"Tears
were the most common response as residents learned Saturday about a
temple The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plans to build
in the area.
...
"Rod Mund, a Willard City Council
member who is also a member of the LDS Church, said, “I was pretty
surprised. I got goose bumps when they said Brigham City.” Mund said it is a sign that not only is the church growing, but the area is growing also. "
-------
So I'm sitting here racking my brains trying to figure out how this is a good business decision for the church, other than a desperate attempt to raise tithing revenues in the area. Most of the major employers in the area have or are about to lay off workers and the school district in Box Elder county has had to close 2-3 elementary schools in the past 10 years because of decreasing enrollment so how are they measuring this "growth"?
And while it's true that I haven't been to either the Ogden or Logan temples in awhile, I really can't imagine they are now so busy that a third temple is needed halfway in between them.
I'm convinced they're trying to keep up the appearance that the church is growing and prospering. Too bad their faithful tithepayers have to bear the burden of their deception.
Temples = lack of privacy and more occasions to need a temple reccommend. More tithing, more pressure to stay in the fold.
There is quite a majority of couples from Brigham City, Bear River, Logan and Odgen don't want to get married in the Logan or Odgen Temple ... Bountigul or Salt Lake are the "pretty picture" ones.
It is true that Brigham City has closed schools because people prefer to live and build in the neighboring towns. Perry, Willard, Corrine are all places that subdivisons were built where farms use to be. But my guess is that it would have limited hours, I just can't imagine Brigham and the surrounding areas keeping it busy full time. Appearance, Appearance, Control and Tithing!
I'm convinced they're trying to keep up the appearance that the church is growing and prospering. Too bad their faithful tithepayers have to bear the burden of their deception.
I could be totally wrong, but somewhere in the back of my (LDS history buff) head is a story of some long dead apostle who in the early days of Brigham City, acted like a 'prophet' and said a temple would one day be built there. If I'm right, it could be the brethren simply wanting to be able to say, "See, revelation is real."
It seems like such a waste. I drive by the Idaho Falls temple a lot and the parking lot is usually barren. There are temples in Rexburg, Idaho Falls, Twin Falls and Boise and they are not even near functioning at capacity, why do they keep building them? Maybe they have been watching that old Kevin Costner baseball movie ....."If you build it...they will come". NOT.
"Tears were the most common response as residents learned Saturday about a temple The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plans to build in the area.
...
"Rod Mund, a Willard City Council member who is also a member of the LDS Church, said, “I was pretty surprised. I got goose bumps when they said Brigham City.” Mund said it is a sign that not only is the church growing, but the area is growing also. "
-------
So I'm sitting here racking my brains trying to figure out how this is a good business decision for the church, other than a desperate attempt to raise tithing revenues in the area. Most of the major employers in the area have or are about to lay off workers and the school district in Box Elder county has had to close 2-3 elementary schools in the past 10 years because of decreasing enrollment so how are they measuring this "growth"?
And while it's true that I haven't been to either the Ogden or Logan temples in awhile, I really can't imagine they are now so busy that a third temple is needed halfway in between them.
Can someone explain this? Any ideas?
I haven't been for a long time either but I know they have begged for better attendance. They are NOT too busy to handle the saints from Brigham City it's just not as convenient. Tithing funds a little low in Brigham City?
Living in the Logan area I predict that this will be used to try to get the members in the valley to go to the temple more. It will be something along the lines of, "We have to make up the loss of the Brigham City saints by attending the temple more often."
Combine this with the guilting of the Box Elder county saint to go to their temple more, since they do not have the excuse of not wanting to drive over the hill (especially during the winter), and perhaps they are thinking that it will lead to more temple patrons and therefore, more tithing.
apostate (FKA) strangite:
I could be totally wrong, but somewhere in the back of my (LDS history buff) head is a story of some long dead apostle who in the early days of Brigham City, acted like a 'prophet' and said a temple would one day be built there. If I'm right, it could be the brethren simply wanting to be able to say, "See, revelation is real."
I think you are right, and I think it was Lorenzo Snow. He spent a lot of time in the Brigham City area, and is in fact, buried in the Brigham City Cemetery.
A temple in Brigham City is no surprise. They were actually going to build one several years ago, under the great temple builders reign, ( GBH ). I know back then, they were negotiating for a piece of land. The deal fell through when, shall we say, an insider got involved, and messed up the sale. He had his own great ideas of how he, could make a lot more money with the land, instead of letting the church buy it for a temple site. Uhhhh, that didn't work out either.
The corporate greed within TSCC runs far and deep. I wish I could tell you all the details here, but I dare not here. I have probably said too much already.
Gilgal:
From Brigham City it's 25 miles to Logan and 25 miles to Ogden. That's just too damn far for any Mormon to have to drive to attend the temple.
Correction: Too damn far for any UTAH Mormon to have to drive.
Bingo. I met people on my mission (Latin America) who saved for years and sold their worldly possessions so they could fly to Rio or Mexico or even Utah so they could go through the Masonic temple.
Gilgal:
From Brigham City it's 25 miles to Logan and 25 miles to Ogden. That's just too damn far for any Mormon to have to drive to attend the temple.
Correction: Too damn far for any UTAH Mormon to have to drive.
Bingo. I met people on my mission (Latin America) who saved for years and sold their worldly possessions so they could fly to Rio or Mexico or even Utah so they could go through the Masonic temple.
Yeah, so much for God being no respector of persons... I suggest they build one on in Wendover, Ut. I'm willing to bet they'd have some of the highest attendance rates around!
Despite the fiasco that is the City Creek Center project in downtown SLC, the church continues to rake in untold billions in tithing revenue every year. They CAN'T spend it (I don't think) on profit-generating ventures, such as the City Creek Center, because that really would force the church-side of the corporation out of tax-exempt status. They can do two things--sit on the cash and let it lose value in today's market, or they can purchase assets. Purchasing land and building a multi-million dollar temple on it kills a whole flock of birds with one stone:
1) Spends money that needs to be spent;
2) Serves to invigorate the local membership;
3) Serves to stimulate tithing revenues from recently re-invigorated local membership;
4) Establishes one more in a long string of highly visible edifaces that communicates to both the Mormons and non-Mormons alike that the Mormons OWN the Mormon corridor, as evidenced by the temples that dot the I-15 corridor like a string of pearls from Idaho Falls all the way to Los Angeles.
5) Fools the world (most notably themselves) into believing that the "stone cut from the mountain without hands" really is rolling forth to crush the world.
The truth is, the church doesn't need this many temples. The statistic I read last night in the local paper was that 86% of all Mormons now live within 200 miles of a temple. You can bet that those remaing 14% live in third-world nations that don't generate anything in tithing, and whose retention rates are such that only a tiny minority ever make it to the one year of full activity required to permit going to the temple. That being the case, the church is simply spending money they continue to rake in to put on the face of growth.
It's a shame that those millions aren't spent to help the rest of the world, rather than make things slightly more convenient for the few Mormons. How much better would it be--now that hardly anyone has to travel more than a few hours to get to an existing temple--to earmark those funds to charitable causes? Disaster or famine relief? Building women's shelters in the same cities that house temples, for example? Wouldn't they actually do themselves MORE good by establishing "Smith Houses" for abused women with children all across the world then they EVER do for themselves by building yet ANOTHER gaudy building that nobody else can step foot into?
They continue to cut off their nose to spite their face...
Yeah, I got a Tweet this weekend from my local news station that, apparently, there will be a new Ft. Lauderdale temple as well.
This will mightily confuse all the Jews in South Florida, who hear "temple" and think something toooootally different.
There is already a temple in Orlando, which is about as centrally located one can be in an "L" shaped state. (Okay, my state is shaped like a penis. Erm. Sorry.) I cannot imagine what they are going to do with a mormon temple in Ft. Lauderdale. 80% of the population is either Jewish, Latino Catholic, or Heathen.
Upon preview, I read P_M's post and yeah. +1 to what he said.
Yeah, I got a Tweet this weekend from my local news station that, apparently, there will be a new Ft. Lauderdale temple as well.
This will mightily confuse all the Jews in South Florida, who hear "temple" and think something toooootally different.
There is already a temple in Orlando, which is about as centrally located one can be in an "L" shaped state. (Okay, my state is shaped like a penis. Erm. Sorry.) I cannot imagine what they are going to do with a mormon temple in Ft. Lauderdale. 80% of the population is either Jewish, Latino Catholic, or Heathen.
Upon preview, I read P_M's post and yeah. +1 to what he said.
Ft. Lauderdale is practically the FIRST thing I think of when I think of Mormons!
Oh, wait. That's not true. It's practically the FIRST thing I think of when I think of bikini-clad girls. Perhaps South Florida is someplace that the geriatric men of the church hierarchy like to spend time, and so having a major church project that close to the beach serves other purposes WELL beyond meeting the needs of the local members.
Yeah, I got a Tweet this weekend from my local news station that, apparently, there will be a new Ft. Lauderdale temple as well.
This will mightily confuse all the Jews in South Florida, who hear "temple" and think something toooootally different.
There is already a temple in Orlando, which is about as centrally located one can be in an "L" shaped state. (Okay, my state is shaped like a penis. Erm. Sorry.) I cannot imagine what they are going to do with a mormon temple in Ft. Lauderdale. 80% of the population is either Jewish, Latino Catholic, or Heathen.
Upon preview, I read P_M's post and yeah. +1 to what he said.
Oooh, you think that maybe there will be some battles between the Jews and the Mormons to see who gets the rights to use the word 'gentile', and what day is really the 'sabbath'? If only the LA Temple was closer to the Fairfax District. Oy!
Well, the upside is, Ft. Lauderdale will be able to eat well, having Jewish Deli's and Mormon Deli's (candy and ice cream stores).
I think temples are placed in areas that need a little bump in tithing receipts. You can be an active mormon without giving them one cent, but when it comes to important family events like endowments, weddings, sealings etc etc..well you just gotta have a temple.
Think of it, how often do you go to the temple for yourself? Twice, maybe. Once for your endowment, once more if you get married. All the other temple visits are for the benefit of others....but you can't get in with out the financial contribution of 10%.... All year, every year.
That's one hell of a revenue stream for showing the same stupid movie over and over and over.
I know retired people, living on very small pensions who pay tithing....I ask them why, since they paid tithing their entire lives, why pay on your pension and social security? The answer: "I want to attend the weddings of my grandkids". What kind of organization takes money from 80 year old retired people?
There are plenty of members attending the temple who would not qualify if they answered all the questions honestly. Some drink, some smoke, I am sure some are not entirely "faithful".....but every damn one of them paid tithing. There aint no gettin' around that one.
True, if a member has indeed paid on the full income (the gross including social security contribution) there should be no need for them to pay on the limited income, that's double-jeopardy. The church should be ashamed...and make sure the fixed income folks are told there is no need for them to tithe....as they already did....
There was a new temple announced for Concepcion Chile as well. My parents are on a mission there and informed me of this. This one REALLY doesn't make sense. They're not going to be getting a whole lot of tithing revenue. I really doubt they have enough mormons there to keep it busy.
I pulled some stats from Wikipedia and The cumorah project and came up with approximately 9,000 active lds in the metropolitan concepcion area.
For all of South America, with 2.25
million members, less than 1.8% of the total adult membership has been
married in the temple.(Source: Encyclopedia of Mormonism, edited by
Daniel H. Ludlow, 1992, 4:1532)
Since marriage doesn't include all people who have gone to the temple I'll be generous and say 5% of those 9,000 members have actually been to the temple.
That leaves a whopping 450 people that go to the temple. (I'm kind of pulling these numbers out of my ass, loosely based on the stats I've seen for population and membership.)
Does that few people really justify building a temple?
Does that few people really justify building a temple?
No, my friend, but since when does the church do ANYTHING for "the people?" They do it for them, for corporate, business-related reasons. There is a gain here for the church, whether it be strictly appearances, or if there is some political capital they gain because they make a beautiful spot in an otherwise impoverished (I assume) area. By making a big, gleaming, beautiful building with a park around it, they may be hoping to attract more people who simply want to be a part. So baptisms go up, and they get to jack their numbers.
I don't know WHAT their reason is, but make no mistake...it's not to benefit the people of Concepcion...
It's a shame that those millions aren't spent to help the rest of the world, rather than make things slightly more convenient for the few Mormons. How much better would it be--now that hardly anyone has to travel more than a few hours to get to an existing temple--to earmark those funds to charitable causes?
Bravo!! I spent many many hours fulfilling my calling sitting watching the mice run circles in the shiny wheels when the same amount of time could have been used in a manner of actually helping someone or at a minimum doing something to make the world a better place for someone other than a made up service project for a ward member at best getting free labor to paint her real estate investment flip project. I must say sitting for hours in church and leadership meetings did give me lots of time to think about how very little was being accomplished. It was one of my first realizations that I was wasting my time there along with lots and lots of other people adding up to lots and lots of wasted time.
Sadly, building monuments and cathedrals to God is what most religions do, but has very little relevance to what Jesus did himself. A new shiny temple has a far greater WOW factor than if the same amount of money was spent on say a woman’s shelter, soup kitchen, opportunity school, or any form of humanitarian aid. Tithing builds temples. Humanitarian aid is a separate line item on the donation slip, is additional and optional, and the last line on the donation form.
Alas, perhaps the new “security” bar code on the temple recommend is recommending that the 25 mile drive is too much of a sacrifice since the area isn’t showing up much in the attending database. Hmmm, I see you can now auto debit your tithing from your checking account. How convenient.
