Me (resigned) and Wife (we haven't gone to church in years)

Me: You got two letters in the mail. One's from Jesus, and one's from America.

(Referring to the bold print visible from afar: one's from the church, one's from a credit union. I hand her her mail and walk across the room.)

A few minutes later:

Me: So what is the letter? Is it an invitation to come back to church?

Her: Nope, it's an invitation to CLEAN the church.

Me: No, really what is it?

Her: I'm serious, look.

(I scanned it: http://www.scribd.com/doc/38795446/Mormon-Church-Letter-Appointing-Members-as-Janitors)

Me: LOL
Her: LOL

They want to find 25 suckers to clean the entire chapel every week for free, and this to "free up money to help others?" You mean, like the janitors you just laid off.

We all know that billions are going to the White Elephant Mall, and how many millions they spent fighting gay civil rights. This is their big plan.

My favorite bit: you will have to clean the church ON SUNDAY!!!!! OMG! I was told that you didn't do housework on Sunday. "Saturday is a special day...." It's not okay to clean your own home on Sunday, but you can scrub toilets in the chapel.

The late show is probably the 3-6 pm crowd. They are supposed to stay until 8 pm cleaning the chapel, instead of going home to dinner and family time before the week begins.

One of the keys of business is to never make cuts that ruin the customer experience. This is really putting the burden in the laps of their members. Setting up chairs and passing out hymnals is one thing; mopping floors and mowing grass for free is just too much.

It's a business, pure and simple. But this business only takes in money. And cutting expenses is crutial...

Wow.

Just when I thought that they couldn't get any worse in their money-grubbing methods...

Way to make people feel wanted and needed!

They need to get 25 people every Saturday? 25 people every Saturday? Most people have full time jobs. Since TBMs can't even use Sundays to run regular errands or clean their own houses, it's asking a lot for them to give up their Saturdays too. In small wards outside of the morridor, some people have to drive a great distance to even get to church, let alone on both days of the weekend. Are people actually complying with this directive? Or is this one of those tasks that people will do anything to avoid and the same 15 stalwarts show up and do over and over again. Shame on the church.

Ward Specialist needs to be capitalized???!!!

cleaning on a sunday????!!!!!

at times like this I turn to the scrip......errr...well, the hymn book is close enough


"Saturday is a special day,
It's the day we get ready for Sunday;
We clean the house and we shop at the store,
so we won't have to work until Monday"

"This will free up a significant amount of money to help those in need."

What a crock! Help those in need? I think we all know what a paltry percentage of income pouring into the Morg goes to charity.

They are trying to slash costs because their revenue is down and they are locked into some big overhead expenses, like the Jesus Mall.

If they want to help those in need, hire the custodians back.

In our stake, the work is spread out among groups in each ward by alphabet. It amounts to one Saturday every other month for each group. My ward met in the stake center, and it didn't take 20-25 people. More like 8-10 people could do the work in a half hour. Sometimes, only 4-5 people would show up in our group, so we were there for an hour and a half or so. And that was before they added cleaning the restrooms to the list of duties. Up until last July, that was still done by professionals. Taking into account that if only 5-7 people show up, cleaning the restrooms doubles the workload for those that actually show up.

I simply don't have words (and that's a first).

;o)

How many "Ward Specialists" do you think will go inactive/resign within the year??? (After trying desperately to herd/guilt dodging members into cleaning every weekend . . . and then finally giving up to do ALL the work themselves every Saturday).

;o)

According to my mom, years ago the RS used to hire babysitters so all the sisters could come and relax on Wednesdays and enjoy lunch together.

Then the church made the sisters do the babysitting and the RS would have to call around endlessly to staff the nursery because no one wanted to do it. How many sisters want to babysit additional kids when they can barely stand their own?
Attendance dropped off. Now they have something in the evenings but who wants to bother anymore.

My prediction is that cleaning the chapel assignments will turn a lot of members off too.
When are people supposed to relax or take care of their own homes on weekends?

The church has become too demanding and people are getting disgusted.

Is behind the white shirts and smiling faces, there is something sinister and abusive.

Making members lives even more burdensome, is abusive. What a friggin, narcissistic cult.

Doesn't matter that some people get paid a generous and hefty salary for there service and other are required to serve and pay for the honor.

I'm sure the Church will preach about how you're just as important to the Church as the Prophet himself and humble service is a great privilege.

Don't forget the member will pay for transportation to and from the ward building in addition to the hours and work they provide free of charge.

Makes me wonder what qualifies a person to be "called" as a "Specialist"--surely not the leadership's inner circle, best friends, etc.

This is just too over the top!

I worked as a custodian 20 years ago, for a while. A year actually. It was the beginning of this whole mess. So they laid me off to save money for the needy? With no job I became 'needy', but did I receive help from the church? No. I was told to remain faithful and reminded that I would be blessed if I paid tithing from any unemployment cheques I'd receive. I'd signed a contract too, with the head honchos in SLC and the local stake PFR man. It was the stake PFR that told me I was out of a job. I asked where my contract was (that he witnessed and signed as a witness), and he said there never was a contract. I phoned SLC and talked with the new head honcho who said they had no record of me ever being a custodian.

That dirty bullshit was the last straw. And I have news for the church. It takes a hell of a lot more than a couple of hours on a Saturday morning to clean a chapel. They deserve all the filth that is coming their way. A lot of members are natural born pigs. As a custodian, I vowed that if I ever became a pig farmer, no Mormon congregation would ever be allowed to use the sty for meetings.

Not very complimentary to pigs, who are generally pretty clean.

A good janitor really is the pearl of great price. Good for you for not just shutting up and pretending your contract never happened.

In EQ the Pres would send around a sign up sheet with all the different jobs listed. You signed up for the one you "wanted".

If you were on the wrong side of the room from where the list started, you got the crappy jobs like cleaning bathrooms.

That really rubbed my wife the wrong way. She hated that I was being asked to clean for them. Perhaps it helped get her in the right frame of mind to follow me out about six months behind me.

Perhaps if I was there now I'd say, "If the church uses it's own money, and solicits money from it's rich members and rank and file members for janitors like they did for prop 8, I'll add to the pot, but I'm not cleaning."