As you know, I am a NOM da NOM NOM. Well, I was called to be a Ward Clerk focusing on membership records. Basically recording when people move in and move out. I did learn a couple things though during my training.

1. Even if you're excommunicated, you are still in the database, with a big EXCOMMUNICATED or whatever, next to your name.

2. Over HALF the ward is a REQUESTED DO NOT CONTACT!!! Over half.

360 members/families, about 260 don't want any contact.

Also, they do keep notes on you with confidential information.

It's actually gotten much easier than when I was a membership clerk about 15 years ago, what with the software updates. Everything is networks with Salt Lake City now. You do your stuff, and then hit a button, and SLC records are updated at the same time.

A lot of what I suspected is true. I also helped with tithing earlier this week. Actually at the local level, the Bishopric really could care less about the donations. The more there are, the more work they have to do and the later they get to go home. They just want to rush through them and get it done. So if you are worried about the Bishop (if you are still paying for whatever reason) knowing what your income is, they really DON'T CARE as much as the Brethren during Conference care. At the local level the Bishops, the counselors, clerks are just doing their calling like any other calling. I think the MIND trips come from higher up. At least I feel that at my ward. Maybe some Bishops are Bishop Roods, but my seems to be just trying to do his best and get through it.

In my mother-in-laws ward, Milwaukie Oregon, she told me just a few weeks ago, that there are over 500 in the ward with less than 100 showing up for church. The church leaders have the GAL to stand up and anounce that the church is growing with over 14 million (active?) members. Such f-en BS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2011 12:12AM by tango.

Primus- tell us more about the "confidential notes" that are associated with the records... Thanks!

I use to be in the Milwaukie ward. Talk about a dull ward.

Me, too, back when it was the Portland 9th Ward.

I asked my TBM friend who was membership clerk about ...things and he said the information was sacred, not secret.

Anagrammy

Amazing.

Wish we had the stats on other wards as well, to see how prevalent this is!

"360 members/families, about 260 don't want any contact."

Half would be 180, 2/3 would be 240!

I wonder when they decided to start doing that. I had never heard of 2/3rds of the members of my ward either. lol

When I was a VT in the late '90s, I would ask inactives that I was assigned to if they wanted to request to be on the 'do not contact' list. Oh man how I hated VT'ing.

My dad had that calling in the 80's. I sure wish he was still alive. He could probably give me some good information about some of the things he knew.

I was a memberhsip clerk once in the 70s when I was in the military, and I learned that there is way to much incriminating information in the individual records. A friend of mine had told me how he had to come back from his mission after three months because he was really sick. Then I noticed in his record once that he went on a mission to Brazil, came back after three months, got married in 3 1/2 months, and his wife had a baby girl in 6 months, then they were sealed in the temple at 12 months. That info put together a completly different story than what he had told me. It's true, I may have been too nosy, but I went to look at is record to find some information that the BP wanted to know about.

This is so true. I was membership clerk too, and there were some awkward patterns that showed up in the data. Like multiple children born exactly 9 months after dad's birthday or something. I loved this calling, though, because it gave me an excuse to skip out on everything but SM.

When I was in the EQ presidency we were instructed to round up the ward sec., financial sec., etc., and anyone else hiding out based on their "callings" and drag them to priesthood! I took a certain perverse pleasure in it, figuring if I had to be there then they needed to suffer through it too!

Oh, at the time I'm sure I totally believed that clerks outranked EQ presidents. Everything we touched was super-confidential, and only the BP himself would have been able to pry me and my financial clerk buddy out of the office!

It was bad when I was active in the pre-Internet days. I imagine it's only gotten a whole lot worse (for Churchco) since then.

Churchco has always operated like a multi-level marketing scheme. The deluded members and missionaries have always thought that there is something magical about baptism (as if there really was a Holy Ghost getting involved) that would help new recruits stay active after baptism despite the fact that they really had no idea what they were getting into when they were baptized.

Back in the old days, it seemed like at least 3 out of 4 persons who were baptized became completely inactive within a year. Even as a fairly faithful teen member, I thought that it was pretty strange and I didn't really buy the story that Satan was working overtime on new members to make them give up. We lived in a kind of college town and I saw a fair number of open-minded, curious people get initially enthused about the Church and get baptized quickly after some high-pressure tactics from missionaries. Then I would see these new members come out for a few weeks after baptism. The worst part was seeing the uncomfortable "WTF?!" expressions they always had during church meetings as they encountered one freaky new Mormon thing after another until they could bear it no longer and faded away forever and ever, hallelujah amen!

The big-box religion retailer. Very fitting word considering what is going on in downtown SLC.

Gees makes me wish I could look at my church records and see what shit is on there!

I was a financial clerk and then ward clerk before I left very recently. While counting tithing week after week, we were mostly trying to get it done quickly. I'll admit though that when a unusually large donation came through it was hard not to notice. I wasn't trying to be nosy, but when most donations are ranging from a few dollars to up to a thousand or so, a check for over 10 grand will catch your attention (an NFL rookie joined our ward... gossip gossip gossip). The other big invasion of privacy is the year end tithing declaration report. It lists every member and total donations, and then the clerks and bishop have to mark everyone according to their status -- full, part, non, exempt. Once again, I wasn't intentionally snooping, but it is impossible to not notice who the big tithers are and who wasn't paying that you would have thought was.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2011 09:20AM by Unchained.

In our ward, the financial clerk printed out all the tithing settlement forms and left them in a stack in the clerk's office. They sat there for about a month. Anyone with a key (EQ, RS, etc) could let themselves in and take a look through and see what people had paid for the year.

As a secretary at BYU, I once had to fax a tithing settlement record for the whole ward to SLC for my boss, who was also a BYU bishop.

--Sister January

On your membership record there are occasions where it will say "contact confidential records department", which means your bishop calls that department and they tell him your "story" and the previous bishop will usually be put in touch with him. This is how the "coporate memory" is passed along for you apostates (ha, ha, I'm with you...).

Interesting to see that if we keep going with it we can probably pin down when the formal 'no contact' policy was actually installed. (Note that one poster says it wasn't being done in the '90's' while another is more specific saying it was being done in the LATE 90's).

Please continue the posts as this is invaluable information for someone trying to piece the whole thing together.

out

I just made it impossible for them to contact me/ know where I am or get ahold of me. (and I live right in SLC county) which is far more effective.

Because I want some updates from the current clerks on here about how much tithing $ the wards are bringing in now. There is an archived thread about this, but it'd be nice to get an update.

My singles ward - attendance of around 270, mostly young professionals or students at the local CCs -- brought in over $500k last year in tithing and around $30k in fast offerings. But we werent keeping up with our missionary support payments. We were a few thousand in the hole. If we could have had some say as to where the money went that wouldnt have been an issue. Most folks have no clue how to fill out the slip to support missionaries from the local ward so we were always behind.

The Bishop has no financial incentive to collect tithing. Sure, he wants a good number of tithe payers, but the actual dollar amount is irrelevant to him. If he collects $100 or $100,000, that money flows to SLC and does not stay locally. The church then gives him a tiny portion back that is irrelevant to his tithing receipts.

I'm not saying that the church should up the incentives, but by taking the control out of the local hands, the local boys just want to go home and watch TV, not collect for LDS, Inc.

In Canada the offering income for each individual ward is a matter of public record through the tax office. You can't see what individuals donations are, but you can see the units aggregate donations.

From browsing a few wards I was familiar with they were typically bringing in excess of $500 K with one of the rich wards topping out over a million. Most of the money left the country to CHQ and BYU with the ward operating on about 10-20% of the revenue.

It is also very disheartening for any TBM if they find out that their membership record lists any formal discipline they might have had against them FOREVER. Worse than the mythic permanent record they taunted you with at school. God may forgive, but the church NEVER forgets and it will affect your progress up the ecclesiastical ladder. Yes, it may be scrubbed from local databases and access limited to the leaders, but it is still there.

We had two lists. One with actual Elders on it including the inactive ones. Less than half of list number one attended regularly. The other list included the names of guys who would otherwise be elders because of their age, but were priests only and most were inactive. List number two was just as big as list number one. That meant that less than 1/4 of the ward's males were active. I would suppose the numbers were better for the women. All in all, activity I would surmise was around 1/3 of the ward.

It’s been a few years now, but when I was the ward clerk it was very obvious that few people paid a full tithing yet many had temple recommends. If you tell the truth about your tithing you are denied a recommend; if you lie you can get one.

I gave up tithing with Proposition 8. Recently I'm in Family History class and the finance clerk appears. He has an envelope for me. He has me read the printed name on front and asks if that is me?

I have been in the ward for seven years, am a well known apostate with fifteen family members currently attending the ward. I guess when you don't contribute, you are considered an unknown person.

I told him I had never heard of the guy. he thrust the envelope in my hand and walked away... I cracked up. Envelope, invitation to a party for "seasoned" members (think old and decrepit). Probably want to ask us to leave our homes to the church when we die.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2011 06:50PM by george.