The New England LDS Canary

The New England LDS Canary


People are overwhelmed with all the upheaval in the world today. All the uncertainty with daily struggles in life, of keeping food on the table and a roof overhead in a slow economy left over from the recession. New England is a Canary in the Coal Mine for the Mormon Church. We need to change or Wards will continue to shrink and be absorbed by other Wards, making already long distances even longer. What can we do to lighten peoples burdens, but also address concerns and retain members in New England?

There is an interesting article about Millennial's and burnout. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work The burnout that millennial's feel has a lot to do with how the economy has changed since the recession, knowing that they don't have the stability that their parents had, coupled with the constant barrage of never ending virtual to do lists and e-mail reminders of things they should be doing but just don't have time for. I know that feeling. That is one thing that is hard about being Bishop, having to ask members to do hard things like Sacrament talks and teach and fulfill callings. That is how the church runs, all on volunteer work (Guided by the Spirit). People seam to have less and less energy to devote. But I think Salt Lake realizes that and are beginning to implement ways of addressing some of these issues.

Some of these changes from Salt Lake have been helpful. The most recent change, going to two hour services from three, has given me a little more hope to keep going. The change coming of ending the use of Boy Scouts will also take a load off, but we are loosing a lot of resources with the break up.

At first I was upset that the Church was ending the 100 plus year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America. I put a lot of time and effort in building the program up. But you could see the writing was on the wall. It was just too much to keep it going. The Boy Scouts are going through changes too, and some of them mirror changes being made in the Church, but they are addressing issues at a different pace. The Boy Scouts allowing girls to join Scouting and changing the name of the program from Boy Scouts to "Scouts" is a big change. It seams to be something that many members of the church were not ready for. Yet the Church may be doing something similar within their own programs. We will find out more in 2020 when the new Young Men's and Young Women's programs are introduced.

Before the announcement of the separation came out I was able to implement some changes through the Boy Scout program that I felt were important. For example, the emphasis on being good stewards of the Earth. The new Boy Scouts manuals focus more on being environmentally conscious, leaving nature the way you find it, recycling, reducing waste, and taking care of the planet. I was able to implement recycling to some degree within our building through the Cub Scouting program. Hopefully we can keep that going. There are a lot of things I don't like about the Boy Scout Program, like how hard it is to keep a troop running. I am glad to see that part go.

The Church has bean simplifying programs to help relieve some of the burdens placed on local leaders. But is it enough to help keep things going in the Northeast United States Area? Some of the streamlining actually makes it harder for the Northeast. We don't have a lot of members, relatively speaking, which means we don't have access to resources like the west does. We only have one Bishop's Store house for all of New England. We will be loosing the Hill Cumorah Pageant which is one of the major draws for Latter-Day Saints to come East. We don't get the same funding like places over seas where the Church is growing, like in Latin America and places in Africa. It's a problem of retention. In places like Denmark, the Church is growing. They don't have any more convert baptisms than we do, but they retain their 2nd and 3rd generations. But here many young members go out west for school, and then stay out west where there seams to be more opportunity and support. How de we retain our young members? How can we make it worth their while to stay? By helping them feel welcome, and find answers and solutions to their burnout.