I attended a church last Sunday to watch my granddaughter give a talk. It was much different than I remember. There were only children ages 3-7 in the room. However, there were only a dozen kids in the room. There were at least a dozen adults. This is a far cry from the wards my children grew up in. Is it a sign that within the next 18-20 years, the churches will be attended by older adults like so many other outdated religious practices?

This seems to be the case in most wards. Here in Salt Lake County, Mormons will tell you that the neighborhoods are becoming "older", and that the young families are populating the areas South and West, towards Draper, Harriman, South Jordan. I have relavies in those areas, who say their primarys are dwindling, too. Most of the wards have consolidated their primarys and YM/YW, or whatever they are calling YM/YW these days. My neighborhood ward has been consolidating the kids for years, and then they consolidated the local wards into one ward/stake, and now they are combining wards out of our area with our ward. Our ward is on prime residential view property, and more valuable than the other ward properties. The abandoned ward houses are, according to the cult liars, "closed for rennovation." One abandoned ward house has been sitting there for a couple of years, and no work has been one on it, at all.

The deacons and elders have been combined, because there were so few of them. No more Scouts. My daughter was the Cub Scout den mother, for the whole stake, combined, and there were only 5 cubs in the entire stake.

I think the church is going the way of all the other christian church's. They all are dwindling. The Methodist church by where I live has been losing membership like crazy. I'm expecting that church to close and go up for sale when too many of it's aging members die off.

Funny. I can remember being in a Methodist cub scout pack as a kid. The church was full of families then and from the standpoint of activities, it was really similar to the LDS Church.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think the church is going the way of all the
> other christian church's.

If I may refine: "...the way of all the 'legacy' or 'mainline' churches."

> The Methodist church by where I live has been
> losing membership like crazy.

Now the "dis-United Methodist Church." It just had an "amicable" divorce over LGBTQ. Expect further decline, even among the rainblow ones.
>
Where there is religious retention or growth, it is among conservative churches, which makes LDS (a conservative sect) interesting--they're in decline.

I poked my head into a neighborhood Christian Science church mid-2019, and saw just one girl in the Sunday School. Interesting, considering CS kids stay in Sunday School through the age of 19.

Maybe there was only one kid because all the others didn't realize the flu is just an illusion, so they died.

One of my main reasons for leaving our cult of choice was that my first kids were reaching Primary age and I just couldn't do it. I didn't care if Jesus wanted them for a Sunbeam, I wanted them for my children first and foremost and I will not share a dinner table every day with a brainwashed stooge no matter if he has 50% of my DNA. So... Me = 1, Jesus = 0.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2020 02:13AM by ptbarnum.

That was the precipitating factor for me, too. When one of my kids came home singing Follow the Prophet and I saw another one walking in a line through the hall with his arms crossed like a little robot, I realized that I couldn't do it to them. So we left.

And then I spent many years wondering why I'd made myself stay in a system to which I would NEVER expose my children.

5 on one side and 6 on the other side, but kids my daughter's age are having fewer kids by far, 2 or 3 at most.

My daughter is 34, got married last January, and isn't in any big hurry to have a child.

You know cl2 I think it is great that your daughter is considering her options about kids. Does she get a lot of blow back about it? I can't imagine the pressure she would have been put under back in the day.

She would never tell me about it, though. She told me last spring that she might have ONE, but was debating that. You should have seen her husband's face. I told him not to worry, she has the genes. He knew exactly what I meant. She's a twin. But she will not deal well with being a SAHM. It is already decided that he will stay home should they have kids.

My boyfriend works with a mormon girl who is an engineer. She was an intern and they hired her. She is pregnant with twins and all the mormon women there are saying she'll quit when she has the twins. She didn't grow up in Utah, so I told him I don't think she'll stay home with her twins, not after just getting her degree. It remains to be seen.

I wanted to have 8. After having twins first, I was pretty much ready to be done. I never did get pregnant again luckily.

Mormonism is losing adolescent members at a big rate. The trouble is that church is just so boring. I'm not sure what could be done different there are a lot of cultural shifts in the teaching that are going on. I hear from my relatives about the curriculum, it's book of Mormon again this year. But the way of teaching is all convoluted, they jump around to different verses on topics rather than going logically through the story. And there are a lot of sensitivity lessons right now. Lots of group thearapy that's the new trend from the bretheren, instead of the facts, like it use to be.

Back when I was a kid if someone was depressed it was because of the Devil. Now members all get around in circles and discuss their feelings. Touchy feely king of stuff. And they are getting into taboo subjects as well during these lessons such as who's got s. abused as a child, and attempted murders, It might just be my ward that's gone off the deep end? IDK

Retaining the young adults is currently a big priority in the church. The leadership believe entertaining the youth may provide fun times but does little to build enough belief in the dogma for them to stay. What the leadership have decided is giving the youth more responsibility earlier will build their belief.

Also more probing into how they are progressing. This is why the bishoprics have been told to delegate more to the Relief Society and Elders Quorum and spend the majority of their time with the youth. Nothing really new here. Our bishop spent a ton of time with us when I was a teen. He even went on a lot of our scout outings with us.

I don't think it's going to stop the exodus. The cost of living is higher than ever and what young people make is not anymore than I made at their age 35 years ago. People are leaving the church because it's really expensive. I know a few young adults playing the game just to get the reduced tuition at BYU but they don't really believe in the church. I don't think anything is going to change or stop the outflow. I don't think bumping up when you can serve a mission makes any difference.

This is all just to make the adult leaders in the church feel like they are changing the situation. In reality it changes nothing.

What does the church offer?

Nothing. Pay tithing, clean toilets and be told that you're unworthy of God's love.

I have mentioned in other threads that some churches are very cognizant that the youth want to feel connected to their church. They let them sing, play instruments and worship their way. And it's paying off. The youth WANT to attend and participate.

It's a concept that the mormon church will not give an inch. They will not give up their control. Just think of all the "unwritten" rules that members are supposed to obey.

Do you think the cost of putting kids through missions AND college is causing some to exit? I know my parents could barely manage helping us through college. If I hadn't paid for it myself I'd never have gone on a mission. Even paying for it myself did not help get my parents excited about the whole mission idea. My mother and father were both against it.

Some, not all, of the decline in membership of protestant churches can be accounted for by the attitude of the younger generation. There is a distinct movement among many away from the denominations of their parents, with their prescribed doctrines and practices, to a more simple Jesus centered focus. I am sure that the Boise area where I live is not too different from other areas of the country. Here I see numerous small group, one off churches blossoming into very large congregations filling large empty commercial buildings.

big churches not part of a major Protestant denomination that have stages with bands that play modern Christian music. Some of them are local "chains" with a charismatic young worship leader who gives talks to the branch locations via video live-stream. Mrs Numbers (raised in Churches of Christ - only a cappella hymnn singing) thinks its pretty bad that the members seem to be drawn there for the "entertainment", but me, meh, whatever floats their boat.

In the ward I recently left there were only three 12 to 14 year olds
the adult males had to pass the sacrament.

Was there any contention between these men as to who got to take the sacrament into the baby-suckling room?




(something tells me that I was started on the bottle too soon...)