it. In a post-Trump church, I’m not sure how you fix that. There are so many blind spots that nobody seems willing to look into.
Angela C,
“Jack’s making one salient point that’s worth calling out, that the Church itself is more worldly…”
Actually I meant to imply that the *world* is getting more worldly–sorry if I wasn’t clear. Even so, there’s no question that the world is becoming a greater challenge to the church.
A Disciple,
“(3-What Changed) President Nelson. What really changed is more decades of consolidation of church control, yielding a rigid, top-down command organization that President Nelson has embraced with enthusiasm, seemingly unaware that the organization is failing to serve the needs of members.”
I’m reminded of the old dictum: ask not what the Kingdom can do for you–ask what you can do for the Kingdom.
Interesting comments and conversation. Among the very complex problems the church has around growth, I think a major tactical mistake has been made in choosing propositions over people. I have still never heard a testimony about the truthfulness of the “body of Christ”, the egalitarian organism known as “Community”. After all, isn’t building Zion, whether literal or figurative, the preeminent goal of the restored church. And yet, we focus on people gaining a supposed spiritual confirmation of a list of truth claims. What in the heck does my assenting to the litany of dogmatic claims have to do with building community? If we want to build the kingdom of God, then we need to stop prioritizing religious ideology over what the word “God” means in the original Aramaic (Alaha), literally means “Unity”, Com-Unity (shared togetherness), At-one-ment, to me, is God’s effort to bring together that which has been separated. The gospel is the constant process of “At oneing”, as Julian of Norwich woud say.
Mormonism has a theological reason to feel a reduced sense of urgency about missionary work relative to other denominations that emphasize it so heavily: proxy ordinances. The idea of the dead getting a second chance to hear the gospel and receive ordinances that are taught to be mandatory always held a deep appeal to me because I believed in the fundamental fairness of that God. It also means that if you slack off in your missionary work, if you don’t make your members do mandatory door knocking, if you don’t go trying to set up missions where the governments are hostile to it, it’s fine! They all get another chance as this salvation thing!
Jack: Actually I think you need to rethink your comment. The idea that there is such a thing as Church that is separate from “the world” is both a myth, and also one of the longest-standing issues Christianity has faced. Consider the reformation. In pulling down the idolatry and wealth of the abbeys and cathedrals, reformists accomplished two things: 1) more power by using this wealth to enrich their “right-minded” supporters, and 2) reducing the power of the Catholic Church. But the impact to the populace was that they lost the patronage and support that the abbeys and cathedrals had always provided in those communities. You really cannot separate the financial support structures of a church from its power structures. We’re always just quibbling over where “not of the world” begins and “in the world” ends.
Excellent article and many fine comments about this problem.
I am puzzled by one thing that continues to crop up.
I can understand the idea that the LDS Church is wealthy but am not quite understanding the concept that the members are wealthy and educated.
I think this is because of my life experience, where I have lived and what I have experienced with members.
We lived for many years in a community that was near a “settlement area”.
Two small towns in our rural area of a state (not Utah)that had been settled by LDS people over a hundred years ago.
These two small towns never seemed to prosper and the LDS people who populated them lived in old broken down houses with open cesspools ( if you are not familiar with them look it up) in their back yards.
They seem to be proud of their improper use of the English language “We is, you was, I ain’t a goin ta go”.
The whole valley seem to and still does have the opinion that Mormons were not prosperous and needed to read more and work on the education of their young.
In my travels of America and the rest of the world I have not really seen the wealth and education of members except for a bit along the Wasatch front in Utah when we attened BYU and where my husband has gobs of relatives.
A lot of money (tithing money?) has gone into that Wasatch area in the last 50 years or so and many have benefited from spreading around the Lords money a bit there.
That is not my opinion, but has been yakked about by others.
This is why so many believe the Big 15 like things as they are and will probably not change.
Not the missionary program, not the temple building,not the way the stats are figured, not the lack of response to what members want and do not want.
The wealth and everything that goes with it is firmly esconed in Utah and in the families of the guys who run the show and that is where things will stay.
No questions allowed.
No answers given.
President Hinckley in 1999: “Last year there were approximately 300,000 convert baptisms throughout the Church. … I am not being unrealistic when I say that with concerted effort, with recognition of the duty which falls upon each of us as members of the Church, and with sincere prayer to the Lord for help, we could double that number.”
Fast-forward to 2023: Elder Cook is excited because there have been 82,000 baptisms from January to May, which puts us on track for 244,800 for the year. “It’s an amazing time,” he says.
1st step of any recovery program: Admit you have a problem.
Sorry, it was 102,000, not 82,000, from January to May. My bad.
Discovering the actual activity numbers for the Church is an interesting exercise. In my current ward in the heart of northern Utah County (aka the core of Mormonism even in Utah), my ward has averaged about 56% sacrament meeting attendance over the past calendar year. Even correcting for travel, vacations, callings outside of the ward, and other factors, that is pretty low given the location of the ward. I can only imagine what those numbers look like for congregations in Omaha, Brooklyn, Memphis, or Juneau…not to mention outside of the United States. I will also point out that there is a fairly sizable contingent each week who leaves after sacrament meeting. We also have significant attrition among the millenial and Gen Z cohorts, which is most noticeable in terms of numbers of missionaries produced (or not) by the ward.
The education issue brought up by A Disciple above is real. We are currently in a situation at BYU that is far more dire than the early 1990s with the September Six. While there have been no high-profile excommunications or firings, the morale in Provo is abysmal. This is due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is Clark Gilbert’s role as Commissioner of Church Education (and his influence with the ECO and on appointments on campus, most recently–and troubling–Justin Collings as AVP). Women have been excluded from leadership positions (the new law school dean and the AVP slot being the prime examples; female candidates were preferred by the search committees for both…and they did not get approval), female faculty candidates fail to get approval from the Board and/or ECO at a substantially higher rate than men, and faculty live in constant fear that something they say or write might be taken out of context and used punitively against them. And while BYU still has nationally/internationally recognized scholars, hiring trends clearly demonstrate that fealty to the institution will trump academic prowess in most instances.
As for the stone rolling or not, there are so many factors at play that it would take several books to explain them all. Some mentioned above–e.g. lower birthrates, the internet, the Church’s position on social/cultural issues–are obvious ones. Broader societal trends like the plummeting rates of religiosity also contribute to these changes. And for all of the problems that have been mentioned above, the Church’s leadership has tried to address these problems and arrest some of the decline through a decrease in expectations (e.g. two-hour block)…but given that the senior leadership came of age during the boom years, it is probably difficult for them to accept and grapple with these contemporary issues.
I could go on, but I will restrain myself. Thanks for all of the excellent comments so far.
Imagine if the church made the world a better place temporally? Instead of Bill Gates’ billions searching for a cure to Malaria, the church does it? Or how about bringing sight to those in third world countries who are blind with free glasses for the young and cataract surgery for the old? Same for healthcare, dental, food, etc. Instead of preaching the beatitudes door to door, the church uses its massive war chest of money and makes those beatitudes a literal reality?
How many people do you suppose would join that organization, gladly giving their time and money to help it do even more?
But what do I know?
A: Can you help me understand the selection of Collings for AVP? His scholarly record seems insufficient to merit the role. Reese as AVP made sense—a top-flight academic with so many A-journal publications. From outside BYU but inside academia, it’s a puzzling choice.
Call me Mark – You said quite simply what I wanted to say. Madeleine L’Engle summarizes beautifully what I believe would be our greatest growth catalyst.
“We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.” And Jesus stated in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on EARTH as it is in Heaven”.
Jesus is always trying to show what Kingdom looks like, and that in order for Heaven to exist, it must be created, beginning herenow on earth. We have strangely taken the
very predictable and not peculiar route of exclaiming, that we (the LDS church” is the way. It’s the same broken record played throughout history, exclaiming that God has created
the new “In group” and you better jump on board or else you will be left out.
How about we stop telling people we are the light, and as Mark said above, be the light. If we were that, people would be drawn to that place, not out of fear, but because they can’t
help but want to be acquainted with that light. Instead, our religious practices are largely centered around the same problem Jesus had with the Pharisees, personal piety. We have
rituals, and meetings, and ordinances, and commandments, and in a very real sense, the Gospel feels more and more like it’s an obsession with proving my own goodness.
Z: It is a mystery to be sure. Hired in 2013, Collings was not well-regarded in the law school by his colleagues, but somehow became an Associate Dean at the law school shortly after getting CFS in 2019 (BYU’s version of tenure) from 2020-2022. He then became Associate AVP for Faculty Development from 2022 until being named AVP this summer. Four years from untenured faculty to AVP is the definition of a meteoric rise–rivaling Matt Holland’s ascension to being president of UVU.
His scholarship, such as it is, is pedestrian. His primary qualification seems to be that he shares Clark Gilbert’s perspective on BYU (i.e. need for retrenchment and blaming the faculty for everything) and his political inclinations. He lacks the kind of scholarly reputation you would expect of someone in that position (even at BYU) and is definitely not popular among the faculty–he seems to think his dual Ph.D. and J.D. from Yale give him some sort of divine mandate, and his condescending attitude is apparent in every e-mail he sends to the faculty.
I get the sense that Shane Reese was forced to choose him as AVP over Brigette Madrian (current Dean of the Marriott School); the prevailing wisdom on campus is that Reese is president because he is not the type to push back on Gilbert and the Board.
One other semi-related point: so much of the conversation about BYU lately has been that the faculty are apostate and driving the chosen generation of Zion out of the Church. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only are BYU faculty the most closely vetted employees in the entire Church, but faculty are actually trying to keep many students in the Church when they come in with faith crises or problems. But it is the donors/connected elites whose children leave the Church who complain to their hooks in SLC about the alleged problems in Provo who get the attention.
It appears to me there’s been a subtle pivot in church-speak regarding Daniel dream and its prophecy about future church growth . A search of past general conference talks shows that apostles and prophets of previous decades very much believed that church membership would grow unimpeded to fill the earth. Joseph Smith said this explicitly. The thought appears to have peaked again in the 1970s when growth rate expectations increased, in part I suspect, by missionary success in Latin America. But Daniel’s dream is now much more soberly interpreted. Jack makes mention of Lehi’s dream in which Lehi saw that the church’s “members were [only] few.” I now see this contradictory view and vision paired more often with Daniel’s in church-speak. This pairing occurs on the church’s web site at the link below. The church now caveats Daniel’s dream by saying it’s merely the church’s “influence” that will fill the whole earth. I expect more of this memory hole activity going forward as the church attempts to rationalize past statements on growth with present reality.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2017/01/we-believe-the-church-will-fill-the-earth?lang=eng
Todd, I agree that, in principle, we should try to be the light instead of merely telling people that we are the light. Even so, the fact that the church may not be converting as many souls to the gospel as it used to cannot be attributed solely to its own deficiencies. Even the Savior himself offended many people just by being who he was. Indeed, the Lord’s prophets have been rejected in every age. Moses’ face literally shone with the glory of the Lord when he came down out of the mount–and the people wanted nothing to do with it.
And so, even though there’s always room for improvement among the saints–I think it hardly matters (most of the time) that the Lord has chosen the weak to declare his word. Because, ultimately, it is the light itself that the world rejects in spite of whoever the messenger might be.
Depending on which one of my social groups I look at the Church is in serious decline or is doing just fine. For example, there is only one other person in my very large Mormon family to have left the church. On the other hand, looking at my BYU social circles from both undergrad and grad school, there is quite a lot of people who have left the church, or who are at least PIMO (physically in, mentally out)
Another thought: decline in the number of baptisms is probably a lesser factor in the decline of Church growth than the the rate of apostasy after having joined the Church.
Perhaps looking at what I call tribal knowledge and it’s impact on members is worth a second glance. Joining the LDS Church is relatively easy. After just a few teachings one can join in a short period of time. Then comes tribal knowledge. All those practices and expectations that were never realized or covered before one says “I do.” The next thought is “I wasn’t expecting this!”
.
Jack, I agree with you that regardless of what the church does, there will always be those that reject the “light” per se. That, however, has become the justification used by the institution to absolve itself of the role it plays in stunted growth, poor retention, faith crises, etc. There are always 2 parties in a relationship, and for the relationship to flourish, both need to be willing to see themselves more clearly. Unfortunately, the church seems to frame the problems with almost a token of honor, supposing that their rigidity is a sign of how right they are. After all, it’s just sifting the wheat from the tares. This is a simple method of observation / judgement that rationalizes humans in “staying their hand” as King Benjamin calls it. We do it all the time, because caring is way way way more difficult that blaming.
For example, the reasons people are leaving the church are because; people want to sin, lack of faith, lazy learners, being deceived by Satan, etc. This is trained into the orthodoxed members as well to abdicate their role. It’s casting blame without asking any questions. It couldn’t possibly be because the church has lied, whitewashed it’s historical narrative, browbeat members with the “obedience” message, made worthiness a manner of assent to truth claims and a full tithe, etc. I am an active member that loves my local ward community, which to me, is what the gospel is really all about. I don’t care about our truth claims, it’s just about following Jesus, and I don’t mean proclaiming his name, I mean loving as he loved. People will come for that, but will continue to leave when they realize Sunday is just another day of the weak to pile on the shame.
They recite platitudes to maintain the status quo. They proclaim that women are equals, with their lips proclaim stuff, and then have 2 women speak in general conference. Their words often do not match their actions. They say they are flawed, but formally say they will never apologize (Oaks). It’s like a husband disclosing to his wife he is addicted to pornography, admitting his flaw, but then doing nothing to overcome the problem, expecting his spouse to give him credit for telling the truth, with no intent to change.
I agree Jack, that regardless of what the Church does, the critics will abound. But that does not mean the Church should do nothing, effectively washing their hands like Pilot, suggesting they have no fault.
Has the stone quit rolling? This was a question that was relevant in 2010 and should have been addressed. By 2016 it was apparent that the stone was rolling backward and continues to do so. A once vibrant church has become a bastion for extreme political beliefs that hold little appeal for the world in general.
For some reason, all the comments on several posts I checked here are showing [1] as the commenter’s name.
A great post! I’m not sure why, but this topic — LDS church growth (or lack of) — fascinates me. Maybe because it is so interesting to observe the stark dichotomy between the crisis of sputtering growth and core members leaving the church against the vigorous attempts by church leadership to ignore and deny the trends.
A modest example: Elder Bednar appeared at the National Press Club last year and the first question had to do with stagnant church growth in the US. Citing his prior academic experience as a statistician, Bednar then said he could only speak as an apostle and he answered that he wasn’t too sure and it was really hard to pin these things down, something, something, but don’t worry, the church is definitely growing.
I found this response to be, at best, disingenuous.
I think the most meaningful growth number — which the Q15 will not release — is how many tithe paying adults are in the pews each week. This number and its trending up or down tells you the core strength of the church. Not convert baptisms, which are juiced up and have been for decades by baptizing people on the margins and/or who don’t understand what they are getting into. Not temples because, well, with $100+ billion, you can build a lot of underused temples. Not the number of wards or stakes because we’ve all seen how wards have shrunk and stakes have gone from 8-12 units to 6-8. And so forth.
In sum, I would surmise the number of tithe paying adults in the pews is stagnant and probably trending down for all the reasons in hawkgrrls’s post. I’d add one more reason: the thousands of formerly core member who grew up Mormon, mission, temple marriage, and who are stepping away. One formerly active family who steps away for whatever reason cannot be compensated for by 10 recent, shaky baptisms. Or even 100.
What would I do to reverse the trends? I’m not sure it makes a difference. The dropping growth of the church is part of an overall drop in religiosity. If this were God’s church and God was giving revelation to the Q15, then you’d think some public miracles and fulfilled prophecies might be in order to draw His children’s attention to His plan.
That said, the church could do so much more to be transparent, charitable, and love people more than the institution. If you can’t grow, at least you can be good. Oh and I would cease having the church run by white consersvative men in their late 80s and 90s, sadly past their prime years.
What do I think current church leaders will do? Very, very little. Making changes, especially significant ones, implies that previous doctrines and prophetic pronouncements were incorrect. Or in other words, if the prior prophets weren’t right then why should I worry as much about what the current prophet says ? That is a fearsome road that no one in the Q15 wants to go down.
Another factor to consider is all American institutions are in decline and have been for decades. From Gallup:
“Confidence has generally trended downward since registering 48% in 1979 and holding near 45% in the 1980s. It averaged closer to 40% in the 1990s and early 2000s before dropping to the low 30% range in the 2010s. Last year was the first time it fell below 30%.”
“Americans’ confidence in institutions in 2023 represents the continuation of the historic confidence deficit recorded a year ago. None of the 15 institutions rated annually managed to repair their images, with many remaining at or near their all-time lows. While hardly encouraging, the good news is that none worsened significantly.”
https://news.gallup.com/poll/508169/historically-low-faith-institutions-continues.aspx
~A Disciple
To the commenter above who noted that all commenters’ names are showing as [1}, I am seeing the same thing. I suspect this is the first step in the Church takeover of W&T. They are implementing this change in line with D&C 38, which reminds us that “if ye are not one [1], ye are not mine.”
I saw that conference with Bednar and was gobsmacked by his inability to answer a basic objective question. He danced like the best of politicians,
evading the question by stating his authority, which somehow made him dumber. .
Ziff: We just wanted ALL commenters to feel special. You’re #1! You’re #1! (Apparently it happened to BCC, too, so it seems more likely that Elon Musk considered buying WordPress for a minute, and the programming, in anticipation, started to glitch).
EastCoastGuy made a vry good suggestion.
He said he would like to see the stats on how many tithe payers were in the pews each Sunday.
So would I.
I would also like to see the traffic numbers on the attendance for each of our Temples, month/week/day.
None of this is hard to produce and publish.
I think we would be astonished as to how little many of our Temples are used.
Some are only open a few days a week and some by appointment only.
I an not saying they should not be built but perhaps we should have more info on the stats.
Chloe: There was a point on an episode of RFM (can’t remember who said it), that whenever the Church tells you something, it’s because the thing they aren’t telling you is much worse. Now, obviously, that’s true of any organization so it’s hardly surprising. It’s why the old adage “figures lie and liars figure” holds true (even if it’s not lying, there’s always spin on what info gets shared.)
Chloe, even the Los Angels Temple, one the original “large” temple is only open 3 1/2 days a week now.
Latter-day Struggle podcast has now released parts 3 and 4 (with more to come). I highly recommend you take a listen.
Here is how I would reverse the trend if it were up to me (which thankfully it is not):
I would have the missionaries stop catfishing on social media.
I would have the missionaries out in yellow shirts doing service (both formally and informally) but the service would need to be coordinated to be intentional and appropriate so as to not displace paid labor but give us visibility.
I would have missionaries be allowed to actually care about their converts. I was told on my mish last century that once they were dunked they were the ward’s problem. We moved on and apparently so did they, but not in the church. The members hardly knew them and we were told to avoid them becoming attached to us. I knew this was wrong at the time (but I was striving to be exactly obedient so I complied) and I know it’s wrong now. Let the missionaries continue to build relationships with new converts until the members are ready to take over. In other words, stop caring about numbers and start caring about people.
All of this is still of course just a band aid until we actually become a community of people worth joining. And currently we are not. We could be, if we loved and laughed more and judged less. It’s possible.
A: Thank you for the inside view on Collings. I have to say that I’m more than a little disheartened. I’m at a great R1 now and really enjoy the environment and my highly productive colleagues, but my aspiration has been to move to BYU after my youngest child graduates from high school in a few years to “give back.”
Most of what I’m hearing recently from faculty I know at BYU is giving me pause, though. They echo your comments about the retrenchment and a further deprioritization of research. These are some of the finest, most-committed disciples I know, and several have made statements about feeling muzzled both on campus and at church lest they be accused of wrong-think by the thought police. And most of what they feel uncomfortable saying seems totally benign to me.
I have to be missing something because it just doesn’t make sense to me. If good scholars leave (or won’t come) to BYU, the ranking falls and our most talented youth go elsewhere. And then we miss the opportunity to solidify testimonies in a faith-friendly environment and retain them at an even worse rate than we do now. Gilbert and Company have to understand this, right?
Chadwick: Yes, the episode just released today was really interesting, even more than the prior ones to me, as I haven’t talked to any missionaries in the last few years. What Valerie described as their tactics was surprising and just, wow, bad. Friending randos on social media to chat them up about the Church is not a good look at all, and the missionaries she talked to who never left their apartment? I didn’t expect that. As to not being a community worth joining, I could not agree more, and the community really used to be something enviable. Right now, I don’t even want to be there. Why would I invite anyone else to be around these toxic, bishop-tattling, Trump-loving sheeple?
Second comment: The Church has gone from being more or less respected in say the 1980s to now, just 40 years later, being regarded as just odd or somewhat crazy (for the things most Mormons believe) or morally retrograde (opposing LGBT, etc.). Rather than anticipating social change and staying ahead of it, or at least keeping up, the Church lags — it always lags — and even then often opposes positive social change rather than accommodate it in some fashion. That approach is simply incompatible with an evangelizing church with 80,000 missionaries out there. You can’t tarnish your own brand, then expect people to respond positively to your message. And it’s unfair to the missionaries we send out.
Another proposed change: Give up the coffee ban. Just say, “After further review of reliable medical and health literature, we now conclude that the health dangers have been exaggerated. Members may now drink coffee if they so choose.” Instantly, the Mormon crazy meter moves twenty points towards normal. Okay, they would say “We got a revelation — God says you can drink coffee now.” Whatever. They gave up polygamy. They gave up the priesthood ban. Giving up the coffee ban seems like an easy thing compared to those seismic changes. Memo to leadership: data shows about a third of younger Mormons have already given up the coffee ban. New concept: Revelation from below.
The Church needs a prophet with the charisma of JS who can unite the conservatives and progressives who can develop a program closer to Christ’s vision. Right now both the conservatives and progressives are frustrated with leadership. This may be good. The middle road. But, it doesn’t appear to working. We all need unite around Christ’s teachings.
@Ziff
I like your interpretation more than mine – I was beginning to feel like I was skiing naked.
Roger wrote “Right now both the conservatives and progressives are frustrated with leadership.”
The Apostle Paul wrote as revelation of God: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
The great paradox of Christianity is it simultaneously sees itself as a minority, rejected by the world and yet adherents are perpetually hopeful their message will be popular. The great temptation for church leaders is to seek popularity by means other than the true word of God. Most churches go down this road and with each compromise find themselves pulled further into the ways of the world.
^ The Apostle John – Revelation 3:15-16
@A Disciple the great temptation for church leaders is to seek control, irrespective of coherency. Irrespective of verity. Irrespective of Charity, and sovereignty of soul, both of which constitute the Mormon, mythic fulcrum of atonement: Christ.
Yet all of this remains beyond your capacity to comprehend- at least until your loyalty to each, or any of these values becomes no more sacrificed upon the altar of institutional loyalty.
@Canadian Dude
What is your basis for attacking me and write “this remains beyond your capacity to comprehend”? What is your evidence to say I am guilty of “institutional loyalty”? My allegiance is to truth. What makes you believe otherwise?
Disciple, I can’t speak for roger Hansen, but in your comment you quoted Roger writing “Right now both the conservatives and progressives are frustrated with leadership.” And then you quoted the Apostle Paul speaking for God, the scripture about men’s works being neither hot nor cold etc, and God will spue them out of his mouth. That dinged my false equivalence bell a little, but it wasn’t enough of consequence to get after you for it. But since you asked…
There’s no equivalency or even a relationship between both conservatives and progressives frustrated with leadership, and the lukewarm works of men. You are capable of making a well drawn argument. This ain’t it.
“There’s no equivalency or even a relationship between both conservatives and progressives frustrated with leadership, and the lukewarm works of men.”
How about we explore this? Who is the served by the current LDS program? What are the priorities of the LDS program? What is the leadership saying? What is it doing? Where is leadership spending money? What about the LDS program is unsettling to “Conservatives”? Why is it not meeting the expectations of “Progressives”?
My read is the LDS church has been consumed by its corporate owner. Where once the church was run as a franchise model with stakes and wards independently owned and operated under the umbrella of centralized Priesthood authority, every property of the church is now owned and controlled by the corporation. The essence of corporate operation is moderation. Every decision is processed by committees and agreement is only realized by compromise. Furthermore, in a corporate structure, money and finance have significant influence in moderating decisions. The larger the financial stake, the less willing the institution becomes to make risky decisions. An organization that has much also has much to lose.
So yes, the LDS church is corporate. It is moderate. It is centrist. It makes both conservatives and progressives unhappy. It also makes God unhappy. For a church concerned about pleasing the most people – and pleasing the “popular” people – is a church less concerned about pleasing God. Don’t listen to me. Read what God has said.
“O ye wicked and perverse and stiffnecked people, why have ye built up churches unto yourselves to get gain?” – Mormon 8:33
“And the Gentiles are lifted up in the pride of their eyes, and have stumbled, because of the greatness of their stumbling block, that they have built up many churches; nevertheless, they put down the power and miracles of God, and preach up unto themselves their own wisdom and their own learning, that they may get gain and grind upon the face of the poor.” – 2Nephi26:20
So yes, a church that seeks to become wealthy and popular is a church that will offend Conservatives (denying miracles) and Liberals (cheating the poor) and also offend God (because it is lukewarm).
A Disciple: “the LDS church is corporate. It is moderate. It is centrist.” Hey, I know this game. It’s two lies and a truth, right?
I’m trying to limit my number of comments to three per thread–but I must answer this:
A Disciple: “O ye wicked and perverse and stiffnecked people, why have ye built up churches unto yourselves to get gain?”
Who’s getting rich off the church?
Disciple, perhaps I misunderstood your original comment way back there to mean that your quote from Paul/God about lukewarm folks was applied to both conservatives and progressives in their frustrations with leadership, and my point was frustrated members doesn’t equal lukewarm members. Or perhaps you now emphasize the leadership as the offending lukewarmists, (it wasn’t clear before)and now direct your scriptural quotes toward the corporate church. Fine by me. Explore and pontificate as you wish, it’s no concern to me.
Side note: In your ramp up to your exploration, you sure asked A Lot of questions that went unanswered. It wasn’t clear if you expected your readers to answer them all, or what was your intention. But after a lifetime of the corporate church using variations of this technique (posing rhetorical questions) on members to lead them to correlated conclusions, while appearing to foster critical thinking, this sort of communication gets the side eye from me, and a hard pass. Just say clearly what you mean and back it up with good sense and sound logic and be done with it. Unless you have unspecified motives you wish to conceal.
Angela, I also listened to Valerie and Nathan’s podcast and my jaw just about hit the floor. In checking with my brothers who all served missions between 1981-1991 they corroborated everything that Valerie and Nathan said about the numbers games and unethical methods of getting baptisms. All three said that they hated their missions for this and for many other reasons.
One brother lived in the Deep South on his mission, and his sweet little landlady was a Baptist who took excellent care of him and his companion. His new MP insisted that they give her the lessons and baptize her. The landlady had already made it clear from the day that they moved in that she had no interest whatsoever in the church. My brother and his companion refused to trespass on her hospitality or to go against her stated wishes. The MP wouldn’t take NO for an answer and transferred my brother and his companion elsewhere for their “disobedience” and also called my parents to complain about my brother and threaten to send him home “dishonorably”. The next pair of missionaries lasted less than a week because of their high pressure proselytizing tactics (despite her making her wishes known up front) and this good lady refused to rent to the missionaries anymore. She stayed in contact with my brother and sent him goodie boxes until the mission ended. My brother said that she was the best Christian he’d ever met (besides our dad’s mom), and he felt sick about how poorly the MP and the new missionaries had treated her.
Some commenters lament “the old days” when wards actually felt like families and that the spirit of love and concern for one another was palpable when you walked through the doors at church. I remember a time when I actually felt comfortable inviting people not of our faith who were visiting me and my family to attend church with us if they so chose. Not now! Frankly, I don’t know anyone who feels comfortable inviting someone to church. Between the funereal hymns that sound like a closet full of squeaky mice, the boring regurgitated rehashes of rehashes of conference talks, and the tendency for Sunday School classes to turn into wild conspiracy theory fests and/or lessons that are dumbed down to the lowest possible level, there is little if anything uplifting, thoughtful or informative about going to church these days. At least in my stake and the stakes that my sibs, relatives and friends live in.
It feels like the leaders from the Q15 on down to bishops and branch presidents don’t trust members to make ANY type of decisions or be able to think for themselves anymore. The church becomes more and more authoritarian as time goes by. In spite of the billions of dollars in the church’s coffers they have become a lot more stingy when it comes to funding even the basic needs in wards and branches. Meanwhile, overly, embarrassingly lavish temples are being built in places that few members can or will visit because they’re usually built in places where there is little or no public transit and not everyone has or can afford a car to get them there. At the same time the poorer members are being castigated by their leaders for actually daring to ask for any sort of financial assistance from their congregations.
It feels like we need a “re-restoration” in order to clean up the mess that has been created during the past 20 or so years. Our church could become such a vibrant worldwide spiritual community that takes the Savior’s teachings seriously and where sacrament “meeting” becomes a real and true “worship service” instead. The question is: Do the leaders and the members have the will to HONESTLY confront the problems and challenges that we currently struggle with, or will we continue with the same old, same old attitude that “All is well in Zion. Zion prospers.”? I pray for the former to happen but fear that the latter will continue on until the church is just a sad shell of its former self.
Stranger, I appreciate your comment about a “re-restoration.” A jewel has many facets, so here’s another facet on the same topic. Which does the Church seek to grow in its members: obedience or charity? Do leaders (at all levels) want members in the pews who are obedient and are focused on obedience, or who are charitable and are focused on doing good? I think that the answer is absolutely and clearly obedience, but I think that the answer should be charity. A person who is striving to develop charity will usually develop obedience along the way, but a person who is striving to develop obedience will not necessarily develop charity. The focus should be on charity, but it generally is not. And we judge people by their obedience, not by the goodness of their hearts. Jesus said “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” You can keep many of the commandments without love for your fellowman, but if one properly learns to love and seeks to practice brotherly love, then keeping the commandments should naturally follow. I’d like to see more focus on charity, as I think that this is the best way to encourage and build obedience.
Georgis – thank you for that very useful post. I, in my mid-life, have found myself questioning our order of operations. We have many gospel principles that continue to solve the addition and subtraction portions of the equation first, out of order, and then wonder why we are not getting the correct answer. Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 in Matthew 9, right before the story about the woman with the issue of blood. He say’s “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.’ Dave Brisban eloquently states the problem: “The quality of the means we use ALWAYS matches the quality of the ends we produce.” In other words, if the end we desire is to produce disciples, who love AS Jesus loved them, then focusing on piety and personal purity (obedience) will never be up to the job.
Jesus’ Atonement is “The Atonement”, the preeminent covenantal relationship to breathe new life into a world attempting to solve problems backwards. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, love your neighbor and despise your enemy, and justice demands penalty and other ideas we have accepted as truth. You have heard it said that the definition of insanity is; “Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.” Well, preaching obedience first is the attempt to teach people to love others by obsessing about yourself, that’s backwards.
When Jesus says he is the way, he is always trying to disrupt a pattern that has no chance of bringing about eternal life (kingdom).
We need a new way to bring about justice and goodness, not the same old way. Albert Einstein reportedly once said, “We cannot solve a problem at the same level of consciousness that it was created”.
Jesus doesn’t appear to be paying the penalty demanded by cosmic justice, it seems he is trying to kill the idea altogether. He is the last sacrifice, the eternal and infinite one, to bring to a close the barbaric idea that we can punish humanity into goodness. It’s almost impossible to realize and experience God’s grace and mercy while holding a toxic image of how God operates. Poor theology has led most people to view God as a sometimes-benevolent Santa Claus or as an unforgiving tyrant who is going to punish us if we don’t do exactly as he tells us. (Who would love, or even trust, a god like that?)
I really like the picture the OP included with the post, and the initial reference to the stone cut out of the mountain. I also remember growing up hearing about how the stone was the church, and thus a symbol of both God’s favor and the inevitability of the LDS church’s triumph.
But I now think this was based on incorrect guesses as to both what the stone meant, as well was the fate of the church, and that is why you are seeing the results the OP highlighted. Nothing wrong, however, with guessing wrong so long as one admits it was a guess and is open to other interpretations and exploring new ideas.
As to my own guess regarding this stone… I think it is an example of Mormons taking a thing to be symbolic when a more literal interpretation might be appropriate. There is symbolism in Nebuchadnezzer’s dream, and Daniel goes into that, but I think at a basic level the stone is what it is: a stone. I don’t think that the possibility that a stone should play a role in both establishing God’s kingdom on the earth and destroying all others should be surprising to members of the church, since stones play such a central role in church doctrine and stories (or used to… we don’t speak about them much anymore, and they definitely don’t seem to be used by anybody).
Lehi quoted Joseph as to the promise of a seer when God’s work would begin in the last days, and seers need stones by definition. The LDS church has canonized the guess (another incorrect one, I think) that this seer was/ is Joseph Smith, but I don’t believe this is so. It is somebody else. In any case, I think the stone that this seer will use is the same one that Nebuchadnezzer dreamed of and when it is removed from its hiding place under a mountain (by non-human hands), God’s work will commence and bring about what Daniel, Lehi, and others saw.
Anyway, could be wrong, I suppose. If right, though, then I guess the solution for the church to reverse the trends highlighted is pretty straightforward: go find a seer stone (and a seer).