The Church's financial situation

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

No. This is the standard of care for any organization with a savings account such as an endowment. The standard of care is to put the money in a diversified portfolio including income producing securities and to protect and help grow the corpus including inflation proofing it. Income from this is then applied to good works, after preserving the corpus. If the LDS Churh were doing anything other than this with even $1 million is what ought to cause a cry of outrage among thinking people.

By the way, noting that the LDS Church has temples on expensive real estate in places like Hong Kong doesn't of itself impress me. Once a person or organization gets beyond taking care of basic needs wealth becomes much about relative wealth. Of course the LDS Church is more wealthy than most individuals or organiztions. But how rich is the LDS Church compared to the Metropolitan Museum (which is endowed), the New York Public Library? Without establishing come comparative benchmark with other non-profit organizations the point that the LDS Church has $x bilions or $x hundreds of millions saved up is meaningless.

So you would be impressed if you were to come to know the LDS church was rich?

[RC Vikings]

Adam may have a point here. As I drive by the new Rexburg temple I wonder if God wouldn't have been happier with a little smaller, simpler building and the extra money going toward helping the poor or downtrodden.

I say this realizing that the church does a great job with their charity work already.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by RC Vikings

Adam may have a point here. As I drive by the new Rexburg temple I wonder if God wouldn't have been happier with a little smaller, simpler building and the extra money going toward helping the poor or downtrodden.

I say this realizing that the church does a great job with their charity work already.

If anything, I'd say the LDS Church is too pedestrian, cookie cutter, fixated on the practical, unimaginitive, and cheap in its buildings. They are for the most part ugly, in a word. One of Catholicism's great contributions to our civilizatoin has been an indellible aesthetic legacy and sensibility still rife even in popular culture such as Harry Potter. Perhaps more important than helping the poor is a religion's role of making our spirits soar with the grandeur of its symbolism and art. Even the Salt Lake temple is tiny and simple compared to many great European cathedrals and basilicas.

[RC Vikings]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

If anything, I'd say the LDS Church is too pedestrian, cookie cutter, fixated on the practical, unimaginitive, and cheap in its buildings. They are for the most part ugly, in a word. One of Catholicism's great contributions to our civilizatoin has been an indellible aesthetic legacy and sensibility still rife even in popular culture such as Harry Potter. Perhaps more important than helping the poor is a religion's role of making our spirits soar with the grandeur of its symbolism and art. Even the Salt Lake temple is tiny and simple compared to many great European cathedrals and basilica.

When I think of great works by the Catholic Church my thoughts turn to Mother Teresa and not St. Patrick's cathedral.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

If anything, I'd say the LDS Church is too pedestrian, cookie cutter, fixated on the practical, unimaginitive, and cheap in its buildings. They are for the most part ugly, in a word. One of Catholicism's great contributions to our civilizatoin has been an indellible aesthetic legacy and sensibility still rife even in popular culture such as Harry Potter. Perhaps more important than helping the poor is a religion's role of making our spirits soar with the grandeur of its symbolism and art. Even the Salt Lake temple is tiny and simple compared to many great European cathedrals and basilicas.

If you look at the early LDS temples and meetinghouses, many of them have very interesting architectural features. However, in the interest of time and money, they went to the cookie cutter approach given the sheer magnitude of the building program the church has to deal with.

[creekster]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

If anything, I'd say the LDS Church is too pedestrian, cookie cutter, fixated on the practical, unimaginitive, and cheap in its buildings. They are for the most part ugly, in a word. One of Catholicism's great contributions to our civilizatoin has been an indellible aesthetic legacy and sensibility still rife even in popular culture such as Harry Potter. Perhaps more important than helping the poor is a religion's role of making our spirits soar with the grandeur of its symbolism and art. Even the Salt Lake temple is tiny and simple compared to many great European cathedrals and basilicas.

Of course Catholicsim's greatest monuments were built on the backs of the poor. Not that the poor cared, as most almost certainly believed in what they were doing in a way that is probabyl hard for us with modern senisibioities to understand and appreciate.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Adam

By choice. Growth doesn't mean a need for buildings necessarily. Putting everyone into nice buildings is only one possible solution.

Elder Clayton Christensen of the 70 (lower level) and also of Harvard Business School gave a very powerful presentation for our NYC Stake where he studied LDS Chruch growth rates and building concentration and building rates.

The relationship was obvious from the data---you build a building and the growth slows to near 0 in the congregations that move into that building.

You create a small branch in a rented space, it will grow gangbusters.

He showed data for the NE United States only, but I suspect it would be true most places.

In Nashville where I served my mission, a small branch was formed a few months before my arrival. My first Sunday there were 28 people in attendance.

We met in an elementary school. Sacrament meeting was in the cafeteria. It was summer and there were big window AC units blowing so noisy you couldn't hear the speaker from the AC side of the room. There was a big clown painted on the wall above the sacrament table (I'm not making this up).

We worked our butts off and averaged approx. 6 baptisms a month plus kids under 8 and plus reactivated many inactive members. I was there for 6 months. My last few Sundays we were being audited by Church HQ to see what size of building we would be given. We really wanted a phase 3 (IIRC) and needed to average over 100 people for like 4 weeks (IIRC).

We did it. There was great rejoicing by the members. I left my heart and soul on the streets of East Nashville and wept all the way to Waverly (my next area).

Today the congregation in East Nashville (15 years later) averages about 110 a Sunday. It has had almost no real growth. The boundaries are the same.

Give a branch/ward a building and it stops growing. It's just the reality from the data--both Elder Christensen's NE Area data and my Nashville experience.

So, my point is, I would rather have amazing huge inspiring Temples in every metro area including jaw-dropping gardens and conference halls and even camping grounds for outing around it----and no chapels at all.

We could be contributing to the inspiration of man, and growing faster.

Even if I am totally wrong on this specific idea, the Church's path is only one of many possible paths.

What's the driver behind the difference in growth rates? Surely it can't be the building can it?

[Indy Coug]

Our branch is in a standard church building and is growing 20%-25% per year. We have over 50 baptisms this calendar year alone. In fact, the explosive growth didn't happen until we moved out from a meeting hall downtown in the hood and moved into an upper middle class neighborhood LDS chapel.

[FMCoug]

Originally Posted by jay santos

What's the driver behind the difference in growth rates? Surely it can't be the building can it?

Maybe it's that the members work so hard at missionary work, activation, etc. so they can hit the numbers to get a building, then get lazy like the rest of us?

[MikeWaters]

I think one of the points of Adam's post is that SACRIFICE is a tremendous driver.

When members had to pay for their own chapels (or a percentage of it), I think they meant something more.

When I was in my area, and we were desperately trying to average over 30 members so we could get a chapel built. Which it was, and the open house/dedication ended up being my send off (like Adam). A lot of excitement at the time. But now it is just weeds (for mainly the reason they pulled the missionaries out).

Sometimes its nice to have a tangible material goal that everyone sacrifices toward. Like the Kirtland Temple.