I've been seeing all these units of the church being shut down in Europe and Asia and was thinking that must be pretty depressing for Mormon to have to be a part of. What do the leaders say? How could they possibly spin it other than blaming the members or the "wicked" world. Do the remaining members have to drive a long ways to another ward? Do the rest just go inactive too? How many small does it have to be before they actually dissolve a branch?!

Stuff like this undoubtedly accelerates the decay.
No one likes being associated with a loser corporation.

A few months ago, a ward in my stake was shut down. (Merged with a neighboring ward.)

But it was really a dissolution, since this discontinued ward was the only one in its meetinghouse, and now the meetinghouse is closed.

And this is in Brazil, of all places.

Several similar cases have occurred in Sao Paulo as well, the cream of the crop of the cult in Brazil:

* Brooklin Ward closed in the 1980s: building became an institute center

* Aeroporto Ward closed in the 1990s: building became a bishop's storehouse or somethins like that

* Congonhas, Bom Retiro, and Pinheiros Wards: closed, but since they shared buildings with other wards, they simply were merged into these other wards.

Just a few cases among MANY.

Rio de Janeiro had many other cases. The following wards have been closed in the Southern Zone of Rio (the richest part) in the last 15 years:

* Gavea
* Copacabana
* Laranjeiras

There are only two wards left in the "Zona Sul": Jardim Botanico and Botafogo, each one in a separate meetinghouse. And Zona Sul covers a HUGE area, with a HUGE population.

The work is moving forth. Yea right.

When I was on my way to Brasil, I heard all kinds of stories about missionaries there baptizing hundreds. My first area had the only ward in a city of ~500K. There were well over 1,000 names on the roll, but regular attendance was ~15, including my companion and I. Most of the branches I served in had attendance of ~30. One branch had regular attendance of ~15, including 8 missionaries. I would estimate that my entire mission had about 1,000 active members.

Do you remember how the Salt Lake Trib or some entity made the church correct their claim about all the members supposedly in Brazil? That was just a year or two ago. But some other South American countries are worse. I think Chile, maybe, has like the smallest ratio of members actually attending.

They merge with another ward and call it "combining resources", a "consolidation of effort" and a "hastening of the work", which is "inspired of the Lord." And the sheeple buy into it, and everybody goes on their merry way.

This is one of the things I chuckle at the most, partly because Mormon members don't seem to get it, even when it's so obvious. A couple of years ago I did a thread on here when the church was claiming new growth due to several new stakes being "created" in Europe. It turned out that every "new stake" was a consolidation of at least two existing stakes. The sum was a negative amount. By quite a bit.

In my stake they dissolved two wards and created a new ward, they just talked up the creation of the new ward. We got some new members in our ward, it was obviously difficult for them to be in a new ward, though the lifers had actually been in the ward previously before being split off and therefore knew the fellow lifers.

Look at the comments from a member when this one was shut down:
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/article_7a4343d3-eca4-5031-bcc9-79579a21aa22.html

"They literally locked the door. We have no place to worship"

"My parents embraced the church and accepted its teachings," she said. Now that she can no longer worship in the chapel where she was baptized, she wonders why Mormon missionaries came to her community at all. "Why did you send the missionaries in the first place? We'd have been better off if you'd left us alone," she said."

Something else to take note of is how the LDS church claims they have 15 million when they want to look like they are growing, but when they closed that branch they claimed less members than there really were.

"The LDS church has between 525 to 550 members throughout the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Dunn estimated. Fox Belly said there are 1,000 Mormons on the reservation, although she admits that many are inactive."

After the branch closed, the members were assigned to the Kyle branch. But that was further away than the branch in Gordon Nebraska. Eventually the church changed that and allowed them to attend in Gordon.

Allowed?

That should be a huge red flag to every person who's a mormon.

Allowed!?

The more men that leave, the more wards and stakes that will disappear. No men, no church. This is a major flaw in the mormon church.

Yes, that is a real problem. If a person is not happy in their ward they cannot be a member in another one unless they move into its boundaries. In this case, the meeting house assignment initially put the members further into the poverty zone and many had no transportation or means to even get to there. The real victims were the women who were still faithful. The church turned its back on them, blamed it on the men and closed the doors to them.

Before I left the cult, there were 3 wards closed in the stake I was in. They nearly sold one of the chapels too. But then there was an influx of people moving in for jobs, so the chapel was saved, & 2 new wards were created when the stake was reorganized.

Yes, in the ward I'd lived in for 20 yrs, one bishop who lived an hour away from the chapel tried and succeeded in getting the ward split. Within 10 yrs ( and before we moved out) that branch was dissolved and they left-over members who hadn't gone inactive already just came back to our ward.

There were four stakes in our Salt Lake City neighborhood, three, then two wards in each stake, plus a singles ward. The church dissolved four entire wards, and now each stake house houses only one ward, except for the singles ward which doubles up. We still have the same number of stakes and stake houses--but instead of 13 wards, there are five wards. This happened about two years ago.

About 10 years ago, In California, my brother's ward, and four other wards, and three stakes dissolved completely. Three stake houses were sold--one to the Scientologists! The remainder of the members combined with another stake. Some have to drive as about 25 miles to church.

Three years ago, my friend's ward in Sandy was dissolved. The ward members were split between two other wards, which separated my friend's friends and some families. My friend, and quite a few others, just stopped going to church altogether.

It's happened to me twice now, two entirely different units. One met in a meetinghouse, one in a community facility. I had lent a lot of equipment to the ward which met in the building (toys for nursery, items for primary)- the minute we left the building, it was locked up and I never got those items back despite repeated requests to the stake presidency. Many had sentimental value- more fool me.

The second shutdown was entirely political- we were sent to another ward to boost it's numbers. The closed meetinghouse stands empty to this day.

The first time I experienced it, it was handled very well, but was still distressing. The second closure was a complete eye-opening shambles.

Even in the heart of the Morridor, downsizing happens -- but they cleverly disguise it to make the members think growth is happening.

Boundaries get "redrawn." Wards get "consolidated" and shuffled around to different meetinghouses to disguise dwindling attendance. The ward in whose boundaries I reside used to meet in a chapel located two blocks from my home. Just a few months after I moved in, the powers-that-be decided to play some shell games.

Our ward got moved to a chapel two miles away, while a ward in another, more distant part of town now meets in the chapel two blocks from me (and they are now the only ward in that chapel, btw). In the process, boundaries were redrawn, resulting in fewer total wards (but not bigger ones). The official line was that explosive growth caused all the shuffling. Yeah, right.

For a few weeks, everybody was glowingly abuzz with news of all the "growth," even though no actual numbers were ever mentioned by anyone.

Yes - I have a SIL in, I think Riverton, who just said today their ward is being 'reorganized' - the boundaries. I have been wondering if this is really a down size being called a reorg.

Also where I am from, they recently 'reorganized' a ward that was previously a branch, and is once again branch size. It's like they lost numbers all around and they just basically moved everybody in so that the furthest out from the city geographically have the least people once again, but I'm not sure if they can go back to calling it a branch once it's been deemed a ward...?

A dissolution? Nope. I cannot remember the dissolution of a single stake, district, ward or branch, and I have seen branches that were down to single digits. But a lot of reshuffling, reorganizations and consolidations, yes.

Typically, they will merge several branches into a real big boy ward. If the branches, or most of them, were already meeting in the same chapel, little changes. If the branches were in different towns, they will usually give up on recruiting in all those towns except the one that is home to the chapel.

The same with districts who merge into a stake.

As for the missions, ten years ago they would turn 3 missions into 2 or 5 missions into 3 and give a plausible solution ("now all of Slovakia is in a single mission") or even a direct external cause ("thanks to the new 11-mile bridge, it doesn't make sense to keep Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden in different missions" or "as Latvia is now joining the single currency, like Estonia earlier, this makes a concerted missionary effort more succesful").

The examples between brackets are not real, by the way, but the could be. They once blamed the merger of two missions on a bridge built 30 years before!

Yes, in the town in which I grew up, there was two branches. Then one day, it was to be made into a Stake with wards. Very exciting stuff.

They said that we'd have 3 wards in the city instead of two branches. Several months go by, and they changed their minds. There were no longer 3 wards, just two. Just like that!!!

In my stake we had a ward - Romford - which encompassed the Brentwood area. Brentwood is a particularly propsperous area.
It was announced that Brentwood would have it's own ward. usual blah-de-blah - the lard had seen fit to bless the area, fields white and ready to harvest, etc, etc.

Brentwood started meeting in a rented hall and missionary work was stepped up

I think it lasted about a year

Eventually the Brentwood ward was absorbed back into Romford and the tiny gains they had made in membership were wiped out by members not wanting to make the longer trip to the Romford ward
IIRC the reasoning behind the merge, was that the ward would have better facilities in the established chapel than they could at the rented hall, etc.... everything was given a positive spin, rather than saying what it was - a failed experiment

In 1961 after the Berlin Wall went up in the small hours of a Sunday morning, the church created the Berlin Stake in order to give autonomy to those wards that were trapped behind the wall. It was the smallest stake in the church and suffered for decades from lack of priesthood, etc. Eventually in about 1985, they incorporated the very large American servicemen's ward into the stake, which beefed up the numbers considerably, but also meant incorporating non-German-speaking Americans into the stake, which was inconvenient and risky. Still, one ward was always problematic, the Lankwitz Ward. They had their own building, but rattled around in it like BBs in a boxcar, and had a bishop that just wasn't going to take it anymore. When he quit, they just couldn't find a leader for the ward, and rather than incorporate a ward of 20-odd people with no bishop into another ward, they brought in a senior missionary couple from West Germany, and made him bishop. He didn't even speak German. There was a lot of resentment, but it personally taught me that to Mormons, desperate times call for desperate measures. They are loathe to close wards. (They are not loathe, however, to close buildings, and a lot of us here have examples of selling off LDS ward houses with a lot of character in order to build a more uniform McChapel instead.)

The California ward I grew up in was recently combined with a nearby ward, after may decades. According to my mom, many people just don't go to church anymore, since they are elderly and the ward they merged with is about 10 miles away. It's a bit far to drive, and they don't feel part of the other ward. My 90 year old TBM dad went from going to church every Sunday to never going at all. He misses the social aspect, but from what I can tell, that's it.

The wards around here were reorganized this past summer and it made a lot of people mad--since some of them will have to travel around 20 miles to their new ward instead of less than 2 in some cases. I wonder if this wasn't really a dissolution.

In January 2009 (I believe that is the right time) there was a 'special' Stake Conference broadcast from SLC to 70+ stakes in California. One of the GA's chastised the members for moving out of California and gave a sob story that the Church had provided them with meetinghouses and temples and that now is not the time to move. Well, from that comment it made it sound like they were waiting for God on some future revelation to make the announcement to move back to Utah, Missouri or where ever.

Frankly, what happened between 2000 and 2009 was that TWO STAKES were dissolved, the San Jose East Stake and the Santa Clara Stake, both in filthy rich Silicon Valley. Many ward boundaries were redrawn, many disappeared and those remaining were reassigned to the Los Altos Stake, the San Jose Stake, and the San Jose South Stake.

The first Stake Center built in San Jose, CA is located at 1336 Cherry Ave. It was the home to the San Jose Stake. But today it's just used to handle 3 wards from two stakes, and sadly it isn't even used as a stake center any more. FYI it's huge. The stage in the cultural hall is easily 100% bigger than most Stake Center stages. It's stage is wide and very deep. The baptismal font was so large from its original construction that it was reduced to one third the original size in the latest remodel. Even the steeple's footprint is 16x8'. Here's a goggle link. It's worth a look in street-view just to see the massive steeple: https://maps.google.com/maps?oe=&ie=UTF-8&q=lds+churches+san+jose+ca&fb=1&gl=us&hq=lds+churches&hnear=0x808fcae48af93ff5:0xb99d8c0aca9f717b,San+Jose,+CA&cid=6678635274934021143&ei=r5PLUo_gNIvyoAS6loA4&ved=0CDEQrwswAA

Back on topic:
During this time (2000-2009) real estate prices skyrocketed. Most TBM's who had been established for a long time in the area were able to sell their originally purchased $30-100K priced homes that had escalated to $700-1 million plus. Many members sold, made a chunk of dough, moved to Utah and bought or built those mega mansions. With all the influx in Utah, TSCC had to build new meetinghouses to handle the sudden membership increase. The money to TSCC from tithing probably didn't change, only the local increase of members increased. So it was a big burden financially to TSCC (as evident with their complaints during the special broadcast) to have to build brand new buildings in Utah.

Meanwhile, many of the meetinghouses in Silicon Valley saw a reduction from 3 wards per building to two. Even in the mega rich area of Almaden Valley where the San Jose CA mission home is located, one ward completely disappeared.

This was built about the time the church was chastising the members for building big homes. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

I think its funny that the air conditioning unit looks like a cross on the rooftop (from aerial view).

They also had to build a lot of new buildings in Oregon and Washington.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2014 01:09AM by madalice.

The big "Cherry Street" stake center was built in 1959-1960. Indeed it is giant. There's tons of seating on the stand for a huge choir. The Sacrament table is front and center elevated about 6 inches with two seats for the priest on the left and right side. The whole set-up is directly below and in front of the podium.

Thanks for the info about folks moving to the Pacific Northwest. I heard so many stories of the people I once knew from the 80's and 90's who had left for Utah and built their mega homes.

No but my parents did. They live in a small town in Northern CA which, at it's height, had 4 wards. Now they are down to three and may combine into 2 soon (although they've been bracing for that for a few years.) Even with three wards, there aren't enough teenagers in any ward to have YM/YW so all three wards have to meet together.

My mom puts this down to the fact that there isn't a lot of economic opportunity where they live and a lot of young families move into Sacramento or the Bay Area because they can't afford to live in my parents town. A lot of people where they live retire there after living in the city during their work years. That's how Mom explains the decrease in wards and how few children there are - it has nothing to do with the younger, tech savvy crowd being able to figure out the church is bogus.

No but my parents did. They live in a small town in Northern CA which, at it's height, had 4 wards. Now they are down to three and may combine into 2 soon (although they've been bracing for that for a few years.) Even with three wards, there aren't enough teenagers in any ward to have YM/YW so all three wards have to meet together.

My mom puts this down to the fact that there isn't a lot of economic opportunity where they live and a lot of young families move into Sacramento or the Bay Area because they can't afford to live in my parents town. A lot of people where they live retire there after living in the city during their work years. That's how Mom explains the decrease in wards and how few children there are - it has nothing to do with the younger, tech savvy crowd being able to figure out the church is bogus.

A couple years ago, the stake dissolved a branch and split the members up assigning them to 2 different wards in the same building 45 min away. Even though they were within minutes of a different stakes ward.

While I haven't lived within boundary of a consolidation, I know a few that have. I was told of a stake in Layton that had five wards and now has four. The guy who told me said it was inspired because of the new boundaries, his new home teaching companion is a second cousin from a polygamous marriage.

Stakes North and South of me reduced the number of wards by one. A guy in the one South of me said it totally messed up people and meetings and some people stopped attending over it. I am surprised that the stake I live in hasn't done any consolidating, not that I really care but I have family in the stake and I could see it screwing with them somehow.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2014 10:14AM by Now a Gentile.