The LDS church always had debt problems. Even with cash tithing it was in the red $40 million in 1959. Construction on the church office building was even delayed to save money. The cold hard reality was the church needed to be ran like a business to afford the infrastructure its doctrine demanded.

The church put more focus on acquiring cash generating assets and it’s done especially well in commercial real estate and agriculture.

We now live in the age where the church has more money than it knows what to do with but it’s growth numbers are stagnant and it’s paranoia about losing its control in Utah is growing. The church is hoping to increase its membership amongst the growing Hispanic population in Utah. Some get wet but don’t attend church meetings because they are busy working to send money home.

The honest truth is less people want the church. The only other scheme I can see the church doing is offering a BYU education cheap to young active church members. This essentially is buying church membership.

The church builds lots of temples because it can. It’s a build it and they will come mentality. I think all these temples will become a maintenance liability and an embarassment. Only a small percentage of very devout members like the temple. I’m finding the average member hates the temple experience.

The corporation is a failure as a businesses too.

It spent millions if not billions building chapels and then refuses to maintain them.

The temple spree, unless some form of long game, is headed for disaster. Buildings that stand idle, fall into such disrepair that they "need" to refurbish them after less than ten years. The whole temple thing screams money laundering.

Yes they own billions of dollars of securities, for now, but I think at some point they'll need to start drawing it down, if they aren't already, just to keep the facade going.

It’s been such a failure that it set up front companies to hide over $100 billion in liquid assets because it didn’t want the members to know how much money it had.

But if members knew that, they might not pay as much tithing. It's kind of like the veil. We humans aren't supposed to know anything about the other side so we can have free agency. So, the church was only protecting the members when it tried to hide its gigantic wealth hoard.

Think "Amana", a religious organization that no longer practices religion, only successful production and marketing of household appliances.

They will run out of members who want to be told that they're special.

The church does not connect well with the youth. The youth are leaving after they escape control of parents and grandparents.

Have you ever witnessed a football team attempt to call the same play over and over as if it's going to work (move the football forward down the field) and fool the opposing team?

That's what I think the church does. Nelson and the other Q15 do over and over. They run the same play and it's going nowhere.

The membership department informs the top church leaders- people are resigning and the missionary department is reporting more young people going home.

The top 15 huddle and devise a play to move the church forward.

Here's their play: Let's build more temples. Let's organize a youth conference. We'll send Bednar to rally the youth and tell them that the youth must serve a mission. Let's have a stake conference where we tell members that the church is growing so fast that we have no choice but to reorganize stakes and wards to strengthen them. We'll remind members that the strong ones stay in the church while weak members are the ones leaving to sin.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2024 12:59PM by messygoop.

The best bit is that they are making the exact same mistakes that certain Protestant churches made decades ago.