The Church Of Jesus Christ: Fill & Download for Free

Of course. I served as the bishop of a ward of about 325 people. I served without pay and administered the ward on my personal time. This question is insincere and poorly phrased, here’s why:As of the date of my response, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has 15.6 million members in 3,811 Stakes and Districts, which contain 30,215 Wards and Branches. LDS Temple and Mormon Church Unit StatisticsStaffing a stake, which administers to 4,000 members on average, requires a President and 2 Counselors (“presidency”) who are assisted by a High Council of 12 members, a Patriarch, an Executive Secretary to the President, and roughly 4 clerks, give or take, depending on the Stake. The women’s organization, the Relief Society, also has a presidency and a secretary, as does the Young Men’s organization, the Young Women’s organization, the Primary organization, and the Sunday School organization. Right there you have 41 individuals who each have rather demanding assignments for which they are entirely unpaid.Staffing a ward requires a Bishop and 2 Counselors who are assisted by an Executive Secretary, Clerk, 2 assistant clerks, a High Priest’s Group leader and 2 assistants, Elder’s Quorum Presidency, Ward Relief Society Presidency, Young Men’s Presidency, Young Women’s Presidency, Primary Presidency and Sunday School Presidency not to mention a host of other callings such as teachers, scout leaders, and other assistants to the aforementioned leadership. Leadership in a Ward would include, then, 35 people plus all their assistants. None are paid a dime, not even the bishop, not even the ward seminary teacher who comes in at 5:30 am and teaches a one-hour class every school day. (Excepting Utah where schools allow seminary classes during the day and for which full time teachers are hired, more on that later…)Accordingly, there are an estimated 156,251 stake leaders currently serving together with 1,057,525 ward leaders—all of whom serve without pay.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an education system that covers the world. These are teachers, not ministers, they have no ecclesiastical or Church responsibilities for which they are paid. Full-time seminary teachers would be in this category; while they may strike many as “ministers”, they are in actuality teachers and have no direct Church responsibility—they report to their student’s bishops and stake presidents as well as an internal structure that is led by one of the General Authorities. A good number of these educational system employees also serve, unpaid, in one of those 1.2 million leadership responsibilities listed above. For example, my daily work is as a Professor of Accounting at Brigham Young University Hawaii, I am paid roughly in line with an accounting professor at a smaller private university. Church folklore has it that the BYU-Provo Football Coach is the highest-paid Church employee, but nobody would mistake Coach Sitake’s professional responsibilities for those of a minister or Church leader.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a large bureaucracy as befits an organization responsible for administering the free will donations of millions of people and maintaining thousands of chapels as well as over 100 temples. Most folks don’t realize that the Church does not spend its principal—when a building is built, there is a fund set aside from which the interest must suffice to maintain the building in perpetuity. So spare me the hollering about our business investments—you can’t put a few billion dollars into a bank account. The leaders of the Church make and maintain prudent investments and live off of the interest from those investments—there is no deficit spending in the restored Church of Jesus Christ, we pay as we go. Nobody would expect the Church’s lawyers, data engineers, auditors, HR experts, real estate experts, building experts, purchasing experts, etc. to not draw a salary for their career work—and, again, Church employees do serve unpaid in many of those 1.2 million leadership positions.The current fuss is over the fact—routinely taught in conference and disclosed in Church literature—that the General Authorities of the Church receive pay to support their full-time ministry. General Authorities include the Church’s First Presidency, Quorum of the 12 Apostles, and 94 members of the Seventy. The First Presidency and Apostles serve for life. The Seventy are allowed to retire at age 70 and presumably get some kind of pension. There are 418 missions of the Church that are presided over by a married couple who volunteer for 3 years but who receive basic support, food, housing, medical and transportation while they temporarily serve full time—these are the couples who are responsible for the 74,079 full time missionaries, and it is an all encompassing assignment taken very seriously. The Presidents, and their wives, of our 149 temples are likewise supported as they temporarily serve in an assignment that requires them to work from before dawn until late at nightEssentially you have 109 full time paid General Authorities, or if you include the 418 mission presidents and 149 temple presidents, a total of 676 supported “ministers” out of 1.2 million leaders worldwide.I’m not going to argue whether or not $10,000 a month is a “large” corporate salary, but will say this: the people making the fuss over General Authority living allowances are not the people who pay tithes and offerings to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Frankly, I’d double the living allowances of all of our full-time Church leaders in a heartbeat if I could and I would be supported in this by a majority of Church members. We love our leaders and know that they are sacrificing family time and personal goals for a job that requires their constant attention.

The official news release from the LDS Church is at: Mormon Newsroom - Church Responds to Boy Scouts Policy VoteThe answer to the question above is given in the first paragraph:For the past 100 years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has enjoyed a strong relationship with Boy Scouts of America, based on our mutual interest in helping boys and young men understand and live their duty to God and develop upright moral behavior. As the Church moves forward in its association with the Boy Scouts of America, Church leaders will continue to seek the most effective ways to address the diverse needs of young people in the United States and throughout the world.IMO, the most significant portion is in the next paragraph:The Church’s long-established policy for participation in activities is stated in the basic instructional handbook used by lay leaders of the Church: “young men … who agree to abide by Church standards” are “welcomed warmly and encouraged to participate”... This policy applies to Church-sponsored Scout units. Sexual orientation has not previously been—and is not now—a disqualifying factor for boys who want to join Latter-day Saint Scout troops. Willingness to abide by standards of behavior continues to be our compelling interest. [Emphasis added]Note that for some time, the LDS Church policy has been somewhat more "liberal" (or at least embracing of diversity) than the BSA's. With this change, the BSA's policy has changed, the LDS Church's hasn't.

No. This has been coming for much longer than that.There have been a lot of issues with the LDS church's alliance with the BSA, some financial, some pragmatic, some out of principle. There's also the factor that the LDS church, which was once largely an American organization with overseas branches, is very deliberately trying to be seen as a global organization, which creates needs the BSA can't meet.However, all of that ignores the elephant in the room, which is the BSA's policies toward homosexuality. That's really the dispute that kicked off the rift that is now complete. The LDS church was in agreement with the BSA admitting openly gay scouts, but strongly objected to allowing openly gay scout leaders. The LDS church takes it as an issue of principle that the practice of homosexuality can not be accepted or condoned. There was a compromise, for a while, that individual groups could make their own rules regarding rules of conduct for scout leaders, but it was clear the church was looking at the exit from that point. There's been a clear and progressive pattern of separation since then, and now it's complete.Had the ruling on female scouts come earlier, we might have wondered whether it was a contributing factor, but the trend has been clear enough for long enough that I doubt it has anything to do with the decision.