Some thoughts on the growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The claim heard in some conners recently "no stakes created this month" does not bear up under scrutiny. It might be a reaction to what happened in July, but there are almost never new stakes in July. August has seen a stake was just created in Forteleza Brazil. Multiple stakes have been formed in Lima this year. Also multiple stakes have been formed in the Phillipines this year. The Church also continues to clearly grow in Utah.

The Africa West Area being split in two is possible, but I do not know how likely it is. At present we have about 2/3rds the areas the Church had at the hight of the area phenomenon. That said, the history of administrative units between that of stakes/missions/districts and the Church as a whole is so complex, that I have only ever seen one article come close to getting it right. That is an article from the book on THe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Canada. Even there I am not sure they fully explain regional representatives (who oversaw the operations of the Church) and mission representatives (who were over training missionaries on a multi-mission level). The Area Presidencies inagurated in 1984 were the first ones to function as full presidencies, Zone Administrators and other general authorities leading before were assigned one by one.

When Area Authorities were first inagurated in 1995 under President Hinckley 3 were called as members of area presidencies. I think both Chile Area and Central America Area for a time had all area authority seventy area presidencies. Today I believe only the Europe East Area Presidency has an Area Sevnety in it.

I always argue that Areas are closer to Catholic dioceses than stakes. Even the number of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Utah Area, which has by far the most Church members of any area, is still dwarfed by some Catholic dioceses, and even more by some archdioceses. On the other hand Europe East Area and Middle East/North Afirca Area (which I think they should rename Southwest Asia/North Africa) have similar membership numbers to many Catholic diocese in India.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Defending Oaks balanced calls

Here  https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/10/14/stuart-c-reid-oaks-does/  is a well balanced article written for the Salt Lake Tribune defending the teachings of President Dallin H. Oaks, specifically his well thought-out talk to the General Women's Meeting in General Conference. Reid presents a well reasoned argument. What he never deals with is the reasons behind Riess's hateful attacks on President Oaks for his talk. To understand what is fully going on one has to realize in the past Riess has attacked President Packer for his comments on LGBT issues in general conference. The best theory is that Riess is not in accord with or agreement with the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on sexuality. She should stop pretending, as she did with her earlier reactions to President Packer, and just admit that she does not view the leaders of the Church as inspired men, clearly does not believe the Book of Mormon is the revealed word of God in a...
Read more

Suing the "Mormon Corporate Empire"

The misuse of courts has reached a new low. In a rambling and clearly unhinged suit someone has now tried to begin a class action lawsuit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the grounds that it misrepresents its history for corporate gain. The suit claims that it is known that Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon from the gold plates and that it is known that Joseph Smith did not see God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ in the First Vision, but the Church tries to manipulate and downplay these facts. The problem for the suit is that it makes false claims on what is and is not known, and then outright lies about the implications. First off, the seeming main claim is that because at least some of the translation of the Book of Mormon was done by Joseph Smith looking in a seer stone in a hat it was not translated from the golden plates. This is a clear false claim. The belief of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that t...
Read more

The first BYU grad

In my interview on Monday for a position at Hope Academy on the westside of Detroit, the principal who has been a school administrator for 30 years said I was the first person who had attended school at BYU, and in fact in Utah, he had ever interviewed. My main regret is that I said in explaining why I went to BYU that I was a Mormon instead of saying that I was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Nelson was correct when in his talk in Montreal he said we have a lot of work to do within the Church to change how we speak of the Church. I have already seen some people say that it cannot be done and that they will not even try. It can be done and it should be done. Will we end all uses of Mormon? Probably not. Should we cut back and refer to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in as many ways and by as many means as we can? Most defiately.
Read more