Why shut down a Ward?

[Guest mormonmusic]

Just wondering if anyone can shed light on something. There was a Ward that was dissolved some time ago, and absorbed with another Ward in a prior Stake I lived in.

Why might the Stake dissolve a Ward? In this case, there was no apparent lack of priesthood to fill major callings -- one HPGL, one EQ President with a counselor, enough for a YM Pres and Counselor, and a full Bishopric. Also, the Ward wasn't experiencing any mass disobedience or righteousness problems from what I've been told. The Bishop was still happy in his calling, although he'd been in the calling for 10 years.

Do you know of other reasons they would shut down a Ward and let it be absorbed with another?

[Suzie]

Usually, due to poor attendance on Sundays.

[Snow]

I'm pretty sure it is due to global warming - everybody knows that.

[MisterT]

Cost/benefit analysis; could the funds of the church be better spent by reducing the number of buildings and support staff, and still meet the spiritual needs of the paritioners?

[NeuroTypical]

A ward needs around 250-ish or so active members to be fully functional. (I forget the exact number, but it's somewhere in that area.) If enough active members go inactive or move away, there's just not enough warm bodies to keep enough nursery workers and elder's quorums and clerks and librarians and young womens and all the rest. And you end up with Bishops in the role for 10 years and other such undesirable things.

It happens. Some areas shrink, others grow. The church as a whole continues to grow.

[Wingnut]

I know of a ward that should be shut down due to mass apostasy.

[Mahone]

Cost/benefit analysis; could the funds of the church be better spent by reducing the number of buildings and support staff, and still meet the spiritual needs of the paritioners?

Agreed. The church is run in very similar ways to a business - for obvious reasons it has to be. If money needs to be saved, this is one way of doing it. A good deal of the church office departments that were up until recently in the UK, relocated to Germany. The only reason I can see behind it is money.

[FunkyTown]

I know of a ward that should be shut down due to mass apostasy.

You can't say that and then not follow it up with details!

Although you could say, 'Yeah. The one I'm in. I really should stop leading people astray.' and that would be acceptable.

[Jamie123]

I'm pretty sure it is due to global warming.

Which is in turn due to a shortage of pirates. Do you know that in 1820 there were over 35,000 pirates on the high seas, and the global average temperature was only 14.25C? By 1980 the number of pirates had dropped to around 400, and global temperatures were approaching 15.5C!

[MarginOfError]

A ward needs around 250-ish or so active members to be fully functional. (I forget the exact number, but it's somewhere in that area.) If enough active members go inactive or move away, there's just not enough warm bodies to keep enough nursery workers and elder's quorums and clerks and librarians and young womens and all the rest. And you end up with Bishops in the role for 10 years and other such undesirable things.

It happens. Some areas shrink, others grow. The church as a whole continues to grow.

It's funny that you say that, because I personally can't stand wards that large. But then again, I've always preferred branches.

To go by the handbooks, a fully staffed ward requires 18 - 20 active Melchizedek Priesthood holders. This doesn't account for having enough additional Melchizedek Priesthood holders to staff a stake, and doesn't include callings outside of presidencies.

When we were trying to build the stake in Kyiv, we were given guidelines to draw the ward boundaries such that there would be about 30 Melchizedek Priesthood holders in each proposed ward.

[Guest mysticmorini]

my ward (yes its a ward) has a total of about 60-90 active members and we are doing ok, well except that i have 3 callings!

[NeuroTypical]

To go by the handbooks, a fully staffed ward requires 18 - 20 active Melchizedek Priesthood holders.

The more I think about it, I'm probably way high in my earlier estimate of how many active members you need.

I do know that we start thinking about splitting wards when we push 300+. That number I can remember, because it's happened 3-4 times to me here in Colorado. One guy has lived in the same house for 10 years and been in 5 different wards in 2 different stakes because the borders keep changing on him.

LM

[Blackmarch]

Just wondering if anyone can shed light on something. There was a Ward that was dissolved some time ago, and absorbed with another Ward in a prior Stake I lived in.

Why might the Stake dissolve a Ward? In this case, there was no apparent lack of priesthood to fill major callings -- one HPGL, one EQ President with a counselor, enough for a YM Pres and Counselor, and a full Bishopric. Also, the Ward wasn't experiencing any mass disobedience or righteousness problems from what I've been told. The Bishop was still happy in his calling, although he'd been in the calling for 10 years.

Do you know of other reasons they would shut down a Ward and let it be absorbed with another?

Probably because there isn't enough attendance overall to be worth the cost, unless there was some special reason.

The church in generall is very frugal about how it spends it's resources... and if there isn't a clear need for something (in this case a specific ward), it usually gets rid of it

[MarginOfError]

Probably because there isn't enough attendance overall to be worth the cost, unless there was some special reason.

The church in generall is very frugal about how it spends it's resources... and if there isn't a clear need for something (in this case a specific ward), it usually gets rid of it

I'm not sure where this comes into play, really. The creation and elimination of wards is something that is initiated by the stake. So you could have one stake eliminating wards that have attendance lower than 150 and another splitting a ward with 250 attending into two 125 wards.

There are other things to consider as well. For instance, you could have a strong ward with high attendance and lots of Melchizedek Priesthood holders, and it might be desirable to disband that ward and send these members to two or three surrounding wards that are struggling to fill leadership positions.

And attendance really isn't everything when defining and building units. For instance, when the application to create my stake was processed, the attendance was technically too low just qualify for a stake. However, an exception was made because of the abnormally high percentage of Melchizedek Priesthood holders that were attending and paying a full tithe.

While monetary issues certainly do play a part, if the Church feels that creating a new ward or disbanding an existing ward will provide better spiritual progression for the saints in those areas, the Church is generally willing to pony up the funds to make it happen.

[NeuroTypical]

Another thing that enters into play, is Christ's opinion. I've watched it two or three times as an 'insider' - the Stake (or stakes) gathers the data, pours over maps, looks at long-range building planning needs, and creates a new set of boudaries. Then they send the plan to SLC, and it always comes back with a few changes. Sometimes these changes don't make sense to the people who put together the plan.

(I put insider in quotes, because I was an executive seceretary for two changes, and knew the Stake exec sec for a third - and he told me stuff before the bishops even knew.)

LM

[Traveler]

Wards and boundaries are usually left up to the discretion of the Stake presidency. Absorbing a ward is likely the result of lack of tithing and temple worthiness; which is not generally available to members.

The Traveler

[Moksha]

When you have a brand new subdivision in Utah, you get alot of young married couples. As they grow old, the children leave. The ward gets much smaller. The question here is whether to maintain the ward for a future generation of Mormon home dwellers or to combine wards for the efficiency of numbers.