The question of just what is the LDS Church is one that gets asked from time to time. The question it really asks where does a church fit in the members lives and what need does it fill?
That question has become relevant across denominations again as attendance has started to drop and conversions are fading. Churches are losing relevance.
At one time, about a hundred years ago the answer for the LDS was simple. The “ Mormon” Church was really an ethnic group. Activity was often around 15% to 20% — the vast majority of those who identified as “Mormon” did not attend meetings as meetings were not relevant to identity.
It was a heritage rather than a religion
Since then the LDS Church has been many things and fit in many ways into people’s lives. Some of these were more engaging than others.
You can get an idea of what a church is to someone by how it is talked about. This is true for how it was talked about in the past as well as now.
For example, you might hear a church referred to as a family or a community. The church might be called a beacon of truth or the covenant path. Perhaps you’ve heard a church called other things.
What it is called reflects its engagement in the lives of its members.
At its most involved and highest attendance the LDS Church combined elements of extended family and community with chapels constantly full of activities and attendance.
The church was community and family.
At its least relevant a church has been a place for ordinances but not a place that engages or creates relevance. Many churches exist for people to attend for Christmas and Easter.
That makes a church irrelevant the rest of the year.
One symptom of a loss of relevance is dropping attendance. After all, people don’t attend a church that has no meaning for them. If a church doesn’t feed the needs of members they go elsewhere.
The loss of meaning reflects a loss of primacy of identity. This shows up when political and social identity is more important to someone than church membership. “I’m a Mormon” becomes “I’m a Republican” or “I’m a Democrat.”
It is interesting to see.
I don’t have answers for what is happening but I do have questions.
When you look at the drop off in attendance and in people who identify as LDS, what do you think would make it more relevant for you?
We can guess as to what would make a church relevant to other people. But only you can answer what makes a church relevant to you.
The real question of relevance is what would make you look forward to your next time at Church? What do you look forward to and what do you get from church attendance?
What would you like to see or experience?
What makes a church about you rather than expecting you to be about the church?
Let me know.
Wheat & Tares 
For example, if you are in a ward that has “the same twenty people” who rotate all the callings, it is a social club for the same twenty and a high school fan club for those people that everyone else gets to belong to.
Many claim that for general authorities and board members that the church is an exclusive country club with tiered membership (do you have a stipend or not? do you have a lifetime membership or not?).
There are many other ways to look at how the Church functions for different tier of membership and different people.
I was listening to 2 Nephi this morning and finished with 2 Nephi 19 and it got me to thinking of it vis a vis a message for our times. Still thinking.
What in the world is that table of numbers supposed to be? I mean, I can make some guesses. The columns might be age ranges, and if the I interpret the the 0-39 column as a percentage, then the rows add to 100%. But even assuming that, what do these numbers represent? Where did these numbers come from? I’m going with . . . age of former bus drivers from Arkansas at time of death. Or maybe it’s the total annual consumption of fruit by Canadians (in pounds). Or is it hours per month spent wearing socks?
My daughters loathe attending church but look forward to Activity Days. Activity Days is fun. The leaders are women who obviously and genuinely care. Both retired ladies with the time and the ability to put a lot into the calling. Plus, at nearly every activity they do something that feels relevant to my daughters.
Church too often feels neither relevant nor enjoyable. Come because God says or else just isn’t a message that resonates. If we could take the sacrament and then DO something: run a soup kitchen, teach English to refugees, donate blood—anything. Pre-kids I loved working in Primary or nursery because at least I felt I was spelling parents. And since I’ve become the organist and primary pianist, even though I’m terrible, I enjoy church a bit more because I’m doing SOMEthing relevant. Except some of our music is as stale and colorless as most of our lesson material. Fortunately, I’ve also been given the latitude to try and work on that. So things on a Sunday by Sunday basis are a bit better for me.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the table represents membership (attendance? actual members–e.g. still on the records?) by age range during each of these years. I believe these numbers were shared on social media by Lindsay Hansen Park, but I didn’t see firsthand. If so I’m honestly baffled by the low % in the 0-39, so maybe that’s not what it’s showing. To me, the church has always been very child- and youth-centric. The problem that creates in terms of relevance is that once you become an empty nester, there’s no there there (caring for the kids of other people isn’t bad, though).
But the biggest issue in terms of relevance is that the messages are more about how to be a good Mormon than how to be a good person, and are quite clearly more about the teachings of Nelson & Oaks than the teachings of Jesus. I’m sure they can’t tell the difference (just as I can’t tell the difference between my best advice and the teachings of Jesus), but a whole bunch of us CAN tell the difference.
Angela & Dave, the numbers have to do with a different denomination’s numbers of who donates. Basically, below a certain age a de minimus percentage of that faith’s members donate to it.
It was just for color to reflect that declining engagement affects everyone.
My apologies for it being a distraction.
A millstone
As far as relevance, Angela is correct about as someone without children at home, they don’t have a calling for the women. Somehow the church thinks women with babies needs more babies, so they put them in nursery, women with small children need more small children, and women with YW need more YW, and of course, women with no children at home are not good for anything. I mean, it couldn’t possibly be that the church sees women as nothing but mothers, [sarcasm off] and far be it from the men in possessions of power to realize that mothers actually need a break from children and that grandmothers are a thing too. You know, grandmothers might love to work in primary or nursery.
What I would want from a church is uplifting, inspirational type talks and lessons, and community with a few close friends, and a calling or other organized opportunity to serve. All I was getting from church was “pay us more tithing” and “stay on the covenant path” and “you aren’t doing enough or paying enough.” If I want to feel that I am not good enough, well I have emotionally abusive parents for that, and they have done such a fine job of that that even though they are both dead and buried, I still hear them in my head, so I really don’t need more of my failings listed by my religion. I was shoved to the side by the tendency to ignore empty nest women, while my husband was still needed, which just left me home alone a lot because the callings he got were not teaching during regular church hours, but things that took him away at other times. The church realizes that teens and children need activities and a chance to socialize, so they provide activity days and YM/YW activities, and plenty of single adult activities. But once you are married, you are supposed to have 100% of your social needs met by your spouse. Sorry, but that isn’t how humans work.
So, why donate my money, when they just hoard it in investments and build malls, and only a very small percent goes to any humanitarian cause, maybe only a fraction of a percent. And they don’t even want my time except my butt sitting in a pew being bored out of my mind so they have good attendance. So, why? They are totally irrelevant.
So, what is church to me? Something that only causes harm by repeating my emotionally abusive childhood, and does no good in my life.
What isn’t existentially satisfying about being a “mobot” repeating correlated content on the correlated covenant path conforming to milk-toast Utah culture? Year after year after year. So satisfying.
Sheesh, so many complainers. SLC works around the clock to run everything so that only the absolute minimum is required of us. Everything we receive is generic enough to apply to everyone while simultaneously applying to no one. Isn’t that clever? And the people have the audacity to burn out and complain that it is “hallow” and “irrelevant”. Ingrates!
It’s like they yearn to be needed, to create, to build, to be visionaries and miracle workers themselves. If such idealism comes from the pioneer or convert blood, a few more generations of maintenance-era mormonism* should flush that out.
Foolish rank and file may feel disgruntled if they pretend to be Don Quixotes- out on an impossible noble quest to eradicate poverty, hunger, sickness, war, and bring about millennial peace etc. No need to go to all that trouble. Life is celebrated best in mediocrity, in quiet obedience, in the small daily things like painting the cover of your Book of Mormon with folk art or cleaning cheerios from the pews. (By the way, how can you go off and change the world when there are still cheerio crumbles in 89% of the chapels you supposedly just cleaned? Just celebrate the little tender mercies in life and get back to basics. That’s contentment!
*My apologies to the good Lord and RMN for saying the word “Mormonism” which I understand was a win for Satan today.
Anna asked for “uplifting, inspirational type talks and lessons, and community with a few close friends, and a calling or other organized opportunity to serve.”
I’ve given up on the lessons. I do feel that I have some friends and an opportunity to serve in coed Activity Days. As Margie mentioned, the fun activities are meaningful to the kids.
I counted on Sunday. There were seven husband-wife couples in our meeting. Approximately 60 people overall. Tiny wards have challenges, but they also have the advantage of being so desperate for bodies that you don’t have to fit the Molly Mormon mold. Our two YW counselors both have high-paid STEM careers!
Both our primary teachers are older women. One is about 60 and I think the other is north of 70. There is another elderly woman (north of 70) that is passionate about music and has been the ward music leader for a decade. Another is in the RS presidency. Those are the only empty-nesters that are physically capable of regular church attendance. They are very much a critical part of the ward functioning. We have no able-bodied empty-nester men, though the Sunday School president is able to serve well with his cane. I would say there is a clearer model for where women are needed in their 60s or 70s than where men are needed.
Anna noted that “You know, grandmothers might love to work in primary or nursery.” Often true! And also on the high council or other places where decisions are made!
TinyWard commented that “there is a clearer model for where women are needed in their 60s or 70s than where men are needed.” There’s some truth here that many older adults are “put out to pasture” and that this affects men as well as women, many of whom continue to have the capacity to contribute. The Breaking Down Patriarchy podcast speaks of the idea that patriarchy harms most men and all women. The host notes that an ongoing restoration could end patriarchy which is found in all cultures and has damaging effects wherever it is found.
I was teaching EQ during most of the pandemic. Now that our son is growing up, a main reluctance we have in continuing to attend (we have stopped) is that we are worried about what values he is going to absorb from our church community. The post by Dave B. about US politics and the church really resonated with me. We increasingly feel alienated from the larger LDS culture as it becomes similar to evangelical Christians’ embrace of Trump.
For starters though, I think we would want all primary and youth leaders to have a formal background check, which has not happened. We are in southern Utah and following the story of Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt has been eye-opening. A lot of these harmful views are prevelant in a lot of lay members in our estimation.
Sometimes people talk about “bishop roulette”, but I think there is such thing as youth leader roulette too. There are a lot of ideas we are uncomfortable with that we do not want our son being exposed to right now. If church participation and lessons were geared around Christ, love, service, compassion, and charity, that would be great. But I feel like what our son will get will be lessons on modesty, gender roles, purity culture, and anti-LGBTQ messaging. Even if this is not what is being taught from general conference lessons, it sure is transmitted in numerous ways culturally and a normalization of these ideas passively. I cringe to remember a lady in our ward giving a talk from the pulpit about how she was so glad she did not waste time pursuing a higher education because all she wanted to do was be a mom. I was uncomfortable with my son getting that type of a message and feeling like we had to “unteach” a lot of what he was getting from church. Also, we do not feel comfortable with any one-on-one worthiness interviews between 18 and so how do we in good conscience participate in a congregation that has, in our view, values that we do not want shared?
For us, what we would want out of church participation is something that makes life a bit easier, not harder. I would want to see daycares run in empty chapels during the week, babysitting options for parents to go on dates, activities geared around communal meals or meal prep (for men and women) to economize and save money. Instead of cleaning the chapel, more efforts like Meals on Wheels or volunteers to drive elderly for medical appointments. For as much as we say we are a family-friendly church, it does not feel that way. I want to see more efforts to build homes for the homeless, widow, and orphans. My wife works full-time and is a mom. She always felt like there was so much pressure put on her to plan girls’ camp or to be involved in the friendship committee. We barely have time to get everything done around our own house, we certainly don’t have time to clean the chapel.
I wanted to make one additional comment. My mother was the RS society in Utah County and her husband is a temple sealer. She is remarried and only 1 of the 5 adult step-siblings are active/involved in the church. I am the oldest of 6 and my wife and I are the only ones in our family who would affiliate, even though we are not currently attending.
One huge source of frustration among my siblings is the amount of time that the church demands. My younger sister was really struggling with having 3 young children under 5 and my mom was spending the equivalent of a part-time job doing many things for the ward. My sister really could have used the assistance of my mom in meaningful ways, but most of the free time my mom had was being devoted to the needs of the ward. A lot of my siblings resent the fact that my mom spends an inordinate amount of time and energy “magnifying her calling” when her children are in the deep end drowning.
What do I want from the church? Now that I have disabled children I long for the reassurance that our ward community would take care of them in financial and substantial ways if it becomes necessary after our death, even if they are inactive and antisocial. Instead I live with the knowledge of homeless and disabled friends who have repeatedly appealed to various wards for aid as they have moved around, and have been turned away and only occasionally helped in minor ways. They have been treated badly for asking at times, and given no real attention to help with Sel Reliance, even when they have specifically asked for the course.
I want the church to face up to the fact some people cannot become self reliant (at least not quickly or easily and at times not at all) and that doesn’t make them lazy or undeserving of help. I want the church to provide shelters for homeless families so no family is ever again required to turn their child over to the state as a foster child to get them shelter. That would truly be a meaningful way to say families are forever. Help families be forever in this life.
I want the church to make a place in our community and theology of heaven for every person including LGBTQ. I want them to include women as full and equal partners in the leadership of the church. I am not willing to accept anyone’s identity making them a 2nd class citizen in the church.
I want full financial transparency from the church here on out. I want background checks on every one working with children. I want to eliminate worthiness interviews, and put a window in the bishop’s door, for when they listen to members concerns. I want RS presidents to be given the same deference, privilege, training and authority as bishops. A good beginning could be making a woman a counselor in the bishopric and have be the connection with the RS and YM and Primary presidencies. There are many ways we could change things. Let’s try more of them.
I want the church leadership to encourage open discussion of controversial subjects like blacks and women and the priesthood, the SEC violations, the lawsuits from victims of sexual abuse, AT church. I want them to openly admit mistakes and apologize for problems they are trying to fix. I want them to teach real and controversial church history instead of faith promoting narratives. I want them to teach changes in policy/doctrine openly and repeatedly instead of avoiding the discussion.
I want the word true eliminated from all testimonies. I want lessons on avoiding simplistic, black and white, magical, thinking. I want anti prosperity gospel lessons and anti racism lessons. I want lessons on faith in God regardless of our circumstances and faith in other people and never judging them, regardless of their circumstances.
I want mothers taught to honor their children’s agency, and to give up believing they are responsible for their children’s actions.
I want our focus to be strictly on following Christ, and not about knowing anything. I want the church to admit uncertainty and accept doubt as a virtue necessary to build faith.
A great leap forward would be a church that supports victims of sexual abuse instead of harboring pedophiles.