I attended a ward activity recently. I haven't been to church in a year now but decided I was going to go and say hi to people. I cannot believe how horrible it felt. I was the type of TBM that would think it was up to you to have a good time at these functions but it felt so sad to see how cheap the church is with the members.

- It was supposed to be "finger food", but there was hardly enough. I could see some people going out to buy stuff and pizzas. I guess many didn't bring a dish. I did bring mine.

- The ad said it was a get-together but really it was a fundraising for YW. All desserts were being sold at very high prices.

- Right off the bat, visitors were excluded since people kept doing games with the same two families.

- Overall it felt as if it was thrown together at the last minute and with zero money, which probably was.

I know the leaders and members put all the effort they can, I used to be one of them. But it was sad to see that, as usual, there was no budget and it was the same people doing the work and running the show. As a "visitor" I felt left-out and noticed how cheap the activity was.

Were they always like this? Well, I guess so, except I was one of the people running around trying to put all together I never took noticed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2013 09:50AM by deconverted2010.

I think they always are kind of like that. One year I went with my friend to his ward's end of the year budget buster dinner. The ward had all sorts of money left over and needed to spend it, so they had a steak dinner for the ward. Other than that, yeah, it seems to be pretty much what you describe.

And, with all of the money the church has, why in the heck do wards have to raise their own money to pay for girls camp?

The central church vacuums up all the tithing money and gives the wards very little money back in return - $32 per year per active member to run the entire ward.

Most of that goes to the youth programs. Which means local members have 2 choices - do cheap stuff or pay for it out of their own packets after already giving the church a whole bunch of money.

Yertle the Turtle keeps building his throne higher and higher on the back of poor Mack.

I think our EQ had $80 for activities last year.

The "majority" of the budget goes to YM/YW and primary, which I'm perfectly happy with.

The sad thing is that it's not a lot going to them.

I also wish they would still pay a needy member of the ward to clean the church building.

Lucky!

When I was EQP my budget was a whopping - $0. When our attendance was down I offered to cut my budget in half - the bishop didn't seem to thing that would help.

When I was a Primary counselor in the mid '90s, our budget was nil. I mean that literally. I think our budget was about $15-20 a year. We had to do everything ourselves, so nothing hardly ever got done outside of Sunday classes. Of course, the PP & 2nd counselor were into scouting hardcore, & frankly cared far more about that then the rest of Primary.

is that why they count the attendance every sunday? to get a bigger budget? the family and stake activities are really sorely lackin in my stake too. the last christmas activity was a real joke! had members show off their family national traditions. man its so sad. people walk off and missed santa!

Here's how it works.

Every 3rd month: March, June, Sep, Dec. For each sacrament meeting they get $2 per person attending. 5 Sundays in such a month is like a blessing from the Lard.

So if there are 4 Sundays in the month and someone attends sacrament all 4 weeks the ward gets $8.

I've heard they may get a little extra for primary/youth attendance, but I don't know the details - and if it is any, it is a very little.

Bishop's have been known to purposely but baby blessings, farewells, etc. in those months...

The stake also get a budget based on total sacrament meeting attendance for the entire stake.

That's a pretty good profit margin - $32 back to the ward - $5,000 to the church is someone makes $50,000. It helps you understand why the church can't afford to pay janitors...

The church is making a bundle off members,that being said, I
I wantd to clarify something said in the post above.

The money coming back to the ward is only their Ward budget for activities. It does not cover the cost of the Janitors. All capital and operating building costs are paid for by the Church from other tithing funds.

People should remember this while shopping at the Jesus Mall.

In the 1940s as a youngster I remember lavish Mexican food dinners at the ward building.
It was in the late 60s that the great god greed took over.

It was the late 60s that they started to send all money to SLC and then got back a pittance. There were also rule changes about fund raising. The ward bake sales and bazaars were fantastic back then. The Halloween party was always my favorite, the prizes for games were really good as was the food.

Now that SLC has a strangle hold on the money and the schedule they have sucked the fun out of everything.

As I recall the fundraising got tightened down on in the late 80s early 90s?

Except scouts could still fundraise all the wanted for Scout camp. Girls couldn't do a damned thing to raise money for Girl's camp even privately.

The current rule is that each auxiliary can do a maximum of one fund raising activity per year. However there are strict limits on what can be done with the funds as well.

I remember hearing repeated lectures about the church not being a social club, and that was a horrible reason to go to church.

I thought that was stupid. If you have no social connections at church you're probably not going to go there very long.

When you go to a mormon church you don't get spiritually fed, so what does that leave? Three hours wasted in pure boredom while the bish. stands up front and tells everyone how hopeless they are.

And they wonder why their depressed.

Mia, I too remember hearing the church is not a social club and that activities went down hill after that. I joined the church for the social aspect so didn't remain active very long.

I remember that too, from the early 90's. A great part of attending church is for the social aspect of it. Can you imagine siting there on Sundays for three hours, without being allowed to socialize or ask questions. Wait, that's how it is. =)

They must have been inspired to say that going for social reasons was a horrible reason to go to church. Now, all the young people leave the church because they "social" life is much better out of the church. =)

we always had pretty good Halloween and other parties during the 80's...don't know how it is now though

I remember one year I cleaned out the entire youth activity budget because one of the scouts accidentally shoved a flagpole through my back window. Just $115 to replace it, but that sent the budget to naught, and that was the end of activities for us.

As I recall the church use to allow members to contribute to the ward budget and do more fund raising. This was in addition to the tithing amount, but it allowed some affluent wards to have extravagant activites. I think it was in the early 90's when SLC decided we should all be poor together and forbade that practice. Our discretionary budget from SLC is about $8K for our ward of about 200 active members. this covers all ward expenses except the building and fast offerings to needy members. So now all activites are cheap. If they aren't it is because whoever organized it decided to pay out of pocket or it is being funded out of SLC directly. On a related note if you include all the costs associated with the ward I estimate that it costs SLC about 20-30K a year to run a ward. The ward sends about 20X that amount to SLC every year in contributions. This is what is referred to in business as milking the cash cow. Sounds like the church has been milking it since the 60's.

"SLC decided we should all be poor together" - LOL

$32 per active member per year? Or even $20 per active member? Meanwhile they take and average of $5K per year per member?. "Milking the cash cow", wow, they sure are.

I wish I had seen this when I was active and a full tithe-payer fool. I wish I had thought of taking the tithing and offerings money and put it to use in my own ward. Oh well.

rainwriter, I'm so jelous, steak dinner at a ward? That is most definetly the exception. Good for you guys!

Some of our ward Chirstmas dinners included roast beef and turkey, but only because members donated them.

'The church is not a social club.'

But, we demand that you marry each other. And, we encourage you to marry a person of the opposite sex, in our church, to make those pesky same sex attraction things go away.

deco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 'The church is not a social club.'
>
> But, we demand that you marry each other. And, we
> encourage you to marry a person of the opposite
> sex, in our church, to make those pesky same sex
> attraction things go away.


And go to church dances ...

It seemed to me that the majority of the budget went to young men and primary. Elders quorum and sunday school always got the least amount.

What a difference open books would make!

Our church is mid-sized, in a fairly expensive suburban area. Our yearly budget hovers around one million. That's building, maintenance, insurance, payroll, training, curriculum, music, etc, etc. including all the various ministries (youth, women,etc).

Since we have open books, we can decide where the money goes. A few years ago, I got pretty disgusted when the entire youth transportation budget ($10,000) was taken away and given to other ministries. That meant no buses for camps. The point is, everybody had a say and a vote.

My parents are in a very affluent ward. I'm always shocked at how over-done their activities are. Parties are professionally decorated with drapery and fancy lighting. The food is almost always catered. I'm positive this has to be coming from the members directly. I always felt like I was attending a wedding when I went to one of those activities!

Compare that to the ward we were in before we went inactive. Members also paid for activities, but that was because there was no money for them. The ward was in a very poor area of town, so we're talking a few liters of un-caffeinated soda and a few tubs of ice cream. If the activity required more substantial food, the members made it.

Yep, yep.

The funny thing is that "officially" ward members aren't allowed to pay for stuff like this - yet the reality is EVERYONE puts extra money into their callings.

This reminds me of the fundraising activities in our stake.

The affluent ward would raise and surprass all the money needed for girls' camp in one activity. We were "allowed" to raise money for the camp fees, but this ward would raise enough for the camp fees, food, transportation, new camping gear and still have left over money. The ward was then used as an example to the other wards on how it WAS possible to raise enough for the girls to go.

I was YW President in a poor ward. We did the same fundraising activity as recommended by the YW stake presidency but the results were not nearly as productive. I think we raised enough for a tent! The girls' fees came from the ward. Those of us who could pay, paid four our daughters's fees. This was on top of all the work we had done for the fundraising.

Our girls often felt left out. The positive side is that many stopped attendig by the time they were Laurels and even more went inactive after 18.

As for the activities, I guess there is a difference when people can donate $50 for a spaguetti dinner as opposed to hardly being able to afford $5.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2013 03:00PM by deconverted2010.

I figured it out a few months ago. An average sized ward has a budget financed entirely by the tithing of one member with an average income. All the tithing from every other member is sent to SLC.

Before I left completely I was spending the money I would have otherwise given to tithing directly to the YM and not asking for rembursment.

I'd be too worried about that money being sent of to SLC as well under some guise of them not being able to accept the donation through non-official channels, or something.

At byu I had a couple hundred dollars every quarter to plan actiities. When I moved out into theission field, it went down to 250 for the whole year. This was late nineties/early 2000s.

The church did not become miserly until the mid-eighties.
At that time all the money was taken away from the local units and the fun was over.

Before that, we had dinners and dances almost every Fri/Sat night, and things were a lot more relaxed.

Mind you, Mormon doctrine was always crazy. But it wasn't driven homes as much and besides, we lived in Southern California.

I would not go back into Mormonism now for all the tea in China.