Sorry never a JW, always Mormon. My LDS life was amazingly good in most cases. It just wasn't authentic. I got tired of acting.
Posts by Qcmbr
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85Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.
by Qcmbr inever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.
to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.
you can only paint sh*t so many ways.
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85
Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.
by Qcmbr inever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.
to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.
you can only paint sh*t so many ways.
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Qcmbr
This is my attempt to extrapolate some useful figures. Hope it helps!
Dang - wrong scale on last graph. buggerbuggerbugger.
Also no exact idea why church baptism rate / growth is not clearly linked. Assume that baptism doesn't include baptising children of record (born ins) and so the actual baptismal rate / membership loss through death and resignation is masked. Shrugs.
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85
Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.
by Qcmbr inever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.
to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.
you can only paint sh*t so many ways.
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Qcmbr
Yadda , I've put out some feelers to see if any of the other ex-mo people in the fb group have access to something concrete but so far nothing. It's very difficult to come up with concrete stats from the outside and also at the church level you only have local figures and you need to be a stake clerk to know the next level up and so on so fewer and fewer people have the real picture. What I will do is get a picture of the stage one chapel that was destined to be a stake centre (stage three expanded building) and show the sold land. I also had a look to see if I could point out the drop in UK tithing according to the charitable donations reports but something very screwy is going on there as 2011 shows an unusual leap in donations which I'll see if I can find an explanation for ( hint it isn't the members paying more in the middle of a recession .)
Ok wasn't too hard, increased donations from parent company(Utah) , lumping in missionary donations and support costs ( missionaries get donations from home churches), whopping land donation (read moving internal assets around possibly for tax purposes). I'll do a better analysis of actual member contributions and graph it.
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85
Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.
by Qcmbr inever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.
to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.
you can only paint sh*t so many ways.
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Qcmbr
When I was active the definition was attending once a quarter - so 4 visits a year though active members will tend to go every week. Our church (ward) had over 300 members on the list at one stage ( I was the clerk )and ,at it's peak,50% were active. With a handful of exceptions everyone baptised while I was active left pretty quickly and became 'less active'. I handed my resignation notice in two weeks ago (my friend was released as Bishop and I didn't want him to have to process it) but I found some interesting hearsay that says my name will still be counted in official figures , I of course have no way of checking but it would help explain continued reported growth figures when the evidence on the ground is plain to see. Also I read that no Stakes ( groups of churches in a local area ) have been created due to expansion since 1996 in the uk, take that with a pinch of salt for now though I haven't verified it.
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What does your screen name/avatar mean and what does it stand for
by BU2B inand why did you choose it?
if you have a avatar, what is it and why did you pick it?.
ok ill start.
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Qcmbr
The cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a widely cultivated plant in the gourd family Cucurbitaceae. It is a creeping vine which bears cylindrical edible fruit when ripe. There are three main varieties of cucumber: "slicing", "pickling", and "burpless". Within these varieties, several different cultivars have emerged. The cucumber is originally from Indian subcontinent but is now grown on most continents.
Who knew?!
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85
Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.
by Qcmbr inever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.
to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.
you can only paint sh*t so many ways.
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Qcmbr
The LDS challenge is that they have pushed the mantra of embracing all truth so much that they can't continually ignore the skeletons in their own closet. There have been a wave of resignations in the last two years that have rocked the leadership and forced them to act. There is even some talk of private meetings between some high level leaders and the some vocal dissidents. It's very interesting to watch and has the feel of a building that's had it's foundations hacked away that will fall in a big heap, a delicious but scary anticipation. Just this weekend we had a lovely evening with friends who casually dropped into the conversation that neither of them had been to church for 7 months. These people who are leaving are the core members, the second and third generation families who just a few years ago had been solid members. Of course it's all because I left hehe. Seriously though this is something amazing and many members are buzzing with talk about what's happening.
If I hear of anything else I'll let you know. The initial reports back from the firesides has been that they aren't enough to tempt waverers back, some faithful members are glad that issues are being confronted and a good wedge of the congregation are hearing things they never knew.
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25
Men...what do you look for in a woman?
by LouBelle inso we had the woman version.
let it rip guys - what type of woman makes you just want to get her know her better - the one that makes you take that risk and walk on over to start a conversation?.
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Qcmbr
Inner self confidence mixed with outrageous flirtation. I want someone who can live life without me as an emotional crutch who I can love as a partner not a backpack. Someone who smiles first , laughs second and crys when she's jammed her hand in a door not when some person may or may not have looked at her funny. Pretty much my wife.
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85
Mormons getting hollowed out: The tipping point has occurred.
by Qcmbr inever since mitt romney turned the spotlight on the lds church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.. the lds core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the west but it has actively reversed.
to their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task.
you can only paint sh*t so many ways.
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Qcmbr
Ever since Mitt Romney turned the spotlight on the LDS church a growing tsunami of disaffection has been accelerated and brought to a head.
The LDS core faithful members are leaving in increasing numbers such that growth has not simply stagnated in the West but it has actively reversed. To their credit the church is responding aggressively but not only is it too late, it is an impossible task. You can only paint sh*t so many ways. These are the red flags:
1 - Vast advertising campaign highlighting normality of church members and emphasising role of women.
2 - New outreach to gay community including re-writing key homophobic speeches to lessen their edge. New website showing changing attitudes. Proposition 8 involvment has been a lighting rod for disaffection.
3 - Growing NOM community (New Order Mormons, cafeteria members who don't believe some or all doctrines but remain for cultural, personal or family reasons).
4 - UK, there are a series of fireside occuring to address the hard issues, a couple are touring the church doing a QandA style presentation with no restrictions on questions. This also involves a public agreement that mistakes have been made by prophets.
5 - Almost complete cessation of UK building program (in my area land allocated for chapel expansion has been sold off to developers).
6 - Facebook has allowed lots of anonymous questions (I've had 6 separate , originally TBM. people contact me privately from an active ward that used to be 150+ and has now fallen to 70+ within 5 years.)
7 - Within the church their are signs of subtle rebellion (LDS women organised a pantsuit day to challenge enforced skirt and dress wearing attitudes.)
10 years and the LDS flame will be flickering out. imo.
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207
Ripping a persons faith away, a heavy responsibility?
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207
Ripping a persons faith away, a heavy responsibility?
by Seraphim23 in[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng /> </o:officedocumentsettings> </xml><![endif].
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Qcmbr
When someone posts an opinion I try and interpret what and why they are saying it. Communication is a a two person job. I bring my knowledge and skills to the table as does the person sending the message. When someone sends a message to me and asks me to seriously consider the possibility of something both implausible and physically impossible , with no evidence beyond their own subjective emotions and thoughts , and absolutely refuses to consider any interpretation other than that they are right , I consider them to be acting in a ridiculous fashion. It would be rude of me and a dereliction of my own integrity to treat their personal fantasy world as true and agree to pretend that I saw merit and reality in their imagination. Instead , especially when they opine on a subject where I have some evidence based information I try to disabuse them of their evidence lite foundation and offer something better. If they stonewall then I consider that the conversation may be ripe for ridicule for the dual purpose of hoping to expose a fundamental weakness in their argument that their rational mind has failed to process and also as a general signalling method to anyone else listening that this conversation is not based on facts and to discuss it as such is farcical.
In this information age where a wealth of facts and researched information is available ,with just a little effort, our personal ignorance on a subject is a matter of choice. It wasn't until I owned this responsibility and took it back from my god, my church and my believing peers that I could fully realise that faith based belief was making me make religious, half-baked, rather silly , public assertions which I defended not because I was interested in the actual truth ( that requires an attitude of being swayed by facts) but simply because I was interested ( when I really thought about it) in converting myself and those around me into worshippers of my god. It took , amongst other things, being shown how ridiculous my then beliefs were and being soundly thrashed in some heated debates to wake me up to the fact that no god was going to step in and give me any real info to help me out regarding global floods or some such myth and that my late night, post humiliation prayers were not beaming out of my head into some magic world.
Pretending to know something and demanding that it be respected or privileged by your peers is at once manipulative and arrogant. Its intellectual bullying and churches and faiths have been doing it for years.IMO.
