Monday, July 7, 2008
Stake Dissolved in Los Angeles Area
The second stake to be dissolved this year was recently dissolved in Walnut, California. Many stakes have been combined in recent years in the Los Angeles area. The Walnut California Stake was combined with the Hacienda Heights California Stake. Each of the stakes had five wards so now the Hacienda Heights Stake has 10 wards along with a branch.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Both the reasons for the Walnut Stake and the Glendale Stake had to be dissolved is major demographic shifts in the past ten or 20 years.
In Walnut, for example, which is an upper middle class suburb, once was predominately white is now 60-70% Chinese or Korean.
Glendale is now predominately Armenian.
So younger families of the church who grew up in the area tend to move inland to areas like Temecula, or Utah or Arizona for more affordable housing.
The problem is also that new converts are not replacing those that are moving fast enough. Also church leaders IMHO are a little short sided in not reaching out to the Chinese, Koreans, Armenians, Persians, Arabs communities etc, etc who live in the area in their languages. And often it's viewed the LDS Church as a "white" and "American" church and not a church for them.
More needs to be done to reach out...
Thanks for the information. My mother actually grew up in the Glendale Stake back in the 1950s and I know a lot has changed in that area since then. Usually what you said happens; coverts make up for the families moving away for more affordable housing or a better environment for raising a family. There is somewhat an outreach for the Chinese and Koreans that live in the Los Angeles area (and of course the Latino population) but that's about it.
Post a Comment