After reading through the "my dad asked me to shovel snow" theme, I thought about where we are as a society. It seems we are heading in the direction of 'if I'm not getting paid or benefitting in any way, then I'm out'.

I've never bought "the church has plenty of money" argument. I have plenty of money to hire projects out around my house, but yet, durning some big projects, I have had friends come over 'gladly' to help out. I usually reward them with burgers or steaks, but that is not why they help. They do it because they want to. Nobody says, you've got plenty of money, that's your problem.

The next paragraph is the LDS BRAINWASHING part.

This is where the LDS church fails though - in telling the members they ARE going to help, and thus, the members think they HAVE to. It should be voluntary --- and for regularly scheduled maintenance (cleaning, yard work), it would be in the best interest of the church to hire those positions out.

Else, where would it end. The church has enough money to hire someone to set up chairs. I have set up chairs in the mormon church, the methodist church, my grandmother's church, the elementary school, the high school. You just do some things to help out even if it's not your job.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Guess it depends on how it is put. My Church requested assistance on per month basis to keep the walks clean of snow, citing if there were no volunteers, the cost of $XXXX would be incurred to hire a service to do it. There were volunteers.

I did not, as I work full time, and could not take on the responsibility. I did not feel guilty about it however, as this is the tactic the LDS church seems to take with their members, ie guilt them into doin tasks they do not want to do.

The labor given has to be freely volunteered. No labor in the Mormon church is free of expectation. Callings are regarded as direct commandments from God. If you refuse a calling, you might well be regarded as unworthy. The choice to give or not give labor is taken away from you. That's not volunteerism.

I once had a government job working for the local parks department. It was during a time of economic distress such as we are experiencing now. It paid minimum wage or slightly above. At one point, a new duty was added to that job. We were trained to fight forest fires, and expected to do so if the need arose.

I deeply resented this new responsibility. Don't get me wrong, I understand that many people volunteer to do firefighting. I might well have done so myself. But my feeling was that if my employers expected me to do firefighting as part of my job, they had better compensate me properly for doing dangerous, difficult work.

As another example, at one time I was in the habit of helping out some elderly neighbors. I carried groceries and other heavy objects from their car to their home. I shoveled pathways for them and cleared their car of snow, and so on. I was glad to do it.

At one point, neither of my neighbors was able to hold a driver's license any longer. They sold their car, which would have brought a decent price. (I also knew that they both had excellent pensions, and a prosperous retirement lifestyle. They went on lots of trips.) One day, they found out that I was going out on some errands. They asked if I could give them a ride to the local drugstore. I said sure, but that they would have to find their own way home (meaning call a cab, which they could easily afford. They were also not so frail that they couldn't do this little expedition their own.) I could tell that they were deeply resentful of this, and felt that I owed them a ride (along with my time) both ways.

So much for volunteerism.

There is a point where volunteerism crosses over into inflated expectations and abuse. My feeling is that the Mormon church crosses that line more often than not.

Ofcourse people are free to help out with whatever they want on their spare time. But to expect people to just give and give of their time and talent is sleezy. It's a personal decision to help out, and that is not how the mormon church operates. They ASSIGN people, sometimes without even asking their permission, to do things for them. That's not persons helping out, it's closer to centrally governed slave labour.

That pretty much says it all.


So tell us when was the last time you scrubbed mormon church toilets on christmas (or any other time for that matter).

Dave, did you not read my post.

I think regular maintenance should be a paid position and no, I would not volunteer to do that at the church. Nor would I allow myself to be bullied into thinking I HAD to do it. I HAVE done that at my business though. I do own the business, yet I employee people that do take care of that as part of their job.

The money should not be a driving force for decision making. I can pay for a lot of things that I do myself and don't consider beneath me.

The church takes the bullying to a whole new level holding people's presumed worthiness as hostage. This is one of many reasons I despise the church.

Just one more thing Dave,
If you walked past a candy wrapper in the hallway, would you step over it because it should be the janitor's job to clean it up? Again, not advocating scrubbing toilets!

I think helping should be clear and understandable and not part of an exchange. If I say I will drive someone somewhere but I can't drive them back I am still helping as long as I made it clear to them what I would be doing. If they dont' like it they do not need to accept the help. Giving someone a ride is helping even if you don't give them a ride back. It is just not everything they wanted. If you hadn't told them you wouldn't give them a ride back and just dropped them off never to return I would say it wasn't helping :)
Conditional helping is a trade or barter. Saying I will give you ride if you pay for gas, buy me lunch, etc is not helping it is barter. I do not think that you can call it helping if you say I will drive you somewhere but only if you pay/donate/volunteer to me. This is what the mormons do. They "help" the needy as long as they do x,y,z. They have every right to say we will do "a" if you do x, y, and z, but that isn't helping it is a trade or barter and both sides have to agree to the trade. The trade doesn't have to be monetary or physical it could be anything that one of the parties values.
I know lots of organizations such as shelters who say we will "help" you by giveing you a meal but only if you go to our church. The things being bartered/traded is attendance at a church for food.
Helping would be saying I see you are hungry here is a hamburger. They person may be a vegetarian but they are getting something for nothing, so it is help. Even if it isn't as useful as they would have liked.