Out of curiosity, how do they determine what church you go to? A while back, when I was investigating the church I put in my address to find the times of services. There was a church within a mile of my house, so I figured it'd be there like the closest available appropriate school...wrong.

The website popped up a church on the opposite side of town from me. As I have no vehicle, and the bus service is lousy in my town, I think I dodged a bullet on that one. Why do you have to go to a particular church? I thought it would have been like any other faith where you pick the one closest to you or the one that feels right to you. Is there a penalty for attending the "wrong" church?

Poorly...

Poorly...

[Rimshot offstage.]

They have software that tracks the membership, runs calculations based on building space, activity rate, parking, etc.

The main determinant however, is that each ward needs to maintain a percentage of full tithe paying members, I don't recall the exact amount but I think it is around 70%. If it is found for example that one ward has a 50% full tithe payment, and a nearby ward has a 90% rate, they will adjust the boundaries so each ward maintains at least the minimum. If the tithe drops, and there is no way to reorganize to level it out, they will merge wards, or disband the ward and absorb it into nearby wards. If this is not viable, they will take more drastic measures.

It's pretty much all about the money first, and convenience/needs of members second.

Wow.. didn't know that! Geographical borders, yes, but not what determines the borders. This is another practical thing that always annoyed me.. all these preassigned locations/wards whathaveyou. People can't decide themselves where to attend services (of course, it's not surprising, telling people what to do so that they can *obey* is the whole point of TSCC). Then there are ward splits.. or you move half a mile after living many years in one location.. and suddenly you lose all social contacts you had in the previous ward.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2014 09:12PM by Facing Tao.

Wow...that sounds so...corporate with the way they make the wards. I couldn't think of another way to put it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2014 05:55AM by Talon Avex.

That's how it also "makes sense" that people can't themselves choose a meeting house to attend.

I thought it had to do with the number of goddamned PH leadership a ward "needs" to run it. If there aren't enough worthy penises on the ward to run it, then some reorganization has to to be done in a stake or region.

That's what I was told anyway. So really it's just some basic, old fashioned sexism that determines ward boundaries. Because women can't be real leaders in the cult.

So, the wards are all sort of jerry-mandered, Mormon-style?

Yes.

When my son lived in an apartment complex his building was assigned to a ward that was a good distance from his home, this was in Utah. This was done in order to distribute apartment complexes among the different wards so no ward ended up with a lot of apartments. Apartment complexes are hard to deal with because the move in move out rate is usually high and it is difficult to run a ward with members constantly coming and going. Also keeping track of memberships is difficult. The apartment complex in our ward never has many active members, or members for that matter which is probably petty common too.

They have been jerry-mandered in my area so they could have certain people they wanted to serve as bishop or to have a certain number of high priests in the ward. The tithing element was interesting. Never knew that before, but it makes sense as to what they'd do. If you don't go to your assigned ward their big threat is you can't hold a calling or have VT or HT. They don't know this isn't a threat.

Ward boundaries can also be redrawn to eliminate a bishop from service. This happened at least once where I grew up, where the bishop in question was a well-known local media celebrity (and descended from very notable "pioneer stock"), but the stake leadership grew to dislike him and then passed judgement on him because one of his daughters had become pregnant at 16.

At one time I asked why members in a particular town had to go to ward A (10 miles away) rather than ward B (3 miles away)
I was told that it was it was due to public transport links being easier for A rather than B

Mormons do that kind of US congressional "gerrymandering." In one ward I was in--and this is not unusual--the boundaries looked like a stylized outline of the state of Oklahoma, but the panhandle ran for a couple of miles up one street, where there was a higher concentration of members. The church was also along this street. The bulk of the ward was in the main body of the map, and a considerable distance from the church. Many members of the ward lived virtually next door to another ward, but had to drive across town to be in the "right" ward, where their membership was maintained. In Mormonism, obeying authority is paramount, more important than teachings of Jesus or--for that matter--even teachings of Jesus' superior, Joseph Smith. To abandon the ward five miles away for the one across the street can plunge a Mormon into grave difficulties.

Have you ever played 'pin the tail on the donkey'?

No, because that's too sacred. It's how the missionary department assigns new missionaries.

From the Church Handbook:

"Find some willing (gullible is equally effective) members, call them to do stuff, flog them into depression. Rinse, repeat."

It's a pretty complex process. There are a lot of unwritten rules. I was on the stake high council in San Jose, CA when we tried to gerrymander, I mean realign, ward boundaries. We ran into all kinds of problems.

when I was a kid in Utah, our block was half as wide and 2.5x as long as the typical block. It became the bargaining chip in ward realignments. We flipped back and forth between two wards (in different stakes) 4 times in 10 years.

One of the complexities is making sure there are an adequate number of high priests and elders in each ward to staff the priesthood positions. This really became an issue in San Jose, as we had a couple of wards where only 50% of the families had a Melchezidik priesthood holder.

Here in Boise, ID, the boundaries were (until recently) such that the building where my ex-wife currently attends was NOT the assigned ward building for the people who's homes backed up to the parking lot, or were directly across the street from the building. Weird, huh?

So, as much as it seems random, it generally has some explanation, but that explanation is generally hidden in a complex morass of unspecified rules.

They have to keep ward small to create enough busy work for everyone.

The penalty (or benefit) of attending the "wrong" Ward is that you can't hold callings in that Ward nor get a Temple recommend from that Bishop. You only get those in the Ward to which you are assigned. Compound that with some "loss of the Spirit" for disobeying your leaders (by not attending your assigned Ward) and perhaps a bit of shunning, and members have a strong disincentive against regularly attending another Ward.

You can sometimes get permission to attend another Ward without transferring your records, or even get your records re-assigned. It is not uncommon for single Mormons to be allowed to attend a Ward with other singles in the hopes of getting them married off. I've known singles who attended both their assigned Ward AND a singles Ward each Sunday, perhaps due to a combination of guilt and a desire to earn more spiritual brownie points to help them get hitched.

My mom and dad have lived in the same house for the last 40 years. They have changed wards three times. They live in a small Northern CA town and they are always having to realign the wards because there isn't enough priesthood leadership in one ward or another and they have to shake things up. At least there, it's about priesthood.

I've seen the same thing happen on the east bench in SLC. The members, especially those with kids, are moving away and non-members are moving in. Schools are closing, wards are being merged, etc... The church appears to be growing like crazy on the west side where all the new construction is, but the church is dying in some older areas.

Everything east of 700 E and north of about 6200 S is losing active members like wildfire. They're all headed towards the south and southwest parts of SL County, especially Herriman & Riverton.

Also, that's how oftentimes really bizarre ward borders make sense. A ward from way over there may need to 'reach' way over here to grab few more priesthood holders. Hence there are often situations where someone lives literally within couple of blocks of a meeting house, yet their assigned ward is across the town.

Under special circumstances you might be allowed to go to attend a different ward than you're supposed to. They're very strict with it though.

They redrew our stake boundaries a few years ago and after 6 months of "thought, prayer, and fasting" the new boundaries were exactly the same as the school district boundaries.

The school district must be true.

timewarper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Out of curiosity, how do they determine what
> church you go to? A while back, when I was
> investigating the church I put in my address to
> find the times of services. There was a church
> within a mile of my house, so I figured it'd be
> there like the closest available appropriate
> school...wrong.
>
> The website popped up a church on the opposite
> side of town from me. As I have no vehicle, and
> the bus service is lousy in my town, I think I
> dodged a bullet on that one. Why do you have to
> go to a particular church? I thought it would
> have been like any other faith where you pick the
> one closest to you or the one that feels right to
> you. Is there a penalty for attending the "wrong"
> church?
Yep, nothing those inbred Mormons do makes any sense. That asshole so called bishop I had at one time before I got smart and left the cult told me that since I did not have a car at the time, then I would have to start walking to "church" on Sunday am, and since I MUST be there by 9am for Crap, er sacrament then I better start walking at 6am. It was 2 miles from my house. The reason I didn't have a car was because he felt I wasn't paying enough tithing and that I needed to get rid of my car by giving it back to the bank, so then I could give the so called cult that money instead of towards a car. I told him that IF I did that then I would still be liable for the balance which was about 5k. I listened to that jerk, because he was supposed to know all and be inspired by some invisible sky god right? And I did it...next to joining the cult, that was thee dumbest thing I ever did. That in turn ruined me financially as I had to pay off the balance of that car, and I was left with no car, so it got even worse. I got thinking about it and finally said to myself "Screw that shit" and I never did walk. Just quit going all together after several confrontations with that asshole. Then after I wised up even more I got the hell outta UT and after a year of deprogramming myself with help from all the rfm folks here I quit for good, mailed that jerk my exit letter which was 9 pages long, and that was it...Oh, after taking a few years off, I was lucky enough to find a job in my career field, and saved and in about 11 months I had enough cash to buy a used car, fixed it up and the best thing is it is ALL mine, I don't have a car payment, and that jerk can never ever take it away from me.