Cheers and have everybody a wonderful weekend.

Gabriel Rossi- Brazil

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That will require that ward members are able to decide for themselves how to meet each others needs. Bishops need to have the ability to raise money to pursue worthwhile projects.

The auxiliaries and youth organization should regain autonomy as well.

I am all for accountability, by the way. But that does not require micromanagement from above a la correlation.

Training and oversight would be sufficient to hold local leaders accountable. Mormon would mean to belong to a community where people enjoy each others company.

That’s how rebranding would be successful.

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I think this is a lost cause – most Asians have access to the internet, are very smart, and unlikely to be attracted to a still very Utah centric church.

All the above is total speculation and just MHO.

I do think tithing is really going to decline, I no longer pay anything to the church except some local fast offerings and ward budget donations. The economy tanking over the whole world – particularly in the US, and I think financially successful people are going to be less and less likely to be attracted to the church. I think LDS is not immune to the problems of most other churches in that the world in general is becoming less interested in churches and religion. I think it is an evolutionary thing and decline of religious institutions is inevitable, no matter how much rebranding is done.

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Having “we’re the fastest-growing church!” as a big part of their image is a real problem since it’s so obvious that it’s not true. The Daniel 2 prophecy can be explained away in the usual fashion: “That’ll happen during the millenium!”

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I tend to believe that the church has grown to fill many of the ecological niches it inhabits, meaning that it has no more room to grow in places like Europe and the United States. It has exhausted the number of people interested in what they’re selling. There’s no way to make the current Mormonism brand a growth industry in many places around the world (visions of global prominence à la Daniel 2 notwithstanding).

The most likely future I see for the LDS church (based on my uninformed hunches) would be a period of membership attrition in places where the internet makes factual Mormon history readily available. This would be followed by stasis at a level sustainable by the number of people available willing to overlook its historical problems for whatever reason. In other places like the Middle East and Asia, the church will never gain a significant foothold due to the large gap between LDS culture and philosophy and those of their would-be converts.

Having said that, I keep hoping that something will happen to cause a sea change within the church that will surprise all us naysayers and cause a real rebranding. At the very least I hope for this so that attending sacrament meeting (as I still do more often than not) won’t be so stultifying.

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If it doesn’t get threatened with losing its tax exempt status, nothing happens. I don’t see internal pressures from dissatisfied members making much of a difference.

It’s true that there is not enough change but there is a little bit of change. There appear to be some efforts to inoculate the members, for example, the Nelson talk about the rock in the hat comes to mind.

Also, historically, there have been periods were there was more or less freedom in the Church.

For example, correlation only appeared during the late sixties when David O. McKay had become to weak to fend off Lee and Smith.

Armand Mauss has a fancy theory about insider-outsider dichotomies. I think that the brethren tolerate more liberty whenever they are broke.

McKay became a general authority when the Church was almost bankrupt. Therefore, church leaders had to appeal for the support of the members. When McKay left, the Church had so much money that the brethren could do as they pleased.

Right now, the effective membership of the Church is shrinking in the United States. For four converts, five Mormons stop identifying as Mormons.

They may never resign but the brethren have seen the last red farthing from those people.

That is not a sustainable situation. Eventually, the brethren will have to do something.

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I also agree with Mermaid that the brethren may be out of the loop. The one signal, they appear to be reading clearly is the cash flow.

The current economic problem will actually benefit them. When people have economic problems, they are looking for community, which will temporarily increase attendance.

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After all, rebranding involves a corporate goal or vision…and the rebranding efforts cater to that.

And I mean, I think the church has such an idea, but as we’ve seen recently, it has little to do with any actually progressive changes.

I present to you, exhibit A!

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So true. It’s hard enough as it is to turn the ship even if you had someone dynamic at the helm (which they don’t).

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