I think the church is going from a meeting house based church to a temple based church. When I was a kid growing up in the church in the 70’s our local LDS meeting house was the neighborhood recreation center. There was a full time custodian and as long as we didn’t interfere with church activities and. Eating sweet were welcome to play basketball. Half the kids that played ball in the church were non-member kids from the neighborhood.

I watched a video on MormonLeaks that showed a meeting with some apostles talking about challenges the church was facing. It was agreed that entertaining the youth was not making them stay active in the church when they became young adults. It was decided that giving kids more responsibility in the church kept them in.

I think this is where the home based church is coming in. The church is going away from sports and activities and even meetinghouses. It’s focusing on temples.

Notice the youth now have temple recommends. They want the youth to be temple goers and they are making access to a temple easier. You have to pay tithing to get the temple recommend. Basically the church is going to only be interested in members who hold temple recommends. Fun activities and sports will be a thing of the past. The church will build temples instead of meeting houses.

I don’t see any growth in the church but a shrinking of it. What will be left will be TBM’s with temple recommends. The pressure to attend the temple will never be greater. This will drive the less TBM away and maybe the church doesn’t care because they weren’t big tithing players anyways.

Temples are pay-to-play, which chapels aren’t. They also have fewer callings to keep filled and sit on more valuable property that could use a nice tax exemption.

I can’t blame TSCC for concentrating on its core competency. The priesthood and the temple are a unique value proposition. Without them they’d be mainstream Christianity. Keep in mind that temples are a favorite of old rich TBMs. You can’t buy a house next to a temple because TBMs only sell to other TBMs.

I think they’ll reframe the BoM from historical to inspired. It’s easy. Look how fast members took to hating being called “Mormon”. The church really can turn on a dime, because it’s a cult steered by one man’s whims.

Yup. It’s almost like Russ is doing a test run on what the church can get away with.

Mormon is now a bad word an 3 Nephi is the most important book in the Book of Mormon.

The doctrine will be streamlined and there will be a focus on Jesus Christ instead of church history.

The temple will just be a cultural thing. I think they will whittle the endowment away to being very short. It’s too long and unpopular. They will play with it more.

So more like the Freemasons and their members-only "temples" ?

I would love to see more empty church buildings with for sale signs. Eventually, I think the church will realize that their McTemple dynasty will need to scaled back. As the late boomer gen and gen x get closer to retirement age, they will have less disposable income to do "world temple" trips. Some of these active members are the ones that are causing the most disdain for the Q15 in their parenting skills (ie it's ok to say no to callings, interviews, seminary, serving a mission).

By the way, focusing on boosting temple participation is nothing new. The modern church has been pushing it since ETB was president in the 1980s. It was one of the 5 missions of the church.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNs2EDxdxq0&t=155s



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2019 09:27AM by messygoop.

Think Amana, where their businesses have lived on, but the religion is no more.

Me either.

However, I know my kids won't be Mormons, and most likely my grandkids won't either. I'm leaving my life story for them so they will know why they shouldn't sign up to be Mormon. I don't want my grandkids to get some romantic notion about Mormonism after i'm dead. I have over 100 living relatives that are Mormon. I don't want them hitting on my grand kids or great grandkids after i'm gone.

Our future relatives need to know WHY we left and WHY Mormonism is a scam and a cult. We may be the only ones who will tell them the truth.

Just a phony product (temple access) to sell and rewards (CK access and fancy titles) for people who build up the biggest down-lines of new recruits and/or pay the most tithing.

Whatever can be done in an expensive chapel can be done in a member's basement. Baptisms can be done in the temple...or in a river or in one of those above-ground pools you can get through Walmart.

https://www.walmart.com/browse/toys/above-ground-pools/4171_14521_132873_1218921_6853140

Billions can and will be saved. The Brethren will have more liquid assets to play with than ever. Each member of the FP will have a private jet, with abundant room for wife and wife's girlfriend and other entourage members.

The neighbors already have a fairly good blow-up pool. I'm sure the neighborhood can use that one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2019 06:08PM by cl2.

...still very much in my rearview mirror...

Pretty soon they will be selling Gold Tickets to the CK for $1,000,000 a pop!

I probably won't be around and my kids are nevermo so I could care less on a personal level...but it would be nice if it were a footnote.

Leave your life story for future generations to read. Don't let those grandkids/ great...grandkids get scammed. I worry they may not know my whole story and get some romantic notion about Mormonism. Don't let that happen.

I am writing it.

So, the cult is going to crack down on kids to pay tithing. Really--how low can they go?

My kids always had jobs, from about age 13, from babysitting and yard work to paying part-time and entry-level jobs, when they were of legal hiring age, to better jobs to put themselves through college...but they resigned before that. Probably most Mormon kids made more money than many Third World people. Some Mormon kids have huge allowances. Dad pays twice--his gross tithing, then the kids pay tithing on their allowances from Dad.

The Mormon leaders think kids are stupid. Kids aren't going to like this, at all.

exminion Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>Dad pays twice--his gross tithing,
> then the kids pay tithing on their allowances from
> Dad.

We used to have Sunday school lessons about this. They made it quite clear that God expected his cut and you had better not cheat him. I might get a cash birthday gift of 20 from Mom that already paid her tithing on that 20, but it really was 18 after the church got its cut. They've been double dipping for years. Even had a mission president that demanded we pay a 13 dollar monthly fast donation based on our monthly $125 subsistence allowance.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2019 11:11AM by messygoop.

I can see a couple of things happening:

I think the LDS church will spin their lack of growth (or even shrinking membership numbers). They used to brag about their membership growth. In just the past couple of years, they have stopped reporting membership numbers in General Conference (because even fudging the numbers shows an embarrassing low growth rate). The new narrative will be about how the elect are clinging to the rod, but the less valiant are slipping away.

Another likely development is a gradual backing away from the claim that the Book of Mormon is literally true. The emphasis will be on the “spiritual” truth of the BoM, and eventually people won’t even care if Nephi and Lehi ever actually existed.

as in, to have a defined good "us" there must be a sharply defined not-good "other" (were everyone LDS the corporation would necessarily splinter -- the real cause of the FLDS). This geometry is the origin the judgmentality, better-than-thou-ness, hypocrisy, anxiety of being found out, money worship, and inhumanity.

Authorities can't control information any longer, so shrinking will accelerate, and the fear of extinction is resulting in a siege mentality which is causing an even more sharply defined us-vs-them. In twenty the small organization that remains will be even more incestuously weirdly deformed. If you can imagine that.

Until Nelson, I never knew that members were reading the BoM incorrectly. He now says 3rd Nephi is what should be focused on. Certainly, this is a sign that the BoM is losing its importance to the church. Yes, let's highlight the most plagiarized part.

Maybe Nelson should recommend listening to sermons by Olsteen and Falwell as well.

More distant in my rear view mirror. Not that I will be around to notice.