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As I sat in Sacrament meeting last Sunday, I looked over the congregation that I have been a member of for over 20 years. I looked for converts that had joined in that time. I only saw a few. A single man in his 30’s that is smart, employed, but a little strange. I really like him, but it’s obvious why he is not married. Another lady in her 50’s with major health issues and some mental problems also. Throw in a few kids from part member families, and that’s it for converts for 20 years that is still attending. There was a single mother of two that was baptized then moved away. I don’t know if she is still active.
Not attending: A husband and wife in their 50’s. They attended for about two years and are inactive now. An MD that married a single nurse in our ward, got baptized, and then left the church and his wife after a year. I believe he actually had his name removed.
The result is not one stereotypical “family” has been baptized and stayed in our ward in the past 20 years. Is this typical of your ward?
The latest PEW poll showed that for LDS, the number of members that are born in the church and are active at 20 has decreased from 75 percent to about 63 percent in the past 10 years. If this continues, in 10 years the number will be 50% that are still LDS at 20 years of age. Can the church sustain its growth with just members of record with numbers like this?
It sounds like I would fit in to your ward pretty nicely. 🙂 I think the church has a role to play in society and in some people’s lives. There will be ebbs and flows, but along with other religions, will be around for a while and can sustain growth.
Your experience is what I see too. The few investigators are often people so odd that I wonder what rock was turned over to find them. Those people need a relationship with God. I see them as being people who would be well-served by the community of a ward. But when every investigator is of that same ilk, it isn’t a positive sign. We have been in this city 17 years and attended two separate wards during that time. I cannot think of a single family that was baptized in those 17 years that was still active 2 years later. And actually, I can only think of one family with children that was even baptized. They lasted 2 years and then had their names removed. Our current ward has had one couple in their 50’s that was baptized. They are childless. There have been a couple singles in their 20s and 30s who have joined and then disappeared.
Of people leaving, I can count so many families that have an inactive parent. In our previous ward, that tended to be men. In our current ward, many more wives are inactive. I don’t know why those statistics are so different between the wards. Both wards have a problem with retaining adult children. Every family appears to have a minimum of one inactive adult child. Some families have all their children inactive.
Talking to people who have left the church, time and time again, I hear comments about a “call to repentance” packages being left in their mailboxes, lots of visits by missionaries, but very little direct interaction by ward members. I’m not hearing any of them talking about feeling any sort of acceptance or real feelings of love or concern by active ward members. I do hear plenty of stories of people being told in one way or another, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
There have been lots of baptisms in my area over the last several years. I haven’t tried to crunch any numbers but I’d say 2/3rds of them are still active and I can think of at least 3 entire families that were baptized, one family in particular will provide lots of future leadership for the church. Quality people. Yes, there are a few that rely heavily on the church but isn’t that what churches are for? I do agree with amateurparent though, if everyone coming in are people that rely heavily on the church it can throw the community off balance when there are more needy than those that are capable of providing assistance. I think we do well with trying to teach people to fish, get people to a place where they can start giving, it’s an unscientific and lengthy transition though.
I believe there are many factors that lead people to joining the church. In most cases of the “normal” people that join I can usually point to strong community support and already having a family member or good friend in the congregation before joining.
We haven’t had whole families be baptized. It’s a mix: some non-member spouses, older single men and women, and high school/college-age friends of LDS kids. Some of them are serving missions. Yes, normal people have joined our ward and stake – or returned to activity after absences of various lengths. Some of them are traditional families; some are couples; some are single adults; some are youth; some are divorced; some have visible issues; all probably have invisible issues; some remain active; some become inactive.
The norm in the Church now is not the traditional family, where the husband is employed outside the home and the wife is not. Thus, this post describes normal people being baptized and increasing the current norm.
If I am being honest and direct, frankly, the title of the post bothers me – a lot. I know what you meant, so I cut you that slack, but it still bothers me. YMMV
We have had maybe 3 that I would say are “normal” (I know that is a very judgmental label, but not sure how else to say what I know you mean). Two of them were spouses of a member for quite a while. The other was a 13 year old that had most of her family as members (not her parents though, lots of LDS aunts/uncles and cousins). She is doing great and a great young lady. Two others that joined. One was someone that was gung ho only for about a month, then decided to go back to his other church. The other was a very older lady that had lots of medical issues. Our ward has grown only due to the fact that they are building houses like crazy and the economy is generally good. The bishop even complained that 1/2 the ward leaves in the summer to go visit Utah and they almost have to close up shop. He isn’t too far off the mark.
This topic reminds me of something a bit funny that happened to me a few years ago. We went to visit someone that lives very much “in town” where the population was quickly moving to be more newly arrived immigrants. We got there early and someone came and welcomed us. We said who we were coming to visit and she said, “I should have known better, nobody normal ever comes to our ward.”
I know what you’re saying Sheldon. I’ve done a similar look around in my own ward. Having been gone but not totally disconnected for 10 years it was actually interesting to see what happened in between what was essentially two snapshots. Just prior to my period of inactivity a major local employer had pulled out devastating our ward (and community). Many families were lost to moving out to get other employment. Our ward had never been a big baptizing ward. I’ve lived here over 25 years and it had been just upgraded to a ward from a branch when I moved here. So, snapshot before my period of inactivity: Close to 200 average SM attendance, many families, large Primary, good youth program with enough YM to do all the sacrament and some to spare. Most families were transplants, some from Utah, and we’d have a few move ins and move outs each year but generally more in than out.
Snapshot two years ago when I returned: Less than 100 average attendance (it’s about 90), families have mostly grown up and the children have moved on. Ten kids in Primary is a pretty good day. There’s one in nursery and she ages out this year. Few active YM, generally 3-4 adults help with blessing/passing and sacrament is set up by adults (there are enough YM to pass but some have an on time issue). The ward has aged, those families who have remained are mostly only parents now. More move outs than move ins.
Now to converts. I cannot recall any families joining the church as a family unit during my time here. I think the closest we have come was a single mom with four children (one below baptism age) who joined a couple years ago and they have been far from the ideal addition to our ward (high needs, legal troubles, etc.). If there were any families that I missed while inactive they are no longer there. My wife did tell me there was a couple baptized during that time who subsequently had their names removed and became quite anti (I have not encountered them). Looking through the ward list on LDS Tools, other than the above mentioned family I see about 6 individuals who joined the church over the last 25 years and come at least sometimes. In the past year we have had three baptisms (a lot for us), all individuals: an older lady (60s) who joined without her husband but has a car and a license to drive it and a job; a mentally retarded man who has family who are members of the ward (he passes the sacrament with assistance); and a young woman with two small children of which she does not have custody and also has some known legal issues. They all come somewhat regularly.
To answer your question, your ward seems similar to mine. Perhaps this is the new “normal.”
Is it really fair to classify converts as “Normal” or something else? What is normal anymore? I’m sure when I joined the Church that there were members “taking bets” if I were going to stay.
When Christ went out preaching the gospel was it the “Normal” people that he was converting?
Normal at the time meant “Pharisees” & the Orthodox Jewish believers.
Some of the greatest miracles were changes made in individual people’s lives.
The fulness of the gospel for some families may come in the next generation or 2.
In PH class someone who worked in the corrections system in our city referred to the inmates that he deals with as:
“as not being candidates for the missionary discussions”. Meaning they were too far gone to be redeemed by the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ. My response was, this is exactly who Christ came for. I still believe that.
We are a strange group sometimes to the world at large & to the church too. I consider myself as leading the parade.
Minyan Man wrote Quote:We are a strange group sometimes to the world at large & to the church too. I consider myself as leading the parade.
Do you mind if I follow?
As to the OP – In all my years in the church (I am a lifer) I’ve don’t recall ever having any “whole standard unit” families joining the church. It was always portions, pieces, one at a times. Even re-activations were portional.
amateurparent wrote:There have been a couple singles in their 20s and 30s who have joined and then disappeared.
Doesn’t take much searching to find plenty of blog posts explaining exactly why that happens, and yet the Church’s response follows the standard cycle of “we need to find out why and fix it” then “well, it’s their own fault that they let being treated like crap get to them.”
Quote:Talking to people who have left the church, time and time again, I hear comments about a “call to repentance” packages being left in their mailboxes, lots of visits by missionaries, but very little direct interaction by ward members. I’m not hearing any of them talking about feeling any sort of acceptance or real feelings of love or concern by active ward members.
Same here. As a SA rep for a ward with 60+ inactive mid singles and two active ones, every attempt to gather up a few inactives led to plenty of repetitions of this narrative.
Quote:I do hear plenty of stories of people being told in one way or another, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
First convert I confirmed got that, primarily over refusing to cut his (clean and styled) mid-back-length hair. I think he lasted a month.
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