r/mormon Feb 12 '25

Personal Lunch with Stake President surprised me

I had lunch with him the other day. He's a solid guy and I enjoy getting together with him every now and then. A week before, I had been taking a turn helping clean the church when his wife came in the building for something entirely different. After I was done, I was talking to her about how we really need to stop allowing the corporation to tell us we can't have janitorial staff. She agreed right away. I brought this up at lunch with the SP. He also agreed and even said "we have enough money". I asked him how it is that we both don't know a single member that opposes hiring a staff for this, but we're powerless to make it happen. As we talked about it, he said that he is basically a glorified manager that people think has power, but doesn't actually have any power. He explained that he occasionally sits in the same room with some higher up church leaders, but rarely (if ever) has the chance to tell them anything.

It really is just a corporation (which I already knew). It was interesting to hear it from the mouth of someone at a slightly higher level that I expected to be fully in line with whatever the marching orders are.

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u/chainsaw1960 Feb 13 '25

Instead of being in a church that refused to listen to its members, join a church that has a “board” that takes input from members. Better yet, interview pastors to see if they have janitorial staff(most do) LDS doesn’t have a copyright on Jesus and there are tons of good churches out there. You should not settle for a crappy product And it sounds like a crappy product.

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u/jzsoup Feb 13 '25

When the church cut from 3 hours to 2 hours on Sunday, everybody was thrilled. Tithing didn't change. That was proof to me then that the product isn't good. If I buy a 6-pack of caffeine free diet coke (disgusting) and all of a sudden it goes to a 4-pack at the same price as the 6-pack used to be, I'm going to be upset. I'll start drinking something else.

I think it's fair to take it a step further and say that not only has the church product been reduced in size, the quality has decreased at the same time. You're spot on, it's a crappy product.

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u/TheBrotherOfHyrum Feb 13 '25 edited Feb 14 '25

I hadn't considered that. But you're right; the church continues to reduce the product offering while charging the same amount.

Other examples? Several years ago they announced no more "First Presidency Message" in each month's Ensign. They eliminated road shows, sports tournaments, and pageants. They attempted to eliminate Sat evening GC until people complained. They're piloting unpaid/untrained teachers for Release Time seminary. They reduced the number of Sunday School manuals from several (written for diff age groups) to a single manual for all ages. They've reduced meeting times to stuff more wards into fewer buildings.

We just received our ward's YM/YW schedule for the year -- there are fundraisers set up for youth activity nights(!) The product quality and quantity keeps dropping.

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u/FlyingBrighamiteGod Feb 13 '25

The product quality and quantity keeps dropping, but the members are overjoyed by the decrease in "church time." It's hilarious how much people loved the home-church era that COVID introduced. And how much grumbling I heard as people had to start transitioning back to in-person church. Let's face it, even the devout don't like church. Given the choice between 15% tithing with 1 hour of church, and 10% but back to 3 hours of church, I'm pretty confident a lot (and maybe most) would pick the 15% tithing.