I did two stints as Primary secretary. Every quarter I tallied up the number of children attending, not attending, activity days that were held, and In service mtgs. These numbers went to the Stake Primary presidency so they could see how we were doing in the ward. I regret the amount of time I was involved in this kind of obsessive record keeping. Obsessive is the key word. If they can make you think that numbers are very, very important, then everyone on board works harder to increase the freakin' NUMBERS. Kind of like a company involved in sales.

It is not "kind of like a company involved in sales". It IS a company involved in sales. They are selling spiritual snake oil for a stiff price. They are organized as a MLM. Your principle job as a Mormon is to create more Mormons, either by conversion through the missionary program, or by raising up children in righteousness, a loaded phrase meaning you saw to it they were properly brainwashed to be Mormons.

You will note that the majority of GC talks are about how to be a good Mormon, not how to be a good person. You must support the organization. The greatest sin is to make the organization look bad. The reason for collecting all the numbers is to see how well the organization is doing.

I usually refer to it as "LDS Inc" for good reason. It is both literally and operationally a corporation. A conglomerate of corporations, in fact.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote, in part:
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>> I usually refer to it as "LD$ Inc"<<


There. I fixed it for you.
You'll get my bill in the mail.

However, in the real world numbers don't matter. People DO!

again IMHO