No no no! Fewer meetings means all sorts of unstructured time to think about things and to do things YOU want to do and to run into "other" kinds of people. That is almost certainly NOT going to be FAITH promoting.
I attended several large mid singles wards in the Salt Lake Area. Many of those large wards had 800+ members on the rolls. It was hilarious and silly at the same time to watch the bishopric, every sunday, get up and announce new callings. They were creating callings out of thin air. Because their mindset was, give people callings to give them a purpose. It was comical to hear some of the titles they would assign.
Sister Smith has been called to the charitable service committee number 3
Brother Hales has been called as an assistant to the FHE activity committee number 2
Sister Faust has been called to the social networking committee number 7.
Many of these wards have 3-4 full elders quoroms and up to 6 different relief society groups.
The phenomenon you describe is doing a lot to hurt TSCC. I spent part of my mission in a barely functional ward which could hardly fill callings. However, about 10 very active 20-somethings lived in that ward's boundaries but attended the local singles ward. Had those YSA members attended the regular ward, they could have made a HUGE difference. Instead, they were probably getting dissatisfied with silly callings, while the other ward was languishing.
The last ward I was in had plenty of members, just not enough recommend holding men. They had to have a high priest be the EQ president for a year until someone else moved in that could fill the job. The bishop was 78 years old, and his counselors weren't much younger.
It would be interesting to compare that figure with how many staff members and volunteers it takes to run any other Christian church. My guess based on a quick online perusal is 5-6 paid positions for an average mainstream church with a 40-45% volunteer rate for the members. It's important to remember that volunteering for a mainstream or independent church could represent only an intermittent commitment such as serving at a church supper or running a booth at a church bazaar.
The average ward outside of the Intermountain West has only 140-170 members in attendance on any given Sunday. This includes children so you only have around 50-80 adults to fill those 200 callings.
That's what I was thinking. Even in Utah, any ward with 200+ active adults would be split before long. According to this guy's personal study, he must conclude that 95% of the wards in the entire "church" are not "well-functioning".
When I quit the church, I was EQP. I also worked with the boy Scouts. My wife was serving as a YW's counselor (and had been RSP while I was EQP before we complained enough to get her "released" to an easier calling."
I'm from the Midwest: we normally had 4-6 callings between the two of us.
How many visiting teachers are in a ward? How many home teachers? One upon a time a was one of many visiting teacher supervisors and my job was to make sure that the visits get done. I only called once at the end of the month and only about 50% of the people on my lists did a few visits. Relief Society president said that I should be more firm to get more visits done and I explained that I do not feel right about it as everybody is very busy.