u/Medium_Chemist_5719

Welp, I’m putting it down as official, even if merely anecdotal.

PIMO Ward Clerk here. I’ve been a somewhat regular participant here telling my story: here in Idaho, the illusion of growth has been created by dividing wards and stakes smaller and smaller. Even though we’ve basically just been treading water. To offset the undeniable shrivel in other areas, so the church can keep a little control of the narrative.

I’ve been predicting it would backfire as ward members get more and more burnt out. I never expected it to go this quickly, but (anecdotally, in my ward), it has. Our ward was the new one that was formed to show the growth, when we got chunks of 3 other wards. When we were formed, we were one of the largest wards (the others being hollowed out and shuffled to make room for us). We had to open the overflow into the gym every week.

Over the last few years, though we have been hollowed out by move outs, deaths, and “where did that family go?”. Also some of the original attendance was probably always going to be a burst of temporary engagement because of the newness of the ward. Our attendance is about half what it was, and the chapel is never full. This month in particular it has been shriveled because people are out of town for vacation, visiting family, etc. (funny how we never get very many visitors from families in other areas doing the same 🤔)

Honestly, I feel bad for our Bishop. He is a great guy but he is taking it so personally, you can tell. I’m sure he doesn’t think he is doing a good job, when really he got handed a situation that was way worse than anyone expected.

So, thanks a bunch, whoever at church HQ decided smaller wards was the way to go. If anyone there is reading this here: you really fucked things up for yourself. We local members are stuck picking up the pieces. Great job.

AMA. It is such a chore to keep doing these monthly financial statements when I know where the money goes.

I can take a screenshot of a recent Monthly Report for verification. (Heavily redacted of course - don’t want any snoopers to track it down and dox me). But yeah: we are a mostly blue-collar ward in a blue-collar state, so these numbers could be much higher in affluent areas. But every month we bring the morg between $35 and $40k. Not counting that month last year when one older fellow passed, and his ~$1 million life insurance paid out, and his widow tithed it. 😭😭🤬🤬 (Edit to clarify: she tithed *on* the payout, so she paid $100k.)

Just do the math: $35k / month is $420k per year. For one ward. Google says there are 12,800 US wards, so we are looking at a minimum yearly revenue of… $5.3 billion from US wards? Did I do my math right there? Wild.

And then they (we?) have the gall to put themselves forward as some big humanitarian organization with a few million a year. Honestly boils my blood.

But hey, maybe some tiny good will come of it from sharing. H/t u/widowsmitereport your work is awesome.