Flight from wards
 

Was talking to a ward member today about another ward member who had moved out. He told me that in part this family moved out because they were tired of being in a struggling ward where they would always have time-consuming callings.

I won't give anymore details, so as not to potentially identify people.

But that's kind of interesting. We have had A LOT of people leave our ward, and we are not getting quality replacements. The previous Bishop, in some 3 years or so as Bishop, had something like 6 counselors.

I told Jen, one more major moveout, and we're gone too! I say that tongue-in-cheek (well, not completely TIC).

If you have a pulse in our ward, you're going to get a calling. Maybe two or three. Many people with more than one calling.

I wonder if we'd be better off being combined into another ward.

I've wondered the same thing.

I live in an area where the church in general is fairly strong, but the distribution of members is not necessarily even throughout the stake.

My kids are too small right now for it to even be an issue, but my feeling is that it sure would be nice when they are in the identity-searching years (ie. high school), that I would love to see them surrounded by a ton of other strong LDS kids in the ward.

Would consolidating units to increase the number of youth in each ward help the problem or somehow make it worse?

Our county, a 20 stake region is redistricting,
 

and our ward looks to be consolidated soon.

I don't care either way, as we have served in most capacities, so we're not likely to be recycled.

We've had 9 families move out of our ward since May of this year. We've had 2 in. Many of those that moved stated that the move was at least in part due to wanting to be in an area with more lds youth.

While I can certainly understand this line of thinking, I think it is somewhat unfortunate. I grew up in an area where the church was small. There were 8 of us in high school but we were close and we all served missions, still in the church etc.... I don't think that the number of other lds youth really matters as much as the quality of the youth your kid is exposed to. I know greater numbers give better odds but it's no guarantee. I also feel very strongly that in areas where your kid is not necessarily going to be surrounded by lots of lds kids, that your kid can be a kid "worth staying for". Meaning that maybe when high school rolls around people will want their kid to be influenced by yours and maybe feel it's not necessary to get out of town for those high school years. If there are at least a few families like that in one high school, then things will be ok. After all, if everyone leaves to be where the youth are highly concentrated, then we'll all be living in Provo or Mesa.

In our ward we only have one deacon, for example. Maybe about 7 total young men who attend activities and the like.

There's not a strong track record of kids going to college either.

After all, when you live in Dallas ISD, you are selecting for parents who do not bother to get their kids out of the school district, or sometimes as in our ward, do a piss-poor job of homeschooling.

I was kind of shocked when I was subbing for a sunday school teacher that one of the 14 year olds could barely read. His sister just flunked her senior year.

It's tough.

Man, you just described my ward, at least as far as YM are concerned. We've had several YW go off to BYU on scholarship lately. I spent 5 years in YM's and several of the youth I worked with had trouble with reading. Of the YM I worked with over those years, only 2 are attending college.

I'd like to see quicker boundary changes...
 

It seems that we like to hear that the number of wards has increased and love seeing new buildings go up but I'd like to see more dynamic wards where we are flexible and able to adjust boundaries quickly in order to accomodate the changes to a city. In vegas most members live on the outer boundaries. The wards closer to downtown are shrinking and the wards out in the new areas are expanding. So you have a lot of interesting issues created by this scenario.

I see a few solutions. One, that would be kind of cool in my opinion, would be to ask members to live close to buildings, especially temples. This would maintain the neighborhood and keep the schools relatively nice and the wards strong in that area. A good example is the Mesa Temple, which now resides in a bad area because the Mormons have abandoned the neighborhood. The problem comes up when it is time for high school and your kids are stuck going to Ghetto High School.

Another solution is to have regional church employees that make suggestions for stake and ward boundary changes. The wards could adjust quickly as needed.

Another is the long narrow wards that exist in some areas in order to combine families from different demographics and economic means. Here you have problems where the youth don't attend school with members of their ward but in most cases they learn to live with each other and become friends.