My aunt and mother came to visit me this week. Both are TBM. Their entire lives revolve around the church, and they don't even live in the Morridor. My aunt was lamenting because the church redrew her stake boundaries and now she has to travel 18 miles one way to attend her new ward. The stake president announced at her stake conference that the church would not build another meetinghouse until every building had four wards in it because India and China are going to open up to missionaries "soon" and the members in those countries will be so poor that their tithing will not cover the cost of building a meetinghouse or a temple. Apparently, the church is trying to save as much money as possible in the US so that it can spend money on members in those countries.

Oh, the brainwashing in my family is deep. It makes me sad.

Of course, all of us here know why ward and stake boundaries were shuffled.

Is this rumor circulating elsewhere? Or is this just a Colorado thing?

Translation:

Lots of people are leaving the church, and taking their tithing money with them. Revenues are down, profits are down...so we have to tighten our belts a bit in the places where we're pretty sure we can ask people to clean toilets and share an over-crowded building without them leaving. We hope.

Unfortunately, my family will be the last to leave. They are TBM to the core. Pioneer stock. they will believe anything the GAs spew from the pulpit. My dad is the exception. I suspect he is just playing the game and will quietly leave once my mom dies (I suspect he will outlive her, but they are both healthy and in their 60s so it may be a long time coming).

So far, I am the only one who has left, out of everyone in my family on both sides. I always hold out the hope that more will join me. It's fun here on the dark side. And I have 10% more money. That's nice too.

Same appears to be true in the heart of Utah. New meetinghouse construction has been significantly curtailed so as to maximize existing capacity regardless of distance, or so I have heard. But I heard it was because of growth in Africa that is happening right now, not growth that may or likely may not happen in India or China.

Could the rearranging of boundaries perhaps be so certain wealthier wards would associate together in special stakes. This is notorious in Utah all designed so Mormon royalty will marry within special clans.

Hmm...didn't think of that. Certainly could be true. When I was growing up in CO, there were blatant "rich" stakes and "poor" stakes in my city. I attended seminary in a "rich" stake, but my ward was in a "poor" stake. The differences were pretty obvious.

What part of Colorado? I was a missionary in the Colorado Springs mission and I definitely noticed what you're talking about with the class divisions.

While a missionary in CA, I was in a stake where they re-drew the boundaries to try to include more "variety" of members from different socioeconomic classes. I wasn't there long, but I recall the routine every sunday of going around trying to line up rides not only for our investigators, but other members from the poorer/worse neighborhoods who didn't have reliable transportation (and/or were "less" active). Being a missionary, of course, we had our reliable...bicycles! no rides for us!

Just baptised Frodo!!

Need to tear down meetinghouses in the US and ship materials to Middle Earth!

News flash: India is open. China? Well,... Technically. There are missionaries in Taiwan, which is not NOT part of China, and in Hong Kong, technically part of China. Missionaries will never be allowed in the mainland, although seniors do go there to teach square dancing and English, then claim they "went on a mission to China."

The corporation is not looking at the big picture. Sat you are the 4 th ward on Sunday. How filthy will the place be. It is bad if you Re the 3 Rd ward.

Growing up with 3 wards to a building the tines were always 9-12, 11-2, and 1-4. Would the 4th ward go from 3-6? That sounds terrible! Attendance will surely suffer during football season lol.

I've heard that some buildings shorten the meeting time to 2.5 hours when they have four wards in the building. I suspect my parents are currently in a four-ward building since their meetings don't end until 6 PM. I suspect that makes their assigned time 3-6 PM. How awful. I'm a morning person. The best time for doing anything is first thing in the morning. Then you have the rest of the day to do whatever.

We were assigned to that dreadful 3-6 pm slot back in the 80s. We were supposed to rotate forward to the 9-12 after enduring that miserable slot, but our asshat BP told the SP that we members just loved that late shift so we got it for additional year while the other wards rotated as planned, I hated getting out in the dark evening. Most of the time, the outdoor parking lights were not lit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2017 09:00PM by messygoop.

Sacrament Meeting started at 6:00 PM and ended at 7:30 PM.

We had one ward in our church house.

If you were lucky you could make it home for the Ed Sullivan Show, and definitely in time for Gunsmoke; my grandparents would often come and watch on our TV because we had a newer model with clearer picture.

I remember in First Grade getting to leave just a bit early from Sacrament Meeting so we could go home and watch The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

This was before the Nazi Era of the Church however.

We got the dreadful 3-6 slot in the late 1980's or early 1990's. As a kid, I found that dreadful!

We would have to wait around all Sunday to go to church. You couldn't do anything where you might get dirty, so it was just sitting around. Simply awful!

The fact that you had an assigned time was simply unbearable.

They're usually 9 with SM last, 9:30 with SM first, 1 with SM last, 1:30 with SM first. They told us there was a building freeze a couple years ago, but they just said it was because of tight budgets. They never made any excuses about growth in China, etc...

Even if missions opened all over China, they wouldn't be building much for a LONG time. The church had been in my mission area for 50+ years by the time I was there, and they mostly met in rented houses. The whole mission had ~60 wards and branches but only 2 actual church buildings.

Sounds like Lying For The Lord.


Or, sounds like "Dad" (SLC) telling his kids "We're going to have to cut back on food and clothing" as he drives off in his chauffereud armored Audi limo'.

Hmm. But they can still afford to build a mall, a housing development in Florida and hold real estate all over the world. Seems like they could manage their money better. Maybe they could take out a loan from the business arm of the church.

I was given "called" the job of keeping a Stake Center cleaned for 15 months. The building had 4 wards (one was a Singles Ward for three Stakes) and the Stake Offices. It was a freaking nightmare trying to keep the building decent. The cheerios on the floor and in the pews from one meeting to the next was awful.

The mothers room - shit diapers were always left in there and the smell by Wednesday's made the building smell like shit. The mother's room was by the Stake offices which is kinda funny.

Every Saturday the building would be clean and by Sunday night after the last Fireside - the building was a pig pen.

Mormons are filthy pigs when they are at Church. Ugh - I hate cleaning - I pay for house keepers - so much better.

Imagine how much extra income they can squeeze out of one single building each week, if they force four congregations to share the same building!

At the same time, upkeep on the building will be kept to a minimum, as the four congregations will be sharing the same lights, water, heat, air conditioning, etc. And we all know who CLEANS the buildings -- already a huge savings there!


How much can you squeeze people, and make their lives miserable, before they say "enough is enough" and walk away?


My husband and I hit that point about 7 years ago, after a lifetime of being born and raised in the Morg.


How many others will just leave, fed up, at one point or another?


Can you imaging how people will be climbing over other people, with 4 congregations in a single building?

My parents are on the 2-5pm schedule. They get home so late. It's ridiculous. I do think they have that schedule because of 4 wards.

I LOVED the 2:00-5:00 or the 3:00-6:00 meeting hours! I could sleep in late, go work out, go to a nice brunch, and then end the day with Sacrament Meeting only. Those were the days! I still keep that routine, except I dropped the Church part. :):):)

I'm Catholic and we have three to four masses each Sunday in two parishes. You go to the service which is most convenient for you and the church in the parish that you prefer.

Or you can skip Sunday all together and go to Saturday evening mass at 5:00.

It could only get more convenient if it was held in your own home while you were in bed in your pjs.

LDS Inc has for decades now stuck as many wards as possible into meetinghouses. I thought three was the normal max, so maybe they are going to try to creep up to four.

In much of the world, there aren't four LDS congregations in the area, so they can't put more than one or two wards in the building.

And as cludgie mentioned, India has has missionaries for decades. While Mormons do reasonably well in Taiwan, it is staunchly pro-American as a matter of survival. Mainland China, much like India, Russia, Europe, etc, will likely have little interest in all things Mo.