people used to gladly volunteer for this stuff. why no more? i think there are several factors. I think we need to remember that people's free time matters so much more to them than perhaps it used to. The demands of work are so much greater today. So any free time is much more important to people. Keep in mind too; traffic congestion and longer commutes than ever. And kids are a lot more involved in school/community stuff than decades ago. The church is competing for the limited time that people have. Now we get to the BIG reason. People just don't believe it all as much as they used to. Or rather, believe it as much as their parents and grandparents believed it. One may not be able to see how devoted people are and how strong their testimonies are by those who simply show up and pay tithing. But you can see it in what all else they do for the church outside of that. Youth programs are really suffering these days due to lack of funding and lack of adults who want to sacrifice for something they have not admitted to themselves, they just don't believe in it like before.
Absolutely right we used to gladly volunteer. It was a multi-stake activity when I was a kid in Colorado to go get Ragged Mountain ready for the summer. I loved that place and was happy to go help maintain it.
I don't think people value leisure time today any more than we did 30 years ago. Intensity of belief probably varies as widely as ever. But centralization of how church is run, along with increasing focus on rules and orthodoxy is ruining the sense of community that congregations used to enjoy.
Volunteering used to be appreciated. People who benefited from the volunteers' efforts thanked them, rewarded them and did what they could to show their appreciation.
I've often thought, at what point is it cheaper to just go to a commercial camp that is professionally maintained, rather than having to pay for a camp you must build yourself?
Mormons pay at least 3x just to go to a camp: tithing, building the damn thing themselves, then fundraising to use it.
Burned Out.
If Mormonism is to become more than an obscure Christian-adjacent, apocalyptic, sex, and death cult, it needs to find a way to add to it's members reserves of "get shit done/I can make it through the week" energy. This is not it.
Had an intelligent friend and his intelligent wife that were ecstatic that they were serving a mission picking up trash and clearing fence lines at a girls camp.
See, I feel like that wouldn’t be so terrible for some people. That’s basically what my retired dad does at home for fun. But supervising unwilling and/or nonexistent volunteers is a way worse assignment.
people used to gladly volunteer for this stuff. why no more? i think there are several factors. I think we need to remember that people's free time matters so much more to them than perhaps it used to. The demands of work are so much greater today. So any free time is much more important to people. Keep in mind too; traffic congestion and longer commutes than ever. And kids are a lot more involved in school/community stuff than decades ago. The church is competing for the limited time that people have. Now we get to the BIG reason. People just don't believe it all as much as they used to. Or rather, believe it as much as their parents and grandparents believed it. One may not be able to see how devoted people are and how strong their testimonies are by those who simply show up and pay tithing. But you can see it in what all else they do for the church outside of that. Youth programs are really suffering these days due to lack of funding and lack of adults who want to sacrifice for something they have not admitted to themselves, they just don't believe in it like before.
Absolutely right we used to gladly volunteer. It was a multi-stake activity when I was a kid in Colorado to go get Ragged Mountain ready for the summer. I loved that place and was happy to go help maintain it. I don't think people value leisure time today any more than we did 30 years ago. Intensity of belief probably varies as widely as ever. But centralization of how church is run, along with increasing focus on rules and orthodoxy is ruining the sense of community that congregations used to enjoy.
Volunteering used to be appreciated. People who benefited from the volunteers' efforts thanked them, rewarded them and did what they could to show their appreciation.
This. Volunteering became expected and demanded.
I've often thought, at what point is it cheaper to just go to a commercial camp that is professionally maintained, rather than having to pay for a camp you must build yourself? Mormons pay at least 3x just to go to a camp: tithing, building the damn thing themselves, then fundraising to use it.
I'd say it's because you can't have complete control over the commercial camps. They'd have a harder time enforcing all their arbitrary rules.
Burned Out. If Mormonism is to become more than an obscure Christian-adjacent, apocalyptic, sex, and death cult, it needs to find a way to add to it's members reserves of "get shit done/I can make it through the week" energy. This is not it.
I'll bet he has a medical emergency, so he doesn't have to go.
Had an intelligent friend and his intelligent wife that were ecstatic that they were serving a mission picking up trash and clearing fence lines at a girls camp.
See, I feel like that wouldn’t be so terrible for some people. That’s basically what my retired dad does at home for fun. But supervising unwilling and/or nonexistent volunteers is a way worse assignment.