Do you think that the Church ultimately lost more than it gained
financially by ditching paid janitors.

what loss would it have by Dismissing janitors - custodians ?

I hear people here complain from time to time about how the members have to clean the chapels despite having billions stashed away.
Perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back.

The church took jobs away from people on church welfare. For what? To create busy work for people who already have jobs. That’s what cults do.

If the church wanted to help the poor, it would create low-skill jobs and vocational training. The most obvious being janitorial work and facilities maintenance.

I worked with those janitors, while there were still paid ones. They were lovely people. They loved their Bishops. They loved their chapels. Working only part-time, they didn't make all that much money, but they took great pride in the work that they did.

Some would cry, saying that they didn't have enough time, or the right tools to get the job done. But they did the best that they could. I only stayed for them. But when it was time to leave, I was outta there. Shortly afterward, I went permanently inactive, and several years later, officially resigned.

What PHIL doesn't get is that the party is over. The church of the 1960s and 1980s no longer exists. The wheels fell off BoM literalism, the pageants went away, and the church turned into an authoritarian cult.

I fretted over my shelf collapse for nothing because there is nothing to go back to. The church is like East Germany after all the smart people left.

Anybody want to discuss the question or just rant ?

Since the church is a business that uses a kind of toy religion as a tax shelter, it came out financially ahead if it invested the savings. In privatizing gains and socializing losses, they are as sociopathic as a typical corporation. That's how capitalism works.

The Mormon church sold its soul to Mammon, but only because Jesus needed the money.

It's a tough question to answer, PHIL. Did the Janitors-R-Us policy cost the church a significant number of very profitable tithe-paying members and families? Almost certainly.

Enough to outweigh the pittance they paid janitors? Almost certainly.

The problem is attributing causation. How do you isolate the cost of that appalling mistake from the costs of all the other appalling mistakes the church made at roughly the same time?

Which was more self-injurious: eliminating a meaningful welfare program or enacting almost single-handedly Prop 8 in California?

What is the purpose of the LDS church?

Why, to bring to pass the immorality and eternal life of an investment portfolio.

Didn't you know that?

"immorality of an investment portfolio"

That covers it.

You noticed!

I wasn't sure anyone would. ;-)

Yeah, good one. Very good.

And I didn't notice until just now, reading this for the first time but only because you mentioned it. And I pride myself on my proofreading skills (that are so persnickety that it bugs even me, never mind everybody else on Planet Earth).

<rant>
The whole situation is a non-event, LDS church is just clipping coupons.
</rant>

Janitors used to receive pensions.

I knew of two men in the Mormon church who I think were janitor supervisors who made a nice living. They both received pensions from LDS Inc. Of course it was much easier to make a living on a janitor's salary years ago.

I think it was mostly a cost savings to the Mormon church to stop hiring janitors. Why pay someone to do a job that can be done by the members for free?

I often notice a cleaning van in front of a local protestant church. I guess they can afford to hire a professional cleaning service although the church members aren't required to pay tithing.

heartbroken Wrote:
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> I often notice a cleaning van in front of a local
> protestant church. I guess they can afford to hire
> a professional cleaning service although the
> church members aren't required to pay tithing.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

Those that I'm familiar with also produce an annual financial report, available to every congregant.

Yes, that's true. Plus, most congregations get by quite nicely on a 1-3% donation per family. They also pay for a professional local staff on their donations (minister, youth minister, organist, church secretary, janitor, etc.) that takes up about 50% of a typical church budget. Normally they only send about 5-10% of their donations to their central church headquarters if they are members of a major denomination. The Mormon church on the other hand rakes in more money than church leaders have any idea how to spend. Hence, the enormous, multi-billion dollar investment funds and extensive real estate holdings.

I think the difference between the Mormon church and most other mainstream Christian churches is that in other churches, the members understand that most of their donations must be used to keep the church going, not just in terms of paying staff, but also for upkeep. In most cases it is understood that donations will be used to pay janitors. I never once heard a call for the members to clean the chapel in the Catholic church in which I was raised, or the Protestant churches I attended as a young adult. I understand that in *some* churches the members volunteer to do special cleaning tasks at certain intervals, but in most cases, no one is expected to do the routine weekly cleaning.

In my opinion, the Mormon church is abusive in that regard, especially considering the demand for the 10% tithe along with labor in the form of callings.

Exactly that members of mainstream churches do special tasks. For instance at my Lutheran church members built a rain garden last summer on half of the front lawn. They also do decorating for Christmas, Easter etc. but cleaning rarely. Maybe the every couple years when they spruce up the stained glass (We have a lot).

Those sound like fun tasks! I'm sure that your church has no trouble getting volunteers to make a garden or decorate for a holiday.

+ they get a kick-back from church suppliers & contractors;

that instead of using local venders for building materials & furnishings; a fact they fail to mention especially outside the IMW (unless things have radically changed since I participated a long time ago…



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2023 12:09AM by GNPE.

The church showed its true colors.

The opinion of the politburo that having the members clean the church makes them more invested in the church showed how out of touch they were.

We all know 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

How many people finally resigned after not only getting calls to clean a church they never go to but to have people pound on their door at 6 in the morning wondering why they aren't doing their assignment.

Weeding out tye tares may seem like a win for the church. Maybe it is.

I don't think the elite sitting on their thrones in Salt Lake understood that the professional custodians did a lot more than clean.

Neglecting preventive maintenance, spotting problems ahead of time, basic handyman service etc all extend the life of the building, furnishings and fixtures. We have no way to measure that cost in dollars. Nor can we measure the loss of goodwill and the number of folks that left over this issue.

We can be sure the bean counters at ensign peak know and changes would happen if it wasn't a win for them

Yes, the janitor was SO.MUCH.MORE. than a custodian who did the cleaning. He was the gatekeeper. If someone needed to get into the building, he was to go-to person to call. The man who took care of our ward building was held in very high regard, almost like the bishop. Any time we were in the building and we were having any activity, I always felt comfortable that all was well and that he had everything under control not matter what.

I was just devastated when I found out they were doing away with paid custodians. Even though I had long grown up and left that ward, I was so sad that he was no longer taking care of my home ward building. So unfair!

PHIL Wrote:
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> Do you think that the Church ultimately lost more
> than it gained
> financially by ditching paid janitors.

Yes. If you go into any chapel today, they tend to be dirty. The last one I went into had small bits of trash on the floor, bits of cookie, leaves etc. It gives a bad impression.

My mom's ward has some affluent donors who pay a company to clean the church every week. I'm not too sure how it is approved by SLC, but this has been going on for ten years already.

I was at the MTC in the 1990s and that's where this member-custodian program was cultivated. I thought it was half-ass to begin with as there were elders who couldn't even run a vacuum cleaner.

That sounds like a good idea!

A family has eight kids - 10 people total...
They want to have FUN, not clean the building-
Their weekly tithing (expectation/ DUE) is $420
(Or a donation of about $50-100 at a normal church)

They tithe $400 one week...
Band together with other members
Each contributing a tithe of tithing
To PAY someone to do it
IOW, make a kitty
$20 x 20 = $400...
$15 x 50 = $650...
$10 x 90 = $900...
Stuff like that!

Guess what $20 saved them
OVER 2 hours each!
That's 20 hours!
Or a dollar/ hour!

Cults FORCE followers to fondle the cleaning duties like the company store pays workers in store credit only.

Mormonism is OCC (One Cheap 'Church')!

The custodian of our building when I was a kid was a great guy. He really took great care of the building and he was really good at letting us play basketball. As long as we behaved ourselves and were not in the way of others using the building we could play.

I think the church lost something getting rid of the custodians. I don’t think the buildings are as clean and it’s always nice having someone keeping an eye on things.

Does anyone remember when the church ever opened up its coin purse to be generous?

I am sorry that I can't think of a single time.

I just remembered about a time when the church used to schedule those quarterly stake priesthood conferences. Basically, the stake presidency would alternate between bloviating and scolding men to magnify their priesthood and honor their assigned duties.

It was announced that there would be root beer floats for the summertime meeting. The church would provide cups and the root beer. The members would provide the ice cream.

Can you guess what happened?

The members kept their end of the bargain. Lots of vanilla ice cream was taken to the cultural hall in the stake center. It was collected and spread out over several folding tables.

At the end of the meeting, no announcement was made to gather in the cultural hall, but everyone moseyed over there. The ice cream was still in bags, but leaking from the great thaw. Nothing else had been added- no root beer and no cups/straws.

The stake presidency was nowhere to be seen; they hit the road and left the stake clerk to handle the mess. -If any of you want to take your ice cream that you purchased, come get it. We still need help with putting away the tables. Most people just walked out.

I was sent to live in a Mormon foster home in 1965. He was a teacher, and she was a housewife. When they got married, she was 17 and he was 18, both right out of high school. They became frozen in that time, without moving forward much. He made $400 a month, and when they took me in I was an additional $125 per month. I may be too cynical here, but I believe that is why they so easily got talked into taking me on.

They were incessantly broke, and up to here in debt, so much so that they had to tow this broken down Rambler from one rental to another, because although it didn't run, it had been used for collateral for one of their loans. So he was always the church custodian (and I was pressed into helping him), for which he got only a small amount of cash, but a houseful of Deseret brand groceries. It was weird stuff -- number 10 cans of honey, number 10 cans of non-homogenized peanut butter, number 10 cans of green beans... But without his custodian job, we likely would not have had enough to eat. That's how important these jobs can be. So I am angry and bewildered that today they tell the needy family to try first finding and using government aid programs (a huge no-no in earlier times), and then check with local food pantries run by other churches. This is a huge blow to any credibility they once had.

cludgie Wrote:
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> ...and then check with local
> food pantries run by other churches.

Bad look for them. How cheap can you get. Feeding hungry people is an easy way to be of great local, hands-on assistance, actually helping people at a most basic level. They certainly have enough money to do so.

Wouldn't it make a member wonder why other churches are being charitable while theirs is not so much? And especially that it's fellow Mormons they could be helping themselves.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2023 01:03PM by Nightingale.

Do you think that the Church ultimately lost more than it gained
financially by ditching paid janitors?

Yes, it's a sore spot for well to do members who shell out nice donations to LDS Corp to be bothered with menial labor.

PHIL, this is the widow's mite that Hinckley proudly displayed.

https://omny.fm/shows/classic-byu-speeches/the-widow-s-mite-gordon-b-hinckley-september-1985

And the church turned it into a billion dollar hedge fund.

They are more concerned with the real estate than the experience of being a member. They want butts in seats but could care less if the facility for those butts is cared for.

I don't know how a member can grow old anymore and not be jaded.

I remember our church janitor in So Cal ( I've been inactive for ? 17 years and was a TBM), He was this hard working Latino guy, older, lived by himself, seems like he had some Psych issues not too bad thought, like a lot of people in LA (worked downtown LA for a long time for gov, and was at ground zero when the riots broke out, very sad and dangerous, know how to keep my head down), sorry onward, a very good guy, and He really needed that job, for money and respect, He didn't make much money but lived frugally and stayed in His lane, for him to go to McDonald's was a big deal something we would take for granted. Anyway it just seems like a crappy Elon Musk billion air, corporate accountant, greed type of thing to do, especially when you know all those cushy jobs they give to the faithful soldiers, retirement jobs, double dipping, all the church workers in the church business, temple facilities staff, etc, etc. And billions in cash...

Teach a leader to fish and they can feed a billion dollar hedge fund. Give a man a meger wage and he might be able to help people with it.