- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
We all know that building custodians are gone. The Family Services group is constantly being downsized.
And now…the FM group is going though changes.
Our building has quite a lengthy list of items that need to be done for building maintenance.
Guess who is doing a good bit of the maintenance work…
Members who attend our ward building!
Need church landscaping done? Members will be doing that now.
Painting or electrical work? Members
If we have ward members with a certain skill set, they are being called upon to take care of Ward maintenance needs.
And this is rubbing me in all the wrong ways.
As wealthy as our church is…
I mean, we pay a lot of tithing that is meant for building upkeep and construction of new buildings and temples.
We also have senior missionaries who are paying their own way to be church employees in SLC.
This seems backwards.
Why is this bugging me so?
On a technical note, the FM group was outsourced and most all the FM employees were moved to that separate company. I don’t know if this is just the US. I do know that temple maintenance was NOT outsourced. But why is it bothering you? I can’t answer that, but I can say that it feels that people are being taken advantage of.
AND for some people it gives them a real meaning.
An example was I saw on reddit a picture of an old man that had to use a walker was down on his knees in a church parking lot (assumed to be) picking weeds out of the parking lot. The person posting it was enraged. BUT, I don’t know if the man really liked being able to do this work and it made him feel meaningful.
For the last few years I have been trying to just be less triggered as I couldn’t stay in a mixed faith marriage being in the “anger” phase. I focus on me doing what I feel is right and worrying less about what the church is doing. I am NOT fully there yet, but have made a lot of progress in that direction. I do think it takes a bit of time to get there and I don’t know that everyone has the temperament for it. I don’t want to tell others they need to follow my path.
Reading this, I have several concerns: A) Blurring the lines between professional/church activities..
1) Blurs the line between professional work and church service – jobs will be lost as they get “outsourced” out to the newly called member-volunteers.
2) Sets up a weird dynamic between people – the employee/employer rules no longer apply, and I am not sure how the volunteer/organization rules apply. There is also a fair amount of re-inventing the wheel to cover when things go wrong (which has already been figured out mostly for employee/employer purposes).
3) Loss/Shift of Church Service Opportunity Advantage – If I am spending my service resources repairing the building, I may not be spending time ministering to others (who may need similar services), increasing my spirituality, doing family history, or any number of other activities.
4) Calling Coercion.
I agree with LookingHard that these actions can give some people meaning and might be what they need…
I haven’t seen this type of stuff happening here yet. Some company is paid to mow the lawn, do the snow plowing, etc. And when one of the furnaces breaks, there is a company that comes to fix it even on Sunday. However, I don’t doubt that it’s happening and am not surprised at it given the track record. I did see a change for the positive recently, but it’s not related to FM. A couple weeks back our stake had their annual “women’s conference.” The keynote speaker was a psychologist who was recently hired by the church and serves our “correlation council” area of five stakes. He lives in the neighboring stake (an hour and a half away for us, but central to the five stake area). He said his job is to provide services to missionaries and members in our area and he encouraged the sisters to reach out to his office. Prior to this the closest service we had available was the LDS Family Services office in a city 5 hours away that serves all the Northeast. They maintained a list of “LDS friendly” counselors in the area that bishops could refer members to.
QuestionAbound wrote:
…Why is this bugging me so?
I have not seen any other organization that stressing “sacrifice” of its members as our church does.
In time, talents & money. We go out of our way to find opportunities to sacrifice.
This bugs me too.
Minyan Man wrote:
QuestionAbound wrote:
…Why is this bugging me so?
I have not seen any other organization that stressing “sacrifice” of its members as our church does.
In time, talents & money. We go out of our way to find opportunities to sacrifice.
This bugs me too.
Good point, and it bugs me also. It’s the root of why I don’t do building cleaning. I think the “law of sacrifice” and “law of consecration” ideas are archaic and not really applicable to the real world. They weren’t even applicable – and failed miserably because of it – in the early church.
To me, yes, it does seem like it’s getting a little out of control the more time we are asking for, and I think the principle reasons are those listed by AmyJ. I’d add to that the complete lack of training, particularly for safety reasons. I’m sure the church would pay something if a person were injured or had an allergic reaction, although since these are volunteers, what if that impacted their livelihood? Would workman’s comp be paid out by the church for someone who had to miss a bunch of work as a result of an injury?
But I think the biggest issue is that there is some limit on how much we are going to spend time on service in the community or beyond and not just on our own church building. People don’t have unlimited time in their week.
FM Changes What are the Free Masons up to now?
If you want to get out of doing the dishes ‘accidentally’ break some plates. When untrained amateurs begin to ruin things that costs $texas to fix or replace maybe we’ll start to rethink our approach. Or worse still, enough people get electrocuted or fall off roofs when tinkering around with whatever. I’d hate for it to come to that but that’s sometimes the strongest driver for change. Liability.
LookingHard wrote:
An example was I saw on reddit a picture of an old man that had to use a walker was down on his knees in a church parking lot (assumed to be) picking weeds out of the parking lot. The person posting it was enraged. BUT, I don’t know if the man really liked being able to do this work and it made him feel meaningful.Some time ago DW and I had a philosophical difference on this subject. Someone at church gave a testimony during F&T where they broke down. They talked about health issues, how chaotic their life was, how they felt like they didn’t measure up, how they felt too inadequate to perform in their newly assigned calling, and how it was adding stress to their life.
My point was that this person needed to learn to say no, to prioritize and not always have church at the tippy top of the list. DW’s point was similar to the point you made, LH. That focusing on the calling could be the stabilizing factor in equation, something that anchored them with a purpose.
Maybe how we see things has a lot to do with our backgrounds. I came from a background of scrupulosity, where I beat myself silly to please god but ultimately never arriving despite all my efforts. I saw myself in the person bearing the testimony and my reaction was to want to help them out, “free” them from the prison I projected onto them.
But in my defense, they were verbalizing the very frustrations I once had. In your story we’d have a better idea of where the old man was at mentally if he was complaining about hurting and clutching his heart while picking the weeds.
It’s a tough call, because I do believe that there’s some degree of coercion at play. Maybe not much, but some. To me the person bearing their testimony had been pushed beyond their limits. There’s stretching to learn and grow and then there’s pushing ourselves to a breaking point. I think the culture of not saying “no” trends towards pushing ourselves in unhealthy ways. But I also see the culture of not saying “no” changing.
I have no problem with members taking on these kinds of activities — PROVIDED IT IS PURELY VOLUNTARY. I personally would love to work alongside someone to fix a plumbing problem (someone who knows) to get better skills. Or if I knew how to fix something, and wanted to do it, it would be fine. But, the precedent has been set for conscripted service in our church. I’m assigned to clean the chapel without anyone even asking me. “We are not a church of volunteers, but a church of assignments” — that one bugs me.
And by purely voluntary, I mean, purely voluntary — there is no pressure, and the invitation is framed only if the person wants to do it. Never say no to a calling (or assignment) does not apply.
I personally would rather be fixing the properties of disabled and elderly people, and not the properties or organizations that are already extracting 10% of the income of their members to fund their operations.
It’s amazing how one’s perspective changes as your role within an organization changes. One has to constantly balance perspectives. It seems the FM group has fallen into only thinking about itself. The old phrase “Get a member to do it” needs some curbing!
I was talking to my former boss about what I was doing in retirement. I told her family history & genealogy. (She never knew I was in the Church. It never came up & I didn’t volunteer.) She said, her family used to be in the church. A 2nd Great Grandfather had joined the church, moved to SLC & volunteered to work on the SLC temple. He fell off the scaffolding and died. The church didn’t volunteer to help the family in anyway so, they sued. The suit didn’t go anywhere so they packed up & moved back to the midwest.
I wonder what the Church would do today, if a member volunteered to do work & died? Is there any compensation for the death of
a husband, wife, etc in this situation?
Minyan Man: Kirton-McConkie would settle that thing so fast, your head would spin. The church would not want the bad PR. However, my guess is that one’s standing in the church would be jeopardized by suing it, if not officially, then certainly in some unofficial way. I heard a completely bootleg unofficial reddit story that a GA’s widow had put a bunch of furniture on a credit line and asked the church to pay it off (since her dead husband had been receiving a stipend while he was alive). Rather than get into some legal BS, they just paid it. That’s the story this rando shared on reddit anyway. He worked in the accounting department for the church. Many years ago (around 20) a member slipped on the ice in the church parking lot and was seriously injured. It was regular Sunday church, not a project or anything. The guy missed some work, etc. He owned a small business, an electrician as I recall, and bought his own health insurance and/or paid his own medical bills. He asked the church to pay his medical bills and lost wages. The church refused, telling him they would pay whatever his own insurance didn’t pay. He did end up suing, the church did end up settling, tongues wagged, and he and his family eventually left the church (he never returned after the fall). So, I think what others have pointed out here is correct – the church probably won’t pay/compensate unless legally forced to do so and most orthodox members will just eat it. Related, this is why our ward won’t do roofing “service” projects any more and haven’t for several years (started last bishop, continued with current bishop). They have no bones abut saying a bog part of the reason is liability. The other main reason, of course, is that it’s always the same few guys doing the stuff. (We did just recently have a SM talk where the guy extolled the virtues of such projects, to which I say humbug!)
I am well connected with the interfaith community and as a wealthy church we suck. Period. The little local Mom and Pop churches, do need church teams to keep things going. It does save costs, overhead, and give members something to do. They also don’t require 10% of their income, plus fast offerings, girls camp, full time missionaries, etc. We do. My answer is, I don’t play. I tithe as I feel fits Jesus’ request. I care for the building, as I do any other, I clean up after myself. Beyond that – it ain’t my problem. No amount of guilt is going to make me do it.
I will confess that I enjoyed taking my kids to do vacuuming and window washing. It taught them some building respect. So a rotation of volunteers helping paid staff would be nice. But not the rest.
The GA’s get two houses. I don’t. I will stick to maintaining my home. They can talk to God about how they maintained His.
Can’t remember where I read it but I like the quote. It’s not service when they can afford to pay. It’s just free labor. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Cadence wrote:
Can’t remember where I read it but I like the quote. It’s not service when they can afford to pay. It’s just free labor.
Yes, in my mind there is a difference between service and free labor. Interestingly enough in the talk I mentioned in my previous post, the only roofing project he specifically mentioned was the roof of a doctor who lived in our ward at the time. I have taken the free labor view when it comes to cleaning the building, too. Like Mom said, I will clean up after myself and I’ll even pick up the stray bulletin left on a foyer chair, but that’s just how I am. Even if I were to take part in cleaning, I would expect that others clean up their own Cheerios. And, I think cleaning up after an activity is different – we didn’t leave those messes back in the day when we did have janitors and rightly so.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.