Posted by:
flackerman
(
)
Date: July 04, 2011 11:44AM
I was listening to a MormonStories podcast a few months ago, where John Dehlin made the following challenge.
"For those of you who thing the church should change, I challenge you to come up with any recommendation that would improve the church from your liberal/progressive view point that would lead to a maintenance or increase in church attendance or tithing."
I know that many of you would just like the church to come to an end, but that is not going to happen. I have lots of family that will never leave it. Therefore, I would love to see the church become something better. So, I thought about this for a bit and came up with a quite a list. I ended up making a video about these ideas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPkL_CjCJucIf I could only choose one of my suggestions, it would be the first one: Stop thinking like a corporation and start acting like a charity (even John's question is a sympton of this mentality). I estimated that less than 0.5% of the cash donated by the membership goes towards humanitarian aid. That percentage jumps up to 1.7% when donated goods and services are included, but that is still pitifully small for a church that takes in over 6 billion per year in tithing, plus all of the profits from its investments and businesses.
During this process I became curious how my suggestions would compare with other peoples ideas. I am sure that there are many out there who would like to see the church change in some way. The church has changed in the past due to aggitation both from within and without. If nothing critical is ever said, nothing good will ever get done. So I would like to extend this to you. What changes would you make?
P.S. I did not put this in my video because I was not sure about it, but how many charitable entities, such as soup kitchens, homeless shelters, shelters for abused women and children, etc, does the church own and operate in the US? There might be some, I just don't know of any.