NOMference Sunday Afternoon Spring 2023!!

[nibbler]

The wife’s aunt lives there. They are extremely happy today. They admitted they have no idea how it will be staffed because they can’t get enough workers for the DC temple. They go 1 day a week to work in DC now. That will end when they get there own.

I'm sure it will take far fewer members to run the Winchester, VA temple than it takes to run the D.C. temple but you're right, the Winchester temple would be pulling resources away from the D.C. temple. That and they'll probably struggle to staff the Winchester temple despite the lower requirements to keep that temple running.

There's another challenge in all this. The more temples there are the less special they become. Granted my view of church culture is now far out of alignment with orthodoxy but I hit the, "New temple? Meh." saturation point some time ago. They're just not as special as they used to be back in the day when there were fewer. There's a tradeoff, more members will have even more access but a trip to the temple will feel far less special than it once did.

Back in the day church leaders dangled the promise of a temple in your area in front of members to motivate them to get their numbers up. I remember them doing that in my area. It was years of hard work to be good enough for a lottery chance at getting a temple. That was even in the small temple environment where it was easier to qualify.

I don't know what the members in Winchester have been doing for the last several years, maybe they've been working towards the goal of having a temple, but I get the impression that a temple was sprung on them. Instead of a, "Finally, we get our own temple." it's, "What? This is great! I'm so excited!! Wait, how are we going to staff it?"

I suppose leaders believe it's worth it to build up several temples, even if the expectation for them is similar to the expectation for a chapel. They'll only get heavy use one day on the weekend, maybe light use for a few hours one or two nights during the week, and are locked up for the majority of the week. I also foresee the day where unused temples become a whipping rod. Members chastised for dormant temples when the real issue is that there are too many temples to realistically staff.

I truly believe we're seeing all of this because leaders are afraid to misspend consecrated funds. They're afraid of upsetting god by misusing his money so the answer is to spend it all on temples because surely the lord won't get upset with us if we use the money to build temples. What greater purpose is there?

If you do charity, people might get listless and grow dependent.
If you increase ward budgets the members might accident their way into developing a community.
If you hire janitors the members wont appreciate the buildings enough.

The obvious answer... temples. You can stop by one on your way to the grocery store.

[sparky]

I also foresee the day where unused temples become a whipping rod. Members chastised for dormant temples when the real issue is that there are too many temples to realistically staff.

I feel like this is already the case where I'm at in the greater DC region. Every ward or stake conference since the temple reopened has been filled with pleas to increase temple attendance, find family history names to take, yada yada. I dont have a sense for how busy the DC temple is these days since I haven't attended yet and don't plan to, but based on the rhetoric they are certainly not having capacity issues.

[alas]

The wife’s aunt lives there. They are extremely happy today. They admitted they have no idea how it will be staffed because they can’t get enough workers for the DC temple. They go 1 day a week to work in DC now. That will end when they get there own.

I'm sure it will take far fewer members to run the Winchester, VA temple than it takes to run the D.C. temple but you're right, the Winchester temple would be pulling resources away from the D.C. temple. That and they'll probably struggle to staff the Winchester temple despite the lower requirements to keep that temple running.

There's another challenge in all this. The more temples there are the less special they become. Granted my view of church culture is now far out of alignment with orthodoxy but I hit the, "New temple? Meh." saturation point some time ago. They're just not as special as they used to be back in the day when there were fewer. There's a tradeoff, more members will have even more access but a trip to the temple will feel far less special than it once did.

Back in the day church leaders dangled the promise of a temple in your area in front of members to motivate them to get their numbers up. I remember them doing that in my area. It was years of hard work to be good enough for a lottery chance at getting a temple. That was even in the small temple environment where it was easier to qualify.

I don't know what the members in Winchester have been doing for the last several years, maybe they've been working towards the goal of having a temple, but I get the impression that a temple was sprung on them. Instead of a, "Finally, we get our own temple." it's, "What? This is great! I'm so excited!! Wait, how are we going to staff it?"

I suppose leaders believe it's worth it to build up several temples, even if the expectation for them is similar to the expectation for a chapel. They'll only get heavy use one day on the weekend, maybe light use for a few hours one or two nights during the week, and are locked up for the majority of the week. I also foresee the day where unused temples become a whipping rod. Members chastised for dormant temples when the real issue is that there are too many temples to realistically staff.

I truly believe we're seeing all of this because leaders are afraid to misspend consecrated funds. They're afraid of upsetting god by misusing his money so the answer is to spend it all on temples because surely the lord won't get upset with us if we use the money to build temples. What greater purpose is there?

If you do charity, people might get listless and grow dependent.
If you increase ward budgets the members might accident their way into developing a community.
If you hire janitors the members wont appreciate the buildings enough.

The obvious answer... temples. You can stop by one on your way to the grocery store.

This is so true about when temples were scarce, they were something special and worth working for. When we lived in Florida, they were starting to build the DC temple. Even the primary was whipped up into bring your friends to primary and donate your candy money to help build it. Back in the late 70s they were still asking the area to help contribute money and there were goals for each tiny ward. And people enthusiastically worked for it. Now, we live in an area with one temple in St George being worked on for years now, and a new one under construction in a nearby suburb. Nobody seems to care that the nearest open temple is Cedar City and we have to drive a whole hour, instead of the 20 min into St George. And there seems to be zero excitement over the Washington City Temple that is almost complete. The two temples will be 10 minutes apart and when my husband was going to St George, it was never so crowed as to be full. He hasn’t bothered to even attend since Covid closed things down, not because of the drive to Cedar City, but because getting older has slammed us pretty hard in the last couple of years.

He has expressed “what the blank are they even building a temple in Washington for? If it won’t be open while St George is closed for repairs there is just no need. Once St George is open again, they will have trouble keeping it full because the baby boomers are the only ones attending regularly and we are dying off.”

Compare that to when people were coming up from Arizona on trails not fit for a modern ATV with mules pulling wagons and wondering if they are going to be able to get the wagon over the narrow trail, or if it is going to roll down the cliff, and if there will be water for the trip or if they are all gonna die. I am serious. There is a scary ATV trail called “honeymoon trail” that is the old trail they used to come be sealed to their polygamous wives. Anyone wanna come visit and I will show you just how important temples used to be. A few of the general authorities kept a home in St George because winters were nice and they could bring their new wife to be sealed and have a place to stay for a week before the buggy trip back to SLC.

No matter how much the church pushes temples, when they become common, they are just not special.

The other thing, the more often I went, the more the reality of the ceremony being creepy, culty, not at all based in Christianity, and sexist as the Taliban, soaked into my brain. I got over the shock of it being weird and started to doubt that it could possibly be from a Christian God. But that took going often enough that I could study it. So, going frequently may actually be damaging to one’s ability to swallow crap. You can only tell yourself that “well, I must not understand it,” when you only go once in a while. When it becomes frequent, a person starts to know it is crap instead of blaming themselves for misunderstanding.

[wtfluff]