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There was a recent drop of some more documents on MormonLeaks. It’s not a barn-burner, but there were a few tidbits worth noting and discussing. Here’s a quick overview of 4 documents: https://mormonleaks.io/newsroom/2017/09/26/mormonleaks-publishes-four-slide-decks-exploring-issues-concerning-various-demographics/ 1) Gospel Topics: This one shows what % of bishops have read them and their impressions. It also shows what % of adult active members have read them and their impressions. Hint: Many bishops haven’t read them all.
2) This one claims to be about the mission age change, but it’s really about leadership demographics in various countries and what obstacles they face. Hint: poor countries face fundamental challenges at staffing and running the church than wealthy countries.
3) Singles and Mid-Singles. This is a study showing activity rates and benefits to keeping singles in magnet wards or mid-singles wards (even when unauthorized) rather than forcing them into “married” wards. Spoiler alert: it recommends encouraging stake leaders to do what makes sense for the members rather than just following the handbook.
4) An older study (it says 2014 on the link, but slides say 2004) showing correlation between male graduation status and salary, callings, activity, marital results, etc. All men, all the time. Although it does mention whether their wives do paid work in two slides.
There was also an earlier document that was hard to fathom, but topically interesting:
https://mormonleaks.io/wiki/index.php?title=File:Gender_Equality_in_the_Church-2014.pdf 5) How members view gender equality. It’s just basically a contrast between complementarian and egalitarian views, trying to be neutral, but it implies the complementarian view is scripturally supported.
My favorite quote:
Quote:
Problem: Many mid-single adults aren’t progressing in the gospel.Solution: Continue current rescue efforts and activities…
I think one of the biggest challenges comes from hanging on to the singles/divorced. I do hope they can take further steps beyond “continuing current efforts”. In fairness, they did also recommend creating more YSA wards, which I’m sure will help in a degree. I remember in my home stake, I had to drive two hours to make it to the YSA ward; 7 hours devoted to Church on the day of rest…
Quote:Many bishops haven’t read them all.
I can tell you that from personal experience. My bishop called me in and we discussed the Race Essay and he didn’t know any of the stuff I pulled out of the essay.
Some bishops think you are being apostate to mention them to others. I did that once and got a massive hairy eyball from an ex-Bishop. Others seem fine if you teach out of them. Go figure. My stake pres told all bishops “if someone asks about them, acknowledge that the essays exists, but do NOT talk about them. Just tell the member to read them him/her self.” Interesting. Thanks! Sorry to say but it seems to me that keeping the essays hush-hush demonstrates a big lack of faith. If we can’t know “true facts” without our testimony being decimated then is it worth having a testimony? I think not. I consider those kinds of injunctions a big lack of faith–in the essays and in the church. That’s exactly what I would say to a leader who suggested that they shouldn’t be discussed. My stake president encouraged all the stake council and all the bishops to become familiar with the essays. That was after polling the council to see who had read them (almost none had). I honestly don’t think much has changed, that happened over a year ago and he hasn’t mentioned it again. Why isn’t this information being published officially? I don’t see what is so sensitive about statistics at this level of granularity. It almost feels like they’re hiding something. I think a different approach needs to be taken for singles. It’s no surprise they go inactive when they feel out of place for their marital status. Without cultural changes, YSA wards are better than nothing, but the real fix is to make the culture more accepting of singles and less obsessed with marriage and family.
I bet there are quite a number of people who leave the church just to have (premarital) sex because they haven’t been lucky enough to find a spouse yet.
I’ve also noticed that most of the people who age out of the YSA ward are weirdos who will, quite possibly, never get married at all. Some of them keep trying to go to the singles ward. (Maybe it’s just those people who are weirdos… Maybe other age-outs get married later more often?)
My husband and I were talking last night about how leadership roulette worked in our favor when we went to the YSA ward. Our ward was about 1 year old when we started attending it at different times. Our bishopric was focused on drawing us closer to Christ first – that was their #1 priority. After that, they made it clear they were there to help and serve us achieve our temporal goals of schooling and jobs, dating if the opportunity arose. They did NOT try to marry us off, just planned activities where we could feel the Spirit and become a ward family – mourn with those that mourn, rejoice with those that rejoice. It helped that our ward at the time was more mature – we had more members between 25 and 31. I was there for about a year, and in a year’s time we must have had at least 8 couples get sealed in the temple from our ward.
My husband and I still chuckle over the first Sunday we sat together at church as boyfriend/girlfriend. Both of us were not daters, and rather private people. I saw our bishop (whom I’d known for years) and gave him a smile, he smiled back saw I was with a guy and got a huge school-boy grin on his face and then he elbowed his counselor (whom I had known for 10+ years) and pointed us out almost giggling with joy. Then his counselor nearly pummeled the other counselor (whom I’d also known for 5+ years) with his elbow trying to get his attention so he could point us out (more big grins).
Quote:Why isn’t this information being published officially?
There’s nothing more official than LDS.org. Are you saying this should be in the Ensign, or General Conference?
It would be nice to have a more public venue, but this is “Official.”
Just to clarify. My understanding is that this comes from “mormonleaks” (think wikileaks for Mormon stuff) It is not official and is publishing some stuff that the church would rather keep quiet. GA salaries and the Gordon Smith presentation are two good examples of this.
Beefster wrote:
Why isn’t this information being published officially?
All organizations keep some secrets, from trade secrets to business strategies to research and development. At the vey least an organization will attempt to control the narrative and to tell their own story. This is to be expected.
OTOH, the church has been practically the opposite of transparent. The church knows that there are people waiting to pounce with every whiff of malfeasance. So they choke off the flow of information even tighter. Creating a vacuum that allows a site like Mormonleaks to come in and fill a need.
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