More on mission evolution

I decided to use some figures to study matters.

To start with one needs to know interpretation of figures is sometimes hard. I am not sure what the "missionaries called" figures represent. I am not sure anyone quite does. Is this an aggregate of formally issues mission calls. Is it influenced by "many are called, but few are chosen."

In the case of missionary calls, most people who receive mission calls, serve at least part of their mission. However I have known enough women who recieved a call, and ended up getting married or engaged before going to serve a mission, that I hope that this figure starts somewhere later than the formal call.

I have to wonder if the stats given would actually be better labeled "missionaries set apart." That has its own draw backs. Either way it probably does not count some irregular missionary assignments.

However does it include the art missionaries of the 1890s, sent to Paris to learn art, and then returning to Utah to decorate the Salt Lake Temple. There is little evidence that these people shared the gospel while abroad. John A. Widstoe and some other students who went to either Eastern US universities or German universities (Brother Widstoe went to both) were set apart as missionaries before departure. How much Elder Widstoe actually did as a missionary is unclear. My guess is he begin the faithful and wonderful man he was, took every oppourtunity to share the gospel within reason, but it is not clear when he was in Germany if there was a local branch of the Church.

On the other hand I wonder if Phoebe Woodruff being set apart to serve along side her husband Wilford Woodruff as he presided over the Eastern States Mission in the 1848-1850 shows up in these statistics. As it was, mission presidents wives accompanying their husbands was only semi-regular in the 19th-century, and which ever way the case of Sister Woodruff falls, there are almost certainly some wives of mission presidents in the 19th century who accompanied their husbands and provided much support at multiple levels of the mission, in many ways, both logistical and proselytizing ways, who were not set apart and so do not show up in the statistics at all.

I then consulted the 1972 Church Annaul Statistical Report. It includes this highly informative paragraph "The following statistics of missionaries set apart (accumulative by decade) do not include local missionaries who often serve in the same mission field where they were baptized and who begin their labors in their own native tongues." see https://www.lds.org/ensign/1972/07/the-annual-report-of-the-church?lang=eng for the fuller discussion.

This tells us that the 65,215 missionaries set apart from 1960-70, does not include everyone serving as a missionary. I am still trying to figure out how the fact the chart also has 1950-1960 works out. Are the 1960 set aparts double counted, or is the cut off either the start of 1960 or the end of 1960, or is it some date during the year? This seems to indicate to me that almost none of the missionaries serving under John H. Groberg (I believe he served 1965-1968, I know it was years in the 1960s) show up, since almost all of his missionaries were local Tongan missionaries, usually married couples (I am not sure if both husband and wife or just husband were set apart, I think the former, but am not sure) and farming during off hours, so they would not show up in the centralized figures, and also would be differently scrutinized for approval than missionaries scrutinized through Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. I say differently, because various factors mean that it is only a different process, how it is different is hard to say.

Using the easier comparison of 1830s stats I can now say. 1-"missionaries called" is the same as "missionaries set apart", and I think the later is a better description. This still ignores that some missionaries get set apart, and then do not move all the way to serving in the field, some because of issues revealed in the MTC. Others then serve very short times, I had to go home at 21 months due to health issues, but I knew one missionary who had health issues that made it so he was unable to serve even a full month past the MTC.

On the other hand, with the "raising the bar" both for worthiness and health, the Church now sends some missionaries on trial missions, and actually did it some back in the 1990s, I know because there was a 1990s trial missionary in my mission. However my impression is that the program has become more regularized and widespread since raising the bar. Raising the Bar was not a one time change, there was clearly structural development of alternatives for those whose health did not allow to serve as a regular full time missionary before the bar was raised, and on the other hand the Church is still working to better develop and organize the church serivice missionary opportunities for those who are not able due to various health issues to serve full time missions. My mission president and his companion, Wareen G. and  Suzanne J. Tate, later presided over the Salt Lake City Headquarters (at first Salt Lake City Family and Church History) mission. The rename came about because of three factors. One was that it no longer just oversaw missionaries assigned to work in the Family and Church History Departments, but also oversaw missionaries in media relations, military relations and many other headquarters departments. 

On the other hand, President and Sister Tate did not in any way oversee the actual operations of the Family History Libary, the Church History Department or other such facilities. They oversaw the work of the missionaries as missionaries. The rename was also connected with reinvisioning the mission as one where the missionaries, like many other missionaries, have dual assignments, at least in the case of the 700+ senior missionaires (mostly couples, but some single sisters) in the mission. They were redeployed from having self advancing, preaching to the choir type branches in the central city of Salt Lake, to assignments as leadership and membership development missionaries in various units throughout Salt Lake City. 

Unlike some other cases, this is one where Salt Lake City is following a model pioneered elsewhere. Here in Metro-Detroit our Personal Storehouse Project might be in some ways pioneered from the Inner City Mission of Salt Lake City, but our taking it to every ward and branch and in the stake, instead of just the 4 with the highest rates of poverty and unemployment (being the 4 that take in Detroit) makes sense. Virtually every ward and branch in the Bloomfield Hills Stake has areas that have a population large enough and poverty and unemployment high enough to translate into inner-city units with the concentration of members you see in Salt Lake City.

Bloomfield Hills Ward for example has the south-end of Pontiac, the part of the city with the highest rates of unemployment and poverty. With Salt Lake City membership levels percentages, this area would probably be at least two wards/branches.

North Shores Ward has Mount Clements and South-east Clinton Township, with the same struggles. Sterling Heights Ward has a few apartment complexes in various parts of the ward with concentrations of these negative issues.

Add to this that many of the people who most benefit from the Personal Storehouse Project and the related but seperate Development Specialist based in the employment center and funded under the auspices of Deseret Industries (I have benefitied from formal association with the later, only informal aid from the former) are people who live in at neighborhoods with low reates of poverty but individually struggle a lot. In my case I pulled this off by living with my parents as a 35+ year old adult. In other cases people pull it off by both husband and wife working long hours, one missing church, and still incuring debts to keep things a float that will leave then never having many options. It may also mean sub-functional cars, all the more problematic with Metro Detroit's sub-functional public transit. 

The place of residence may be in a neighborhood not currently pegged as high poverty, but that does not mean it will be an ideal home, and with the husband working long hours at low wages, he will have little time to fix the house and no money to pay others to do it. It does not matter if your neighbors have pristine houses, a leaky roof will be sub-optimal in any situation.

OK, back to my point. Here in the Detroit Mission we had been having full-time missionaries assigned to the Employment Center and the Food distribution facilities within the Bishop's storehouse also assigned as full-time missionaries to work with specific wards and branches in need of various aids to development. Mainly reactiviation and leadership development assignments, but also generalized assistance with teaching and travel as aids to the full-time missionaries.

These full time missionaries normally live close to the Bishop's storehouse in Farmington Hills, but are assigned to wards and branches much further south-east.

The situation makes me wonder if the Bishop's sotehouse should be moved. However I know that will not happen in any close decade.

I am not sure if the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric owns or leases the Bishop's storehouse. I am guessing the former. 

My general experience is that while the Church leases some mission offices, virtually all missionary residents (the ones it does not lease, it holds on rents, but that is rare, and there are some who live in Church owned mission homes, but that is also not common, I am not even sure the Church owns all homes for mission presidents, some may be leased.), and does rent/lease some spaces where Church meetings are held, the Church generally works on the goal of eventually owning as much of its operational space as reasonably possible, with the exception of missionary living quarters.

I do not have enough points of information to say for sure, but I think the Church is trending towards trying to move mission offices from leased/rented spaces to Church owned spaces where possible.

In some cases the Church acts as a land-lord for other organizations. However this is technically through its various Property Reserve and a few other for-profit corporations, to make it clear which properties it does and does not pay property tax on. 

There may be some churches that do iffy things and skirt the line of non-profit status with money making operations in their non-profit operations, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extra scrupulous about this, making Kargil's attempts to get incrimadating information on this matter even more bizarre. 

Back to the situation at hand. The Church buys properties, to build churches, temples, etc. They do this with the long duration in mind, and try not to abandon specific properties. On occasion the Church does close and sell old chapels, but not on the model of building a replacement just across the street or such as so many fast food, grocery and clothing stores do. 

The LDS Church builds its buildings to last. The Troy Chapel is so well built that it gets estimated at 15 years old instead of the real 24 years old. Temples are built to a higher standard. Both go through various remodels. Temples a lot more than chapels.

On occasion LDS Chapels are demolished with a new one rebuilt on the same sight. Although this does on occasion happen for fast food locations and other restaurants, keeping open during remodel is more common in the later cases.

Many LDS chapels were built in phases. Both the Bloomfield Hills Stake Center and the Roseville Chapel were not built as unified units. The Bloomfield Hills Stake Center because it was first built as just a ward chapel, and when designated a stake center needed to have expansion.

The Roseville Chapel as part of the general phase in large buildings as the congregation grows. It was built in three phases. However there have been at least two revisions since enclosing some of the heating/cooling and such space, adding an addtional more acecssible bathroom ajacent to the chapel, and reformating the areas of the original chapel which no longer needed to have a foyer, thus creating more classrooms. 

While the Church owns many institute buildings, I have also attended institue class in space on a public university campus that the Church accesses through having an LDSSA chapter at the university, I am not sure if fees are involved.

I have known of seminary being held in rented space, either inside a public school or in other locations. I would guess most seminary classes are held in space owned by the LDS Church, and probably most institute classes. The later because most institute classes are held in chapels and not specific to any college/university enrollment. 

A large percentage of Church picnics during summer months are held at locations other than church property, the exact percentage hard to place. Also, outside of certain parts of the intermountain west and the western US, most summer camps are held off church property. 

The majority of EFY sessions are probalby held off church property. All the ones immediately family members of mine have gone to have been, but I have never even tried to calculate what percentage of sessions are held at BYU. I do not know if any sessions outside of BYU are held at least in part at Institute Buildings, but would be surprised. Most institute buildings other than at a few places in Utah are not big enough, and I am not sure Salt Lake City is far enough from BYU to justify holding a regional EFY at the University of Utah institue. Also, Institute Buildings generally operate at least some over the summer, so they are not actually open spaces. EFY thrives on universities with much lower summer enrollment. 

Virtually all stake youth conferences involve some use of non-Church owned space, although I have attended some where most of the time was spent at the stake center. 

Church sports programs and stake conferences I know of cases where both were held at non-Church owned locations, involving some level of rent. Stake conference is in the long term the one that makes most sense to rent space for. Although with the advent of the internet interconnecting multiple buildings in the stake seems to probably be headed to what will be done all the time.

A few locations, such as Salt Lake City, Bountiful and Provo in Utah, and Oakland, California with the inter-stake center adjacent to the Temple, have a situation where building a facility large enough to house a stake conference for the current sized stakes with at times 5,000 members, and attendance hopefully going over 3,000 makes sense. 

In other places a facility of that size clearly is not a reasonably investment, since it will not be used very much, so either you chose multi-site, multi-session, have more people than available seating, or rent a facility. While the last has many pluses, from what I know and have been told there are drawbacks. Generally when you do the whole process in house and with known systems, the technology failure level is lower, although I once was at a conference in a stake center where the sound system to the cultural hall was not working, and people there could not hear the speaker.