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I was listening to a MormonStories podcast a few months ago, where John Dehlin made the following challenge.

"For those of you who thing the church should change, I challenge you to come up with any recommendation that would improve the church from your liberal/progressive view point that would lead to a maintenance or increase in church attendance or tithing."

I know that many of you would just like the church to come to an end, but that is not going to happen. I have lots of family that will never leave it. Therefore, I would love to see the church become something better. So, I thought about this for a bit and came up with a quite a list. I ended up making a video about these ideas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPkL_CjCJuc

If I could only choose one of my suggestions, it would be the first one: Stop thinking like a corporation and start acting like a charity (even John's question is a sympton of this mentality). I estimated that less than 0.5% of the cash donated by the membership goes towards humanitarian aid. That percentage jumps up to 1.7% when donated goods and services are included, but that is still pitifully small for a church that takes in over 6 billion per year in tithing, plus all of the profits from its investments and businesses.

During this process I became curious how my suggestions would compare with other peoples ideas. I am sure that there are many out there who would like to see the church change in some way. The church has changed in the past due to aggitation both from within and without. If nothing critical is ever said, nothing good will ever get done. So I would like to extend this to you. What changes would you make?

P.S. I did not put this in my video because I was not sure about it, but how many charitable entities, such as soup kitchens, homeless shelters, shelters for abused women and children, etc, does the church own and operate in the US? There might be some, I just don't know of any.

Liberal/progressive ideas intrinsically don't result in improvements to anything. They don't increase faith. They don't create wealth. They don't emulate charity. Just look at the example of liberal Protestants. They are dying out as they convert their religion into....nothing.

bcspace wrote:Liberal/progressive ideas intrinsically don't result in improvements to anything. They don't increase faith. They don't create wealth. They don't emulate charity. Just look at the example of liberal Protestants. They are dying out as they convert their religion into....nothing.

There's a whole vast range of middle ground between Unitarians and radical literalist Mormonism (read: orthodox Mormonism).

bcspace wrote:Liberal/progressive ideas intrinsically don't result in improvements to anything. They don't increase faith. They don't create wealth. They don't emulate charity. Just look at the example of liberal Protestants. They are dying out as they convert their religion into....nothing.

in my opinion they did result in improvements in Mormonism such as the ending of polygamy, extending the priesthood to the blacks, and changes to the endowment ritual. Those changes to core tennants of the faith were due to pressure comming both from within and outside the church. The church has been very flexible when it needs to be in order to survive.

Although the Church undertakes charitable operations, it is not a charity.

Just as St. Paul spent months to years raising funds to pay for the support of a missions abroad and to Rome, so does the Church spend money supporting missions and temples.


The Church's doctrine has always been that teaching a man to be a Christian is more valuable than giving him a fish, for the poor you'll always have with you.

I think it is presumptuous and condescending for Dehlin to say what he has said. I spent two years as a transient bishop arranging, often with my own funds, for the housing and/or treatment of battered women, homeless families and drug addicts. I paid for housing for unemployed and homeless pregnant teenagers. Week after week. I got to know all the apartments and motels in town which would take my checks for long-term or intermediate housing for people would could not show a credit card for check-in. Every stake California has a similar bishop and a similar program. That system puts these people in touch with local bishops who can muster priesthood and relief society resources to help.

On one occasion, a field deputy for the local supervisor for the County Board of Supervisors asked me, the transient bishop, to provide housing for a homeless non-LDS couple living in one of their stairwells who had been CHP officers. I asked why the deputy had called me, and the response was that it was well known that the LDS Church did more than what the local Catholics and Lutherans did, which was to provide one-week vouchers at local motels. The LDS Church, I was told, was known to have an infrastructure in place to rescue people.

Did I do it willingly? Often, no. A gift begrudged is no gift at all and I am no good Christian. I would rather be with my family than drive 20 miles at midnight to a seedy motel to pay for three weeks' rent for a mother with 5 children living out of a car. I'd rather spend a couple of hours coaching my kids' football teams than sitting down with drug addicts, as I often did, hearing them tell me yarns and fibs about how sober they were. But I did it because that is what the Church required of me. And I saw some success with people finding friends and spiritual support within the local church infrastructure.

I like Grant Palmer's suggestion that we become more Christ oriented. I think that would make us even more kind and gentle as a people. Might even lead to kinder and gentler type of apologetics as well.

Yahoo Bot wrote:The Church's doctrine has always been that teaching a man to be a Christian is more valuable than giving him a fish, for the poor you'll always have with you.

39 Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, and notice them not? 40 Yea, why do ye build up your secret abominations to get gain, and cause that widows should mourn before the Lord, and also orphans to mourn before the Lord, and also the blood of their fathers and their husbands to cry unto the Lord from the ground, for vengeance upon your heads? 41 Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer.

Yahoo Bot wrote:Although the Church undertakes charitable operations, it is not a charity.

Just as St. Paul spent months to years raising funds to pay for the support of a missions abroad and to Rome, so does the Church spend money supporting missions and temples.


The Church's doctrine has always been that teaching a man to be a Christian is more valuable than giving him a fish, for the poor you'll always have with you.

I think it is presumptuous and condescending for Dehlin to say what he has said. I spent two years as a transient bishop arranging, often with my own funds, for the housing and/or treatment of battered women, homeless families and drug addicts. I paid for housing for unemployed and homeless pregnant teenagers. Week after week. I got to know all the apartments and motels in town which would take my checks for long-term or intermediate housing for people would could not show a credit card for check-in. Every stake California has a similar bishop and a similar program. That system puts these people in touch with local bishops who can muster priesthood and relief society resources to help.

On one occasion, a field deputy for the local supervisor for the County Board of Supervisors asked me, the transient bishop, to provide housing for a homeless non-LDS couple living in one of their stairwells who had been CHP officers. I asked why the deputy had called me, and the response was that it was well known that the LDS Church did more than what the local Catholics and Lutherans did, which was to provide one-week vouchers at local motels. The LDS Church, I was told, was known to have an infrastructure in place to rescue people.

Did I do it willingly? Often, no. A gift begrudged is no gift at all and I am no good Christian. I would rather be with my family than drive 20 miles at midnight to a seedy motel to pay for three weeks' rent for a mother with 5 children living out of a car. I'd rather spend a couple of hours coaching my kids' football teams than sitting down with drug addicts, as I often did, hearing them tell me yarns and fibs about how sober they were. But I did it because that is what the Church required of me. And I saw some success with people finding friends and spiritual support within the local church infrastructure.

Bishops are, very much, the unsung heroes of the LDS Church. Thanks for sharing that.

Good work! :-)

I'm sure that the families you helped were very grateful.

Yahoo Bot wrote:Although the Church undertakes charitable operations, it is not a charity.

Just as St. Paul spent months to years raising funds to pay for the support of a missions abroad and to Rome, so does the Church spend money supporting missions and temples.


The Church's doctrine has always been that teaching a man to be a Christian is more valuable than giving him a fish, for the poor you'll always have with you.

I think it is presumptuous and condescending for Dehlin to say what he has said. I spent two years as a transient bishop arranging, often with my own funds, for the housing and/or treatment of battered women, homeless families and drug addicts. I paid for housing for unemployed and homeless pregnant teenagers. Week after week. I got to know all the apartments and motels in town which would take my checks for long-term or intermediate housing for people would could not show a credit card for check-in. Every stake California has a similar bishop and a similar program. That system puts these people in touch with local bishops who can muster priesthood and relief society resources to help.

On one occasion, a field deputy for the local supervisor for the County Board of Supervisors asked me, the transient bishop, to provide housing for a homeless non-LDS couple living in one of their stairwells who had been CHP officers. I asked why the deputy had called me, and the response was that it was well known that the LDS Church did more than what the local Catholics and Lutherans did, which was to provide one-week vouchers at local motels. The LDS Church, I was told, was known to have an infrastructure in place to rescue people.

Did I do it willingly? Often, no. A gift begrudged is no gift at all and I am no good Christian. I would rather be with my family than drive 20 miles at midnight to a seedy motel to pay for three weeks' rent for a mother with 5 children living out of a car. I'd rather spend a couple of hours coaching my kids' football teams than sitting down with drug addicts, as I often did, hearing them tell me yarns and fibs about how sober they were. But I did it because that is what the Church required of me. And I saw some success with people finding friends and spiritual support within the local church infrastructure.

Amen.

My experiences as a bishop were similar. And I'm sure that thousands of other bishops and former bishops could make similar reports.

Incidentally, I've never understood the argument that the Church doesn't devote enough of its resources to charity. To me, that's rather like complaining that the Audobon Society or the Sierra Club doesn't given enough to alleviate hunger in Africa. What they do is their charitable service. The Church's primary functions are many, and they include helping the poor and the needy. But they also include building chapels, doing missionary work, and erecting and maintaining temples, etc.

My suggestions, in order of importance:

1. open the books. Publish a complete, accurate, and public financial report every year. Send it out with the Ensign in the May conference issue.

2. Sell all the businesses; put the money to use fulfilling the 4-fold missions of the church, especially #4.

3. Close/sell all the BYU campuses and their assorted entities. Keep the Institutes open and expand that program.

4. Open the priesthood to all worthy members.

5. Rewrite the temple rules so that those who are married civilly are not required to wait a year.

6. Institute an emeritus process for all GA's once they reach 70 years old. No exceptions.

7. Pay all GA's, every single one of them. If they want to donate it back, they can, but let there be no ambiguity about who gets paid and how much they get paid. Remind them often to pay their tithes and offerings. Send Deacons to their homes every Fast Sunday to collect their fast offerings.

8. To find out what the members really think, send out a survey once a year, asking for input and suggestions. Send out evaluations to members for bishops and stake presidents.

9. Encourage questions and discussion about controversial issues, including church historical events and current social issues during Sunday School. Throw the manuals away. Trust in the Lord and the discernment of local leaders to call spiritually in-tune teachers.

10. Revise and revamp the church court system.