Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
In my town, there is a small gathering on campus supported by LSM, and another small gathering supported by Cleveland at the old meeting hall. Both added together is still just a fraction of what the church was once like.
At the recent regional conference in Cleveland, TItus Chu publicly told the local elders to "sell the meeting hall" since it is too expensive to maintain by the few remaining saints.
That's often how local decisions were made in the LC's. The big boss would spring it on us publicly. There really was nothing called "local elders deciding before the Lord." Never, because that would be "independent decisions, without fellowship."
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When I was in college, there was a college meeting that I was attending for a number of years that progressively got smaller and smaller. When I first started going, there were maybe 40 or so attending on a regular basis, and eventually, it got down to where there were only a few including myself who were attending regularly. Maybe the initial size was too large for a home meeting, but the real issue was that so many had just 'disappeared' and there was really no explanation for why that had happened.
It got to the point of just being completely discouraging to be a part of that meeting, so eventually I stopped attending as well. I don't know if the numbers have since improved or not, but considering there was no desire to 'fix' anything or to plug the massive leakage, I would expect the same trend of decline to still be occurring.
As I see it, that is the problem that the LC faces. They are unwilling to do what needs to be done to retain members, and thus there is a gradual decline over time. Of course, it may not appear so to the average LC member, because there is so much activity going on that it can hide the real situation. But just look at what the LC once was, and where it is now. Sure they can claim that they have more churches or even more membership, but the overall growth is next to nothing, and is no comparison to the initial growth that the LC experienced.