At the top of the food chain in Mormonism are the Mormon Apostles. You can see their pictures at
http://www.lds.org/media2/resources/photos/0,5722,711-1-381,FF.html and there are 15 of them. The faithful members of the Church recognize these men as prophets, seers and revelators and God's official spokesmen on the earth. The only one of them authorized to speak on behalf of the whole Church is the President of the Church who is the only one is generally regarded as the "Prophet". The system is based on seniority so when the President of the Church dies automatically the senior Apostle becomes the head of the Church (well they say Christ is the head of the Church). This is why the Mormon Church President is usually a very old man. On March 28, 1975 Church President #12 Spencer W. Kimball turned 80 and ever since then the Church President has been older than 80. The last President of the Church to die was Howard Hunter in March 1995 and the senior Apostle Gordon Hinckley (ordained an Apostle in 1961 and born in 1910) was then ordained by the rest of the Apostles to be Church President and he selected the #2 Apostle Thomas Monson as a Counselor and another Apostle James Faust as the 2nd Counselor. This left 11 Apostles in the Quorum of the Twelve and at the next Church General Conference (held every 6 months in April and October) the President of the Church announced the call of an additional Apostle named Henry Eyring. If Henry Eyring outlives all of the other 14 Apostles then he'll become President of the Church unless he gets excommunicated for getting caught for adultery, apostasy or something like that.
Below the Apostles are two groups of authorities. (1) The Presiding Bishopric which is 3 men who oversee the general church departments for non-spiritual matters and all the Church's billions of dollars of investments. (2) The Presidency of the Seventies which is 7 men who oversee certain spiritual matter committees and the 29 worldwide area presidency offices which manage the Church operations on a regional basis. Each area is presided over by 3 full-time members of the Seventy who then preside over about 5-10 Seventies who are part-time volunteers and oftentime well-respected business leaders. Most of the part-time Seventies are multimillionares and I know that at least one of them is a billionare.
Locally the Church is organized in congregations called Wards (250+ members) and Branches (under 250 members). A group of 6-12 Wards/Branches are organized into what is know as Stakes. Wards and Stakes are each presided over by 3 part-time volunteers known as Stake Presidencies (for Stakes), Bishoprics (for Wards) and Branch Presidencies (for Branches). Throughout the world there are about 2500 Stakes and each Stake usually has about 3000-4000 members.
In Utah where about 12% of the 11 million members live about 60-70% of the members attend at least one meeting a month. Outside Utah it varies from 10-50% since there is alot less social pressure. But nobody knows for sure outside the top hierarchy what the numbers are because the Church refuses to publish these figures. However some leaks have occurred but they generally aren't tolerated and do result in excommunication to any Church employee who would dare leak such sacred data. Nobody outside the top hierarchy gets any financial numbers either since the Brethren consider it to be too sacred and members need to be more worried about obeying the prophets, paying tithing, doing missionary work, etc.
Obeying leaders is an important part of the Mormon psychic. They are God's representatives PERIOD. Anyone who questions this is obviously not living the commandments and an apostate so they can't see straight anyway. Mormons love to make fun of apostates but in specific they really feel sorry for loved ones who apostasize and they rarely give up on them.
The typical man who gets to be a Mormon Apostle is one who is about 55 to 65 years old and has proven throughout his lifetime that he is completely dedicated to the cause, he's happily married, has good people skills, has good managerial skills, was successful in his career, served a mission, had several children and they are all active in the Church, had decent health, served well with distinction in various Church callings up the food chain such as Bishop, Stake President, Mission President, Seventy/Area President and usually as a member of the Presidency of the Seventy or Presiding Bishopric. Then this man lives another 20-40 years and travels around the world with his wife all the time speaking at weekly firesides where 2000-10000 attend and they also get to meet lots of VIPs and get lots of respect everywhere. They also meet each Thursday morning in the Mormon Salt Lake temple with the other 14 Apostles to plan long-term Church policy and give general guidance to the Presiding Bishopric and Presidency of the Seventy who do the actual day-to-day operations of all the Church functions. We're told that the decisions of the Apostles are always unaminous but since their meetings are held in secret we can't be sure how unaminous it really is but no Apostle in his right mind would risk his position, perks and prestige by denying this myth and all the other myths so the aura of authority continues to perpetuate.
Members are told that if they ever have specific doctrinal or historical issues with the Church that they should go see their local leaders. The local leaders aren't given any guidance on the difficult issues from the Apostles except to tell the members to read the scriptures (by seeking the spirit -- not with critical thinking) and pray. The idea is that members who have issues really have some deep hidden sin or just are plainly rebelling against God because they don't have humility. When I shared my concerns with my Stake President his response was that I needed to have more faith, pray and seek the Spirit and then everything would be just fine.
Whenever a member is apostate the disciplinary councils are held by the Bishopric and sometimes by the Stake Presidency. The Seventies and Apostles never do the dirty work in these cases. They seem to try very hard to maintain the image of respectability and admiration for the members.
The biggest myth of all is that the Apostles talk to God face-to-face. In reality they receive "revelation" by good feelings in their heart and avoid any statements that could be interpreted as being official doctrine. So the whole religion is slowly getting more confusing all the time to the true believers.