705: Major Contraction of LDS Church in Europe and the Netherlands Beginning

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2017

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marco Meiling, active and believing LDS church member in the Netherlands, reports on the beginning of a major contraction of the LDS Church in Europe.

From Marco's original message to me:

Have you heard yet about a big push to consolidate the units in Europe.
We are having closing after closing being announced. Yesterday a closing was announced, and the Stake President stated there are 800 units in Europe which are considered too weak and would need to merge. We have 1163 units in Western Europe acc to Cumorah.com.

Holland with 34 wards will close 5 at least this year. In Holland the Church is phasing out all wards which don´t have a purpose-built Chapel.

Temple-attendance here is down 60% compared to 2000. However the amount of recommendholders went up 200%. So what do we make of this: A Temple is a way for the Church to increase revenue. So even with less people, the Church can make a higher turnover.

The main reason given is that these units are too weak to run programmes aimed at the youth. and small units demand too much from the few members. Research has shown that people and families benefit form larger wards, and families are less burdened. That why the policy direction. Of course the longer travel will cause problems for some menbers. Assistance will be needed.

Transcript

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0:32.0	The Conglue Line Amidth Insurcling Glue
0:37.0	Leigh Thou Meon The Night is Dark and I am far from home.
0:53.0	Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John Dillin.
0:58.0	It is March 15th, 2017. It's about 2 o'clock PM, mountain time.
1:06.0	And we are kind of, I think, breaking some news.
1:11.0	We'll see if everybody else thinks it's interesting or worthwhile.
1:16.0	But today we're going to be talking about some breaking news that I've heard about a contraction that seems to be beginning at the LDS Church in Europe.
1:30.0	So, and so the source of the information is a friend who I've been Facebook friends with for quite some time.
1:41.0	He's joining us live on the call now and his name is Marco. I pronounce it mealing. How do you pronounce it Marco?
1:48.0	Mailing. Well, it's me.
1:52.0	And Marco, let's just talk briefly. And also we've got Mark Johnson on the line right now his microphone is muted. Hi, Mark Johnson.
2:01.0	Hello. I'm here.
2:03.0	Okay. And Marco, you're Mark, you're joining me and me.
2:07.0	We can hear you. You're joining us from the UK. I'm guessing. Is that right?
2:12.0	I am. I am in the UK at the moment out. So I just called some people. Yeah.
2:16.0	Excellent. All right. Well, you can mute yourself, except what you talk and we love. We're really glad.
2:20.0	We're really glad you're joining us and we'll, we're inviting other European saints to join us as well.
	...

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