A few years ago, the LDS Church switched from 3 hour church to 2 hour church. Is that helpful or hurtful to retention of members? Scott Vance weighs in, and we’ll also discuss the loss of Church pageants and other activities. Check out our conversation…
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Gospel Tangents
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3 to 2 Hour Church/Pageants
GT 00:30 Is two-hour church a good thing or a bad thing?
Scott 00:35 In terms of retention? I’m skeptical. I mean, you even see this in the 1980s. In fact, the Church published some of the data on this in the 1980s, when they went from the essentially all day church meetings and breaks in between.
GT 00:48 And primary in the middle of the week.
Scott 00:50 Yes, and all that to the three-hour block on Sunday. The Church published an article in the Ensign saying that their sociologists researched it, and these were the positive effects, and these were the negative effects. And the negative effects were that single members and people who traveled further missed the communion that they felt at church on Sunday when they had the shorter block meetings. So, that’s something that they noticed even back when they went to the three-hour block.
GT 01:13 That was like, 1980, I think.
Scott 01:15 It’s 1980. Yeah, 33 years ago, roughly.
GT 01:18 Okay, so back then they noticed? Well, I guess it wasn’t disaffiliation, because they were still growing.
Scott 01:25 Sure.
GT 01:26 So, how do you explain that? There was less community?
Scott 01:32 I think the level of community dropped slightly at that point. But there weren’t the other social factors, which were pushing as hard. After the year 2000, you get a lot of factors. There’s obviously the internet, which, in terms of researching historical topics–and whatever you can say, the Internet has had a negative effect on the LDS Church, perhaps. But I think the larger effect is just the loss of community when people spend more time online. Because you’re not with the group of people, therefore you feel less affiliation with the group. And I could be totally making this up. But that’s my impression. {both chuckling}
GT 02:12 All right. So if the brethren came to you and said, should we reinstate three-hour church, you would say…
Scott 02:21 I would say, {heavy sigh} what to do? That’s a tricky one. I do think there’s this continuity when they go between Sunday School one week, and the other classes the next week, and I think that’s negative. I would say that if they want to be successful, they should have a constant program, the same program every week. Whether that means shortening the classes or getting rid of one of them, I don’t know.
GT 02:54 Half-hour Sunday school, half-hour priesthood?
Scott 02:56 Or you skip Sunday school entirely. And you do priesthood and Relief Society, and you combine the Sunday school curriculum into the priesthood, for instance.
GT 03:05 So you have a Sunday school lesson in priesthood?
Scott 03:07 Yeah.
GT 03:08 Okay.
Scott 03:09 For instance–I don’t know the answer there.
GT 03:13 But what about, like, road shows and basketball tournaments and things like that?
Scott 03:17 I think that’d be a huge plus for the Church. I think that the Church has a number of talented, amazingly talented people, which they saw, when they asked for submissions to the hymnal. They got so many more than they were ever prepared to, and it cost them years of delay. But it’s because the members care and they’re talented, and they want to help.
GT 03:37 I have to say something. I know, with correlation, they want to make the hymns simple, so that anybody can play them or that sort of thing. I attended a Bickertonite service with Steve Pynakker in Florida back in January. And that piano player was freaking amazing. They would say, ‘play this hymn.’ And it was jazzy and fun. And I was like, wow! This guy can really play. And it sounds like, I’ve been told, I’ve only been to on, so I can’t say. But it sounds like a lot of these branches of the Bickertonite Church have these amazing piano players. I think it really adds something to a meeting when you’ve just got this really rousing music. I think it’s a mistake, I mean, I can understand the simplicity. And if you don’t have a piano player, it’s a great idea. But if you do, why not take advantage of that to increase the spirit? I think it’s great.
Scott 04:43 Certainly, I think that would be good. You do have a lot of strong congregations who have that person who can play like that.
Scott 04:50 The trick for the Church in the last decade or so, I would say, is that they’re attached to the growth narrative, which means they want to exhibit positive growth. And part of the way you do that is by not closing congregations. Closing congregations is scary in a couple of ways. But, one way is, you look like you’re shrinking. The other way that it’s scary is now people have to maybe commute two hours instead of one hour to church. So, in areas where the church is weak, that’s hard for people.
GT 05:19 Yeah.
Scott 05:20 So, because of that, in certain areas, you have very small congregations. And when you have small congregations, this…
GT 05:25 Gets harder to get a good piano player.
Scott 05:27 Yeah. So, they really need to have a variety of hymns with a variety of skill levels so that they can do both.
GT 05:32 Yeah. So decorrelate? Is that what you’re saying?
Scott 05:38 Yeah, I think they need more flavors. I think they need to accept more flavors in the sphere of the church and do some local tailoring. I’ve spoken to some insiders, at some point, who gave me an indication that the Church was thinking about moving in that direction. We’ll see. But I think that would be a smart move.
GT 05:55 Yeah. Pageants. President Nelson has shut down the Manti Pageant, the Hill Cumorah Pageant.
Scott 06:01 Yes.
GT 06:02 What do you think about that?
Scott 06:04 The pageants were problematic in certain ways. It was fun, because there was the history, and it was fun for members and families to go perform in these pageants and that increased engagement. That was great. Certain pageants had some latent racism and some other issues that really needed to be addressed. So, at a minimum, they needed to rewrite the pageants.
GT 06:26 Okay.
Scott 06:27 Should they still do pageants? I think that it would be wise to have two to five pageants throughout the Church. If I was in charge of the Church, which I never will be, {both laughing} I would put one in Cardston. I would have one in Manti. I would have one in the Salt Lake vicinity, maybe slightly outside, so that people can go outside the city a little bit.
GT 06:49 I know Manti, it’s probably an hour and a half from my house. We hadn’t been for a long time. And then, of course, COVID killed it. But, it was a big economic driver. Manti is a very small town. We had the dinner at the local stake center, and it was good food.
Scott 07:08 Yeah.
GT 07:08 And the whole town, it was an economic boost to them. Because you had people from everywhere coming, including the anti-Mormons. I mean, I thought it was funny talking to Benjamin Shaffer from Christ’s Church. They’re a polygamous group. He said they would send their missionaries to go fight with the anti-Mormons so that the Mormons could walk by in peace.
Scott 07:34 Good for them. That sounds fair.
GT 07:38 I thought that was funny. And I would still, I mean, I’m not much of a camper. But still, just the chance to go to Manti, I mean, it’s a special thing. And Clarkston had the Martin Harris Pageant.
Scott 07:51 Yeah.
GT 07:52 They had just gotten Church funding, because they were independent before that, which kind of relates back to your thing. Then the Church, gave them all a bunch of money and then took it all away.
Scott 08:04 Yeah, I don’t think it was a smart strategy. But that’s just me looking from the outside. I think that the pageant…
GT 08:10 Not that you’re counseling the Brethren or anything?
Scott 08:12 Well see, I’m allowed to, because I’m actually not a member at this point. {both laughing} So, they’re allowed to ignore my counsel, and at least in theory, they can’t excommunicate me because what are you going to do? I don’t know.
GT 08:26 It’s too late. They missed their chance. {both laughing}
Scott 08:28 Yep.
GT 08:31 All right. So go ahead and we’ll jump back into your presentation here.
Scott 08:36 Alright. Church growth, we talked about. The other point to bring up is that there are certain, I call them markets because this is an official conference. But let’s call them certain countries where the Church does better financially than other countries. It’s no secret that tithing income in the United States and Canada is very high, and it’s maybe very low in some African nations. My understanding from my mission president way back in the day, was that the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and Japan were the countries where the Church had a net positive income from tithing, meaning they brought in more from tithing than they spend on Church buildings, and all other Church activities. And then every other country in the world, which is a lot of countries, the Church is actually sending in money from Salt Lake City to build the local buildings and to keep things floating. So, from that perspective, it’s not surprising that there was a statement in 2005, where President Hinckley, evidently, in a conference for leaders only, said that the reason why we need to have more missionaries in North America, in the United States, is because there’s greater return on investment. If you make a convert there, then they’re going to pay more tithing and they’re going to help grow the Church as opposed to a convert in Africa, who’s maybe not going to pay any tithing, but you still have to build the church building and so that’s a negative cash flow. So, at least historically, it’s my impression that the Church has concentrated proselytizing efforts, missionaries, in markets where it matters. There’s lots of businessmen in the Church and in Church hierarchy, and they’re smart people. And so, I mean, that’s a logical course of action.
GT 10:20 Okay.
Scott 10:22 So, if these markets or countries or whatever show negative growth, then that’s a bigger deal for the Church, than if somebody in Africa should leave the Church, just economically, dollars and cents. That’s my first argument. The next is that the loss of youth is really troubling for Church leadership. Because if you lose the young people, then that’s the next generation of the Church. And they’ve said this in conferences, they care a lot about the youth. And I think that care is genuine. So, if the youth are leaving, that’s a big concern. There was a leaked video from 2012, which indicated that perhaps as many as 70% of the youth worldwide, were leaving the Church.
GT 11:06 Seventy percent? Wow, that’s really high.
Scott 11:09 Yeah, and I don’t know what the actual number is. I don’t know if it’s 50, 70, or whatever. But 70 was the impression I got from that video. And Jana Reess has quoted that as well. And if that’s the case, then this is a big problem. This is a problem we’re going to try to fix.
GT 11:24 I mean, let’s look at that. I know, I talked to John Dehlin, a year or two ago. And when he worked for the Church, he said that activity rates were 30%. So maybe it shouldn’t be surprising. If activity rates are 30%, we would expect 70% of the youth to leave. Right?
Scott 11:46 Not quite. Yes, Jana Riess and others have pointed out this in previous generations, in the 1980s, it wasn’t 70%. It was more like 30 to 50%.
GT 11:55 Okay.
Scott 11:57 It seems to have gone up since the year 2000, if I’m reading the data correctly. Plus, the other thing is the barrier to entry for the LDS Church is very low. If you want to get baptized, “we’ll do it this Sunday. Walk right in. Step right up.” right? Whereas, if you want to get baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness, you’ve got to study for two years and pass the test. So, a very different paradigm there. And because of that, at least at one point, I want to say that the one-year retention rate, that 67% of new converts left within one year.
GT 12:35 That wouldn’t surprise me.
Scott 12:36 So, two-thirds of people coming in the door walk right out within a year. And if that’s the case, you’re going to have to do better than 70% in terms of youth retention, if you want to maintain a 35% activity rate.
GT 12:46 Okay. That’s interesting.
Scott 12:49 Yeah, so that’s the numbers as I understand them. So, then I launch into these partner organizations, which I’ve already talked a little bit about. We have the More Good Foundation, Book of Mormon Central, FAIR, obviously, the Temple & Observatory Group, which people may not be familiar with.
GT 13:04 Right.
Scott 13:06 Faith Matters Foundation.
GT 13:09 See, I didn’t realize they were a Church organization, as well.
Scott 13:13 And I’m not positive that they are.
GT 13:15 Okay.
Scott 13:15 I have the least amount of evidence for that organization. But there are some signs which indicate that may be the case.
GT 13:22 Okay.
Scott 13:24 The Widtsoe Foundation. There’s some pretty clear indications there and the Interpreter Magazine.
GT 13:31 The Interpreter is another one that boggles my mind. I don’t know if we should jump into that now or later. What do you prefer?
Scott 13:37 It’s up to you.
GT 13:42 Let’s go there.
Scott 13:43 All right.
GT 13:45 Because The Interpreter really started as a foundation called FARMS, Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. Back when you could say Mormon, it wasn’t verboten. I think it was 1980. Does that sound right to you?
Scott 13:58 That is correct. Yeah. Jack Welch.
GT 14:00 Why don’t you tell more about FARMS?
Scott 14:03 FARMS was started by Jack Welch or John Welch, he has two names. I think he goes by Jack.
GT 14:10 He goes by both, yeah.
Scott 14:12 And it was basically the apologetics organization for the Church. It was unofficial, at first. It was a side project, I believe, of BYU professors and like-minded individuals. I want to say in 1997, it became part of BYU. It became officially under the BYU umbrella. And it continued until 2012, in one form or another, although by 2006, I believe, maybe the Maxwell Institute had started up and they had started transitioning away from FARMS.
GT 14:45 And they just basically changed names from FARMS to the Neal A. Maxwell Institute.
Scott 14:50 That’s my understanding, but they also changed the mission and they also hired some new folks and switched leadership in 2012. And some people would consider 2012, when there was a hard shift in the organization. Daniel Peterson was somewhat controversial for his charismatic attacks on those who were not positive towards the Church’s message. He said a lot of things. From his perspective, he’s defending the faith. Right? And he’s defending it very strongly. But some of the things he said may have been offensive. There’s the classic incident with Brent Metcalfe, who we’ve talked about in this program. You may have even interviewed him.
GT 15:38 I have not interviewed Brent Metcalfe.
Scott 15:39 You need to!
GT 15:40 I do need to.
Scott 15:41 Yeah. But basically, I believe it was Daniel Peterson. it may have been somebody else at FARMS, but they wrote an article about some random topic, but they chose the first letter of every word in this paragraph so that if you took the first letter out, it would say Brent Metcalf is a butthole or something like that.
GT 16:01 Butthead, I think it was.
Scott 16:02 Maybe it was butthead, Thank you. So, little things like that. And they went to publication and then somebody realized this and then I believe they stopped publication. They republished that issue or something.
GT 16:14 Oh.
Scott 16:15 If I’m remembering correctly, anyway. Bottom line, Mormons are known for their niceness. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are known for their niceness. {Scott chuckling} And this organization was not nice.
GT 16:28 It was a very, they did a lot of ad hominem attacks.
Scott 16:31 Yeah.
GT 16:31 Attack the person, not the argument.
Scott 16:33 Yes, absolutely.
GT 16:34 And so that’s what I find so interesting. So, FARMS becomes Neal A Maxwell.
Scott 16:41 Yeah.
GT 16:42 They’re supposed to be more pastoral, less combative.
Scott 16:46 Yeah.
GT 16:47 And so Daniel Peterson gets kicked out, basically.
GT 16:55 And [he] restarts the organization, this time as The Interpreter Foundation.
Scott 16:58 Sure. Yeah.
Scott 17:01 Yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s the same organization. So, The Interpreter, it’s a magazine. It’s a monthly. I don’t even know if it’s monthly, but it’s an online magazine. They publish articles. These are articles defending the faith. But there are also articles of curiosity, like what did the Urim and Thummim look like? [They publish] Mormon-related research, maybe not to the academic level of the BYU publications. So a lot more—what do we want to call these?
GT 17:34 Apologetic?
Scott 17:35 No, I was going to say, member scholars, who maybe don’t have the academic credentials, or writing. [It’s] for these people like me, who want to be helpful and want to contribute, but maybe don’t have the academic background.
GT 17:48 Okay, so Interpreter, you and I talked about this yesterday. You would still say Interpreter is much more apologetic in nature than Maxwell Institute.
Scott 18:00 Absolutely.
GT 18:01 Which is much more scholarly in nature.
Scott 18:02 Yeah, absolutely.
GT 18:03 And they’re not interested in things like, Book of Mormon historicity, whereas Interpreter still is?
Scott 18:10 Yes. Yeah.
GT 18:11 Okay. And so, I know in your presentation, was that yesterday? It seems like it’s been a long day. You had said in one of the quotes that the Church leaders had defended certain organizations, Book of Mormon Central, etc. Is that where you’re going next? Do you want to jump ahead there?
Scott 18:36 We can jump ahead to that. So, I’m saying that they’ve named these organizations explicitly and said that they’re good organizations, basically. There’s a couple of different…
GT 18:47 So, The Interpreter gets the stamp of approval, even though there was a big rift when they were part of Neal A Maxwell.
Scott 18:55 Yeah, The Interpreter does get the stamp of approval from the Church.
GT 19:01 Where is this stamp of approval?
Scott 19:03 In 2019, the Church, through the institutes and seminary program, through its Church Education System, was kind enough to tell youth essentially, “If you’re studying the gospel, this is the way to do it. And if you have questions, this is where to go.”
GT 19:19 And Gospel Tangents wasn’t on that list.
Scott 19:21 You didn’t make the cut, {both laughing} oddly enough, which is unfortunate, honestly because you do such good work.
GT 19:28 Oh, thank you.
Scott 19:29 But, anyway, so they have, using divinely appointed sources. They have this whole video about how it’s important to use the right sources, because if you use the wrong sources, it’s like drinking water from a polluted stream that somebody’s just put some chlorine tablets into, but it’s really polluted. The visual analogies, which the Church likes to do–anyway, so they have these divinely appointed sources, which they’re calling–so it’s funny, because we still talk about Church approved sources. And people don’t like that term. But evidently, we have God-approved sources, {both laughing} instead of Church approved sources. Anyhow. They have the page, which you click on the links, and that has three different lists. The first list is the official Church resources. And that’s official, so you’re supposed to go there. That’s number one. Number two is the Church-affiliated resources, which is basically BYU, everything done out of BYU.
Scott 19:30 Maxwell Institute would be included in that, even though it’s not explicitly mentioned.
Scott 19:39 Yes, it should be. So, they do link to BYU Religious Studies Center and Maxwell Institute, maybe under the Religious Studies Center? I’m not sure.
GT 20:38 I’m not sure either. I think so.
Scott 20:40 Yeah, it probably was.
GT 20:42 Okay.
Scott 20:42 Then list number three is the other resources. And they start with the classic disclaimer: The following websites are maintained by third parties and not affiliated with the Church. ” So, [that’s a] red flag there. “Linking this content does not imply endorsement by The Church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
GT 21:02 Okay.
Scott 21:03 So, use at your own risk, but they have a list of approximately eight organizations. Among that you have LDS General Conference corpus, which means it links to all the general conference talks. So this is…
GT 21:15 That’s not third party, though.
Scott 21:16 They’re calling it third party because it is actually maintained by a third party. So, it means…
GT 21:21 It’s not Intellectual Reserve?
Scott 21:23 No, it’s not, actually.
GT 21:24 Oh, I’m surprised to hear that.
Scott 21:27 Yeah.
GT 21:27 Because you can still search, and I say lds.org, because it’s so much easier to type and it still works.
Scott 21:34 No, it’s true. So, this is on BYU server, but it’s maintained by a member. It’s not maintained by the Church.
GT 21:40 Okay.
Scott 21:40 Yep. But the other resources on there; they have the Webster’s dictionary from 1828, which not too risky, hopefully. But they also have Book of Mormon Central.
GT 21:52 Okay.
Scott 21:52 One of these organizations they have [is] FAIR, obviously. They have Latter-day Saints Scholars Testify, which is a part of FAIR, but it’s a separate website. So, they’re listed separately. They have The Interpreter Foundation, which we talked about, and they have Faith Is Not Blind, which I didn’t go into in the presentation, but they’re on my watch list.
GT 22:14 Okay.
Scott 22:15 That was actually, if I can–this is Gospel Tangents.
GT 22:17 Exactly.
Scott 22:18 Are you ready for a tangent?
GT 22:19 We can go there.
Scott 22:20 Alright. So, Faith is Not Blind, because it’s on the Church’s list, I am convinced this has to be associated with the Church, somehow. So, I go to their website and I start reading articles and things and somebody publishes an article. There is a comment section. So, I start reading the comment section, and it’s all of these computer Bot comments. You’re familiar with these.
GT 22:42 Sort of.
Scott 22:43 If you don’t monitor your comments, then computer bots come in and make these automatic comments in order to get links back to their sites. And there are porn sites!
GT 22:50 Oh really?!
Scott 22:51 Yes. Anyway. It’s surprising.
GT 22:57 So, I guess it’s not really.
Scott 22:59 So, it’s not well maintained. What I’m saying is that whoever’s in charge of that website needs to go back through and…
GT 23:08 Clean up the comments.
Scott 23:09 Yeah. Auto delete on those.
GT 23:09 Okay. They’re going to end up off that list, if they’re advertising porn.
Scott 23:15 Well, they’re not advertising porn. There are no links. Right? But if you read the comments closely, you’ll see one in five or whatever is these bots that are not good.
GT 23:25 Yeah. Right. Hmmm.
Scott 23:26 Anyway…
GT 23:27 Interesting.
Scott 23:28 So anyway, these organizations, I’m arguing, are closely aligned with the Church, and they’re maybe closely aligned in other ways. So, I talked about some of these other ways they’re aligned.
{End of Part 2}
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