So, why is the church divided into assigned units? Is it about anything more than efficiently running the kingdom? Is it more about control? If it's the latter, what are they trying to control? Thinking back to when the church was set up, maybe here are some answers.

- Classism. Can't have the little people mixing with church royalty, can't have farmers sitting next to white collar people, can't have poor folks sitting next to prosperous folks.

- Racism. Gotta keep the good wards white and delightsome.

- Militarism. JS tried to be a grand military leader. Early (and some current) Mormons imagined the church eventually ruling the world. So get the members/troops used to functioning as units and following the chain of command.

- Regemented behavior control. Go where you're told, do what you're told. It's what Jesus ordered.

- It's a business. Members are the workers, not the customers. This is your job, this is your office, and we need those TPS reports ASAP. With the new cover sheets.

Anyone have more thoughts on this?

Have you done any reading on the matter? I wonder under which president the stake and ward structure we're familiar with. What was the ecclesiastic structure before the stake and ward system were instituted? What were the problems with it?

One thing which jumps to my mind is how well planned SLC and most of Utah's municipal's streets are, thanks (cough, cough!) to BY. I wouldn't be surprised if this was BY's construct.

Wards date back to the 1840s in Nauvoo

https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Ward

Were ward membership and attendance assigned and based on address and residence even back then?

I assume it's based on the number of people required to fill available positions, plus or minus a few, but it's crazy.

If members were free to attend any LDS congregation of their choosing, in addition to positions not being filled in some wards with other wards having too many people for everyone to have a job, other issues would come up. Some bishops and stake presidents are @holes while others are relatively decent. Many members would bolt away from the jerk leadership in favor of the more humane leadership. When decent bishops were released, if those replacing them were sons of ******* or worse, members would exit en masse from THAT ward, heading to a nearby city if necessary. Bishops also might have to liven up meetings just a bit in order to compete. (There already IS competition and choice. It's just that only those wealthy enough to move at will truly benefit from the ability to choose.) Ultimately, it might force the LDS leadership to quit elevating douche bags to positions of authority.

In Protestant/Evangelical circles, denomination seems to become less important with each passing year. People go to where the popular pastors who are dynamic speaks and offer solid youth programs are. Devout Catholics typically stick with the denomination but parish-hop when priests are obnoxious. Even Jehovah's Witnesses are allowed to choose their own congregations. What is it about Mormons that causes the leadership to believe the members aren't qualified to decide where they will attend services?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2021 02:57AM by scmd1.

scmd1 Wrote:
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> If members were free to attend any LDS
> congregation of their choosing. . . many members would
> bolt away from the jerk leadership in favor of the
> more humane leadership. . . [B]ishops also might have to liven > up meetings just a bit in order to compete.

Take that logic a bit further. Recall Packer's speech about "Which Way Will You Face," in which he said that church leaders are to take orders from the top and not the bottom.

If wards and stakes were subject to market forces, the bad ones would lose people and the good ones would gain. The church would then have to replace the bad leaders with new people who paid more attention to the members and less to SLC. Mormonism would perforce become a lot more democratic and the Q15 would lose much of its power.

For the apostles and prophets, this is an existential issue.

your statement "the bad ones would lose people and the good ones would gain" is exactly right regarding wards. There are wards with abusers in the position of Bishop and counselors, and for some reason the general authorities do not want the victims of the abusers to be able to escape. No matter how abusive the Bishop, the general authorities want you to be subject to that man.

Because any case in which members pressured the GAs to remove a bishop or stake president would represent precedent for other congregations to do the same thing. Giving members the right to choose wards means letting them choose what flavor of the gospel they prefer. And we can't have that now, can we.

I agree with this
"People go to where the popular pastors who are dynamic speaks and offer solid youth programs are."
All other things considered I believe that people attend churches for the entertainment value thereof. If there is nothing interesting to me why attend?
People will come to hear dynamic speakers, They will not come to be bored to death. I have seen wards where 20% attendance is a huge day.

Don't know, but the link above suggests that they probably were

"By 1844 the city was divided into ten wards, with three more in the surrounding rural neighborhood. The name "ward" was borrowed from the term for political districts of the frontier municipality."

Your theory of classism reminded me of a ward division when I was 15 years old. Two big wards were divided into three wards. My family ended up in the new ward, which was much smaller than the other two wards. Our new ward was mostly upper-middle class and up, but it did have a working class (still suburban, but lower income) area. My dad was obviously a bit uncomfortable with the makeup of the new ward. I heard him say several times "you know, the church didn't used to do that-mix economic classes in the same ward."

Those are good reasons and make sense to me.

They got me thinking of a few other lesser reasons:

Assigned wards prevent the problem of everyone flocking to the charismatic bishop who would attract a crowd. What would they do with the dull boring wards that no one attends? The church would be left having to help pay to keep the less popular wards. The mega wards would take on a personality cult atmosphere.

The McDonalds-like nature of the wards would probably be disrupted if like minded types congregated. The hamburger has to taste the same in every ward.

It possibly keeps wards from drifting apart politically into pockets that might be more apt to produce activists.

That plus the issue of callings. If members can go anywhere, some wards will not have enough members to fill all of the callings, while other wards will have more members than there are callings.

Then there is the issue of tracking activity - if members can attend anyplace, then there would be no way of knowing who was attending or not. It becomes easier for people to quietly slip away without any "local ecclesiastical leaders" noticing and starting reactivation efforts.

Likewise, the issue of determining worthiness. Which bishop determnes if you are worthy if you can switch wards anytime you want?

I think exactly this too.

The LDS Church is the epitome of "organized religion."

Its a lay ministry and everyone is expected to hold callings and participate to some degree. And there are many expectations the church has on its members which can't be done if the members can be anywhere any time.

Its all about keeping the machine efficient, well oiled, and hitting all its marks. This is best achieved by making the members stay in the same ward.

Also strong reasons are, keeping the membership counts even. You don't want one ward to have 1000 people and then the other one to only have 10 people showing up.

Some of them, two and three times a week.

The last point is the key IMHO. It's a business, and the ward members are the employees. Assigned wards are the only way to efficiently run a business.

Wards need a minimum number of Mel's Priesthood guys to function. So they have to gerrymander ward boundaries to maximize unit productivity, and enforce the boundaries as best they can.

It's also a control issue. If mormons could go anywhere, wards with a putz bishop would dwindle in unbelief. Ward-shopping would likely become the norm in areas with high mormon density.

logged out today Wrote:
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> Wards need a minimum number of Mel's Priesthood
> guys to function.

Okay, but why were wards designed in such a way that X number of MP holders are required?

There are a certain number of jobs. If the number of active members in a ward falls too far, many jobs won't get done. If the number is too high, a lot of people won't get assignments.

They try to keep the size of wards close to the standard number of jobs.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> There are a certain number of jobs.


Yes, but most of them are busy work, because that's the way the brethren decided to structure things. The congregations in most other religions run just fine with far fewer people.

Agreed.

Yes, they are busy work. Many are created for the purpose of keeping people busy. TSCC believes that everyone should have a calling to keep them engaged.

LW is right. It's basically a job description.

The church is run like a business. Businesses need managers and administrators. And just as businesses often require managers to have college degrees or MBAs to qualify, the church has decided to require Mel's Priesthood to run its operations. That's just the way it is.

Control the flock. "After all the church leaders know what's best for you." How often have you heard how wonderful it is that you can go anywhere in the church on a given Sunday and (allegedly) be taught the same correlated lesson.
For heck sakes the leaders even assign you friends (ministers)

It helps facilitate mind control

Artificial communities with assigned friends. It's about control.

Kind of hard to change because the church is structured around the priesthood. The stake is ran by the Melchizedek priesthood and the wards are ran by the Aaronic priesthood. It’s the priesthood being over a geographical area.

Never-Mo...but live in the Morridor.

Do you know, I have an assigned ward? I think I may even have a Bishop! They've even come to visit me! And I'm not even a member!

From what I've read here, from what I've seen whilein the Morridor, and my own experiences I think it's a combination of many of the items listed in the OP.

They HAVE to have someone who is rich and possibly influential in the position of a Stake President or Bishop. Some people say they have known poor Stake or Ward Leaders, it may be true, but I think it's few and far between if there are. I've only seen guys from the rich neighborhoods touted as Bishops or former Bishops.

It's absolute classism. Point out that the righteous (irony, a few of the "Leaders" that I've known are crooks, blatantly so, but they are rich crooks and so get those Stake Positions) are the ones who get to be leaders, and they are all rich..

Makes the middle and lower class members probably feel like junk.

And a woman...in my position...forget it. Even as someone who lives here but isn't part of them...they try to push their classism via their position on me. Lucky for me, I don't give to licks about them, but it actually still BOTHERS me. It's like they feel superior because they are rich and the church recognizes it and gives them positions to do so.

It's also regimented behavior control. Why do I even need to be included in this group as a Never-mo. Why even visit me? It's all about trying to control those who they think they are over.

Just me thinking about it.

olderelder Wrote:
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> Anyone have more thoughts on this?
===============================

It's a corporation. The sole object is money.
Strategies listed support the fraud.

That's why the Mormons hold no universal "Mass." It's not about equality. It's not about helping people.
Maximization of profit is through enhancing ever smaller circles of "us" vs. "them." The delusion of specialness.
It's also why Mormons are so concerned about social standing, so judgmental, and so miserable.

Pretty exhaustive analysis OE

I have a younger brother who is 55. He is mentally and physically handicapped. He has excellent friends. I wish I had friends like he does. A family who grew up across the street from us had a son a year younger than this brother and he has a sweet wife. They have watched out for my brother all the years since my parents died 12 years ago. He has been in their ward. I went to visit him on Easter and they split the ward down the road between the neighbors and my brother. My cousin was also in the other ward and is a leader, so watched out for my brother.

So now he has to go to a strange ward and he does stand out. He needs help socially and he needs someone to sit by in church. And here he is separated. He really needs that couple when going to church. We're all concerned.

I grew up on a corner where our house was always separated eventually from the people on both sides of the street. There were always a lot of bad feelings after these ward splits.

Any compassionate and sane organization would allow your brother to be in a ward with those who look after him.

There has to be some sort of order in any oraganization.
So to maintain order membership is grouped
This helps the powers that be control the actions of the membership.
It enforces the concept of The Slave Species of God!

Largely modeled after a school district with attendance
boundaries, the Mormon model adjusts boundaries to maintain a
consistent number of members and "staff." Unlike schools which
allow reasonable attendance exceptions these are rarely granted
in the Mormon organization. Therein lies an authoritarian
influence.

The number of callings can be adjusted at any time by creating
those which did not exist or are make-work, such as ward
magazine subscription coordinator. This sort of silliness
existed in corporate America pre-pandemic. It might still
exist but most companies have a bottom line focus that
precludes unnecessary spending.

But in a school district the number of certificated and
classified staff per school is more or less fixed and dependent
on enrollment.

BcE



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2021 11:34PM by Bicentennial Ex.

It was supposed to have been shredded but wasn't and I got a good look before the document met the metal teeth shredder.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2021 03:22PM by messygoop.