Linger longers are unofficial "break the fast" activities where all church attendees are welcome to socialize and eat snacks and partial meals after church services on a fast Sunday. Members (not the church or the ward budget) donate food for this social event. It's one of the events that make Mormons appear semi-normal human beings.

A letter from my mom's stake presidency has cancelled this activity for all of its wards and branches. I wasn't there but the gist of it read that church fast donations are down, WAY DOWN. And the church (which has BILLIONS) is disappointed that members are selfishly thinking of themselves before making Christlike decisions to donate money to help others.

My mom thinks some families have decided that they need not pay tithing or fast offerings to the church if they are DONATING to support Linger Longers. Times are tough and families are struggling to keep their heads above the waters.

My mom is feeling a bit down with these cut to church activities (Linger Longers and RS Luncheons).

I doubt that people are not donating "because times are tough". More likely they are at least subliminally pushing back against donations because they know the church has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets.

They keep paying tithing because they have to to get a TR, but the passive resistance kicks in with the other donations.

And frankly, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if tithing wasn't also down. Some people may just stop paying, and others scale back and just lie at the TR interview.

But cancelling a monthly potluck until donations come back up - sounds like someone needs a refresher on D&C 121

41 No apower or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the bpriesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;

    If you don't pay your tithing, you get an 11% increase in spending power!  (I read this somewhere, or rather the title of the article said it was an 11% increase, but I don't know the facts, nor the math, but as a propagandist, not knowing the facts never bothered me all that much...)

    Why wouldn't ghawd want you to have more spending/saving money?  Pretty big blessing, right?

    So, say you, your spouse(s), and ghawd(s) agree that you are entitled to the blessing of keeping all your money because ghawd is doing more than just fine when it comes to income; ghawd readily admits that he and Ensign Peaks aren't hurting...

    But the bishop doesn't agree with you and says, "No tickee, no washee..."*  So you go home, a bit dejected...  But then in conference with the lord, you all agree that the bishop can be 'moved' to agree with you and to issue you a TR...

    The following Sunday, in EQ meeting, you sound out a couple of other in-favor-of-the-blessing-of-an-11%-boost-in-income Elders and they each bring in a couple of friends, and before you know it, you have an action committee!

    The action committee, after being impressed by the spirit that ghawd is on their side, begins a terror campaign against the bishop.  It starts with both his and his wife's car having one tire slashed.  A crude sign is taped to the windshield: "Don't withhold ANYONE'S TR, bishop, or else . . ."

    Of course, he does not knuckle under; he's ghawd's spokesman on his patch of this wonderful planet.  He violates the sanctity of the confessional by telling them (as if they could care) who isn't paying their tithing, and should be considered suspects!

    The following Sunday evening, around 11 pm, there's a knock on the door of the bishop's house.  It's a local police patrol officer, and she says to the Bishop, "I was driving by and noticed that your Lexis was tipped on its side and that all the tires on your and your wife's car have been slashed..."

    Now at this point, things begin to diverge. Some bishops will immediately wise up and start issuing TRs to whoever wants to sit across the desk from them and ask for one.

    Other bishops, those who believe in Truth, Justice, and the American Way** are going to dig their heels in and demand that things be done THEIR way!  Regarding these dumb butts, the campaign simply tightens its belt in the face of the petulant, mewling hypocrite UNPAID warrior of ghawd.

    At some point, maybe when the bishop comes home from work to find his wife and kids handcuffed in a circle around the oak tree in the front yard, and she's only wearing garments, bra, and panties, and all the neighbors are ignoring them, he'll cotton on to the fact that he's totally at the mercy of his ward, not the other way around.  He'll finally admit that ghawd has failed him.

    And the fact that the SP (who IMMEDIATELY figured things out was signing ANYTHING for ANYBODY!) and church headquarters were doing nothing for him, along with the fact that his auto and homeowners insurance dropped him for too many claims, the recalcitrant bishop will finally be convinced that maybe ghawd isn't all that powerful, on a day to day basis.  Sure, he'll be getting a planet of his own later, but as for now...


    Yes, this is a fairy tale, but power does reside in the people, and in countries where the church thrives, the people still have this abundance of power.  Let's hope that they don't give it away for a mess of porridge.





*"no tickee, no washee" is a very old, prejudiced way to say 'if you don't do things my way, you ain't getting what you want.'  The sociological reference is to the 1910s through the 1920s, when it was a stereotype that Chinese immigrants started their way up the economic ladder by taking in washing.  You'd bring in a load of dirty clothes, and you'd get a 'ticket' that ID'd your load.  If you lost that ticket, you were NOT going to be given your now clean clothes, which makes perfect sense to our now very orderly society. Cartoons were created in which the stereotypical elderly Chinese lady was yelling at the stately, refined, well-dressed American high society lady, "Lady, you no got tickee; no tickee, no washee!"


**The American Way    Someone could spend a lifetime writing about precisely what "The American Way" is that we're talking about!!  I'm not going to claim that "The American Way" consists of an infinity of choices, but c'mon, it is not a small menu!

Why it's an 11% raise when you quite paying tithing.

You are never supposed to add and subtract percentages. That said, if the percentages are small, the error from adding and subtracting is also small. For larger percentages, the error is quite dramatic.

Dramatic example: You mark some $1 item down 50%. The new price is $0.50. OK, fine.

You mark the now 50 cent item up 50%. The price is now $0.75. You can't simply subtract 50% from the original price and then add 50% to the discounted price to get back to the original price.

Given the exact same circumstances ($1 item originally), multiplying by .50 (50%) will get you the discounted price, and dividing the discounted price by .50 ( that is, $0.50 / .50) does in fact get you back to the original $1 price.

That is the reason the % symbol has a slash in it - to indicate that a division is involved - it is the ratio of two numbers.


So, to discount your income to reflect tithing, you will have 90% left, so take your income (let's say $60,000) and multiply by .90.

Discounted income is $60K * .90 = $54K
If you then stop paying tithing, your unddiscounted income is:
$54K / .90 = $60K

Through the magic of algebra, dividing by .90 is equivalent to multiplying by (1/.09) which, if you get out your trusty calculator is 0.1111111... which, if you remember 6th grade math, converts to a percentage as 11.11...% percent.

And nobody actually does the math that way. They just add or subtract 10%. Close enough.

I think the tipping amount in the US crept up from 15% to 20% because most people could figure out 20% in their head (move the decimal one place left, then double the amount and you have 20%). Fifteen percent was just too hard to do mentally.

The standard tip back in the old days was 10%. Mathematically it would have been easier to just keep that. It gradually crept up due to social pressure and the expectations of service workers to first 15%, then 18%, and now often 20%. There was some pressure to move it up to 25% at which point customers pretty much "noped" out of there. I think the fact that customers have finally put their feet down is why there is now a conversation about paying servers at least minimum wage.

Eating out at restaurants in wealthy towns in California, you are often presented with the suggested tip starting at 25%, and if you look closely at your tab, there are very often ancillary service charges for the restaurant itself.

  
  

Yes, I agree. There is passive resistance going on here.

I know I could hardly wait to get the heck out of there when church ended. Ward boundaries are defined, so it's not like you are there with your social time pals. You know the weird guy and old lady who never shuts up will be there. You are already behind on doing your darn "ministering" visiting teaching. You already did your janitor rotation so you don't want to be stuck with clean up for yet another activity.

You have kids to feed and the church has already sucked up too much of your day. You have a roast in the oven at home. No one wants yet another thing to be asked to bring refreshments for. Everyone knows that crap cuts into your home budget, and the church already gets a huge cut.

I can't believe you overlooked one of the great time savers in LDS-dom: Say hello to the people you "minister" to at the potluck, and count that as your visit.

D'oh!

BTW, the social glue effect is precisely the reason most churches have a coffee hour after the service. The vast majority of the people stay for coffee hour.

>>Say hello to the people you "minister" to ... and count that as your visit.

Genius!

While in the mission field I had one area that was over 200 square miles. The branch house was 8 miles outside of the nearest town, and it had 50 dedicated members who were all farmers.

They drove up to 50 miles to attended church. The monthly potluck was the event for all of them. I tell you, if you want to experience a real potluck, theirs was the one. But that monthly event bound them together, they were one united group. I remember them all. Everyone of them I deeply respected for their hard work, generosity, and I got your back mantra.

This was the glue that kept them together. Today's LDS Corp. leadership simply does not get it. They have been getting rid of all the glue, and all you have left is a baseless boring religion.

Its just going to get worse for those who stay.

You're right. The church just doesn't get it.

The community feeling in the branch you describe was what I wanted the church to be, but it just wasn't. I've often wondered if the truth about the church would have mattered as much to me if I had felt a sense of belonging in the wards that I attended as an adult.

It's normal in the mainstream Christian churches to host after-church coffee hours and linger-longers. Most churches realize that opportunities to socialize are important to many of their members.

I enjoyed our linger longers with friends, and even the ward crazies, it was nice to have some shared community. This is probably something that was programmed into our DNA, thousands and thousands of years ago. Communal meals were a ritual and way of binding the tribe or group into a social unit.

One thing I have often observed with high level general authorities is they don't like the unwashed masses of the Church and they rarely would accept an invitation to sit down at a meal with a ward or branch. I saw this many times on my mission where the visiting GAs were celebrities and kept insulated from the members.

yet each church has a sign that reads: Visitors Welcome...

Stupid 'Church'

Benson used to talk about the fancy spread the in crowd got to mince on at conference….poor stupid little members don’t get that they’re only the support network to the real members….those bellied up to the tithing trough….it is good to be connected….I think it’s great the Scrooge network has cut the guts right out of membership…sad that churchco has so much money that all the little folk could leave and churchco will be just fine..eff you very much

Yes, lets punish the ward who were providing all of the food and work anyways. I say to have it t someone's house and don't invite the bishopric.

When did the church change the kitchen rules?

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/141wbl5/when_did_the_church_change_the_kitchen_rules/

When I was a young woman we would cook and bake in the ward kitchen. That was a very common young women's activity on a Wednesday. That was around 1995 or so.

"I wasn't there but the gist of it read that church fast donations are down, WAY DOWN."

Well, after the whistleblower mentioned that the lds church has a 100 billion dollar rainy day fund I can imagine lds members reducing the amount of fast offerings they are giving. I once had a bishop saying that fast offerings should be the tithing of the tithing. What? If I already spend $500 on tithing even as an active member they got $20 fast offerings from me and not $50.

The church didn’t change the rules. Boards of health did. To cook from raw, the kitchen needs to meet restaurant standards. This is hugely expensive, so the kitchen is restricted to reheating already cooked food.

Granted I grew up in the Lutheran Church. Coffee hour was so important. It happened after all three services. Teenagers made coffee and set out the cookies etc. Working in the kitchen as a teenager was a blast.

Once a month the youth could “charge” for coffee hour to raise money for our summer canoe trip in the boundary waters.

Dumping it in any organization is just stupid.

Not for working folks who itemize their deductions;

this adds to the mystique of our 'beloved' tax system connected with the feel-good Schick of making donations to 'charitable' causes!

Clarification. There is no such thing as fast offerings or any other distinct types of offerings for that matter. All tithes and offerings are deposited into the same ward account that goes to headquarters. Nothing is separated out. There is fine print on the tithing slips that give the church all say in where the money goes. The reported numbers are just meaningless words on a report.