Monday, December 10, 2018
Updated Country Profile - Czech Republic (Czechia)
Click here to access our updated Reaching the Nations country profile for Czechia. Slow, albeit steady growth has occurred for the Church in Czechia during the past two decades with annual membership growth rates averaging around two percent in the 2010s. The greatest progress has been in regards to maturing local leadership as evidenced by the organization of the first stake in 2016 and the calling of the first native Czech mission president to preside over the Czech/Slovak Mission in 2016. Also, convert retention rates for one year after baptism have noticeably improved, ranging from 50-70% during the past decade per returned missionary reports. Nevertheless, the number of cities with an official congregation has decreased from 18 to 12 within the past two decades as the emphasis has been placed on the establishment of larger congregations. Low receptivity remains a major obstacle for the Church to achieve greater growth. Other nontraditional, missionary-focused groups report similar difficulties. Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists have both reported stagnant membership and congregational growth in Czechia within the past decade.
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Czechia has had very good missionaries over the years, that I know of. In the early 1990s there was Elder Graff from Sandy, Utah, and Michael Hinckley, grandson of President Hinckley. It is interesting to consider the quality of elders and sisters serving in missions and despite their quality and faith have small successes as compared to quantitative numbers.
The Gospel is not about statistics, but they are strong indicators of growth and activity.
Our faith compared to Witnesses and Adventists is interesting in itself. While both those "modern" non-traditional Christian practices are sonewhat dynamic worldwide, neither have a robust concentration in the U.S. SDAs are largely headquartered historically in Loma Linda, California, but as far as I knew maybe a minority even in that small town in the early 2000s.
I am not sure if any town anywhere has a large plurality of Jehovah's Witnesses, let alone majority.
Yet, both these denominations do pretty well internationally at creating converts and congregations.
The Church of Jesus Christ requires, perhaps, additional measures that make true membership a bit more intensive, and in some countries, perceived as "pro-American", which can present a slew of problems per culture.
Today a new Stake of Zion was reported, "Machala Ecuador Puerto Bolívar Stake", located at :
https://classic.lds.org/maps/#ll=-3.291187,-79.966065&z=13&m=google.road&layers=stakecenter&q=Machala%20Ecuador%20Puerto%20Bol%C3%ADvar%20Stake&find=stake:2124327.
Sister Nelson mentioned in an interview on Oct 30, 2018 that President Nelson was concerned with how were spending the widow's mite and what is really needful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv48nEaU44Y
Today (December 12, 2018) they announced that a 3rd MTC is being closed (The Dominican Republic MTC) [The closure of the MTC's in Santiago, Chile, and Madrid, Spain where announced on March 29, 2018]:
https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/missionary-training-center-dominican-republic-close
This is in addition to cutbacks in church pageants (announced on Oct 27, 2018 with an update announcing the decisions on various pageants made on December 4, 2018):
https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/statement-local-celebrations-pageants-october-2018
Did anyone catch the letter from the First Presidency on 18 October announcing the translation of the triple combination into Kazakh? In the letter, which is posted in the Official Communications Library in the Leader and Clerk Resources, translation will start with the Book of Mormon after “other translation projects have been completed.”
The same week as that announcement, the First Presidency also announced the completion of the triple combinations in Afrikaans and Amharic, two of the translation projects announced last year.
I am going to attempt to write a comprehensive blog post on Nelsonian reforms at my blog. I invite anyone who wants to to come and view it.
This is my blog. http://memberoftherestoredcofjcmichigan.blogspot.com/ the new post should be up soon.
What has become of the tracking of new wards and brnaches? I miss that a lot. Is there somewhere else where I can go to find such tracking?
http://www.fullerconsideration.com/units.php
Think everyone is already gone for the holidays at CHQ? Think again. Another big one just dropped this morning and is detailed by this Church News article.
https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders-and-ministry/2018-12-14/first-presidency-announces-age-changes-for-primary-progression-young-men-priesthood-ordination-and-youth-temple-recommends-48626
Followup: Church's Newsroom page, has the letter with a FAQ and a listing of when youth, particularly young men, received particular priesthood offices. References the 1877 changes that at that time also set up Melchizedek Priesthood offices and quorums almost the way they were until March 31 of this year.
https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/age-changes-youth-progression-ordination-announced
Well, the 1877 changes keep local 70 quorums, so those would be ended in the 1980s. It was a more recent development to only have 1 patriarch per stake. At one time it was common to have multiple patriarchs. Stkae size has also changed in many ways over the years.
Guidelines on what age to ordain to the melchizekek priesthood have changed. The FAQ seems to suggest at one time it was not until age 18 that most youths were ordained priests and so 21 was often the youngest men were ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood.
When Elder Groberg was a missionary in Tonga the Church did not ordain men to the melchizedek priesthood before marriage. I am not aware of anywhere else ever having this rule, but since I only know this because it is mentioned by Elder Groberg in his book ''In the Eye of the Storm'' to explain why Feki was a priest and not an elder, I would not be surprised if the same policy existed in some other Polynesian countries and maybe in other places at some times as well.
I am excited about these changes. For my grandson it will just mean he gets to go to Sunday school a year earlier, and start passing the sacrament about a month before he would have under the old system. I with an October birthday would have been even more effected by the changes.
To me the big plus will be unified movement. It may also lead to less constant youth leader changes. At least when I was Deacon's quorum president it was the five months I was the oldest deacon. The new system will discourage such choices. In my parents ward the current deacons quorum president was called when he was only about 2 months past his 12th birthday, and he was not the oldest deacon, so default oldest choices are not always the way things are done.
This will also end some cases where getting to go to various summer camps or youth conference at times depended for people with summer birthdays on when exactly these events were scheduled.
This past 8-9 months have seen a lot of changes. Perhaps only 2012 was a revolutionary time where the missionary ages were dropped.
Any thoughts on the last 6 years of younger missionariea? Do they end up going more, and do more of them end up staying more active?
I am not sure if more men end up going... But it seems more women are becoming full time missionaries, for sure.
A new branch in the Fort Walton FL stack the Freeport branch was organized a couple of weeks ago this is big news seeing that most if not all of the Panama City stack is recovering from the steam damage. Freeport is just west of Panama City. It is not yet known how the membership of the Panama City stake would look like . A good number of people in the city have moved out or are planning to move out soon to look for new homes and jobs . Including my mom and grandparents and a few others I know. This can decrease the church membership in the city. Also with the Mexico beach branch in the Panama City stake I don’t see how the beach can go forward over half of the members of that beach are air force families and with the base closed for he next year or two these family’s are know moved out. That means that of half the branch has now moved out and I know that a good number of the remaining members have not yet been back or may not even come back. With that said I don’t see the Mexico beach beach being around much longer.
Fort Walton Beach has had a stake for decades, and it goes west to Navarre and Tiger Point/Garcon Point. West of there it is Pensacola that has the stake and units.
US military make up some membership in Fort Walton Beach and nearby (Elgin AFB, some miscellaneous military installations), so while that should remain constant, there will be issues on account of the hurricane damage, Mexico Beach had also not updated their building codes like much of the rest of the state did after some previous hurricanes so the damage was particularly bad.
México City Chimalhuacan District reported 12/15/2018 on http://www.fullerconsideration.com/units.php,
also on Classic LDS Maps :
https://classic.lds.org/maps/#ll=19.34557,-99.020636&z=11&m=google.road&layers=stakecenter&q=M%C3%A9xico%20City%20Chimalhuacan&find=stake:2123827
The Haitian Creole branch in the Coral Springs Florida Stake was upgraded to a ward today. Attendance was apparently at around 100. One of the members was called as a second stake patriarch with the purpose of giving patriarchal blessings in creole. This is the second Haitian creole ward in Florida I believe.
I have to wonder how many stake patriarchs with specific language assignments there are.
It is looking like the article in Wikipedia on the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple is headed towards deletion. This is a major downer to me. First huge numbers of articles on general authority seventies, now an article on a temple. Some days it makes me feel like me editing Wikipedia is all in vain.
Today in my branch we watched a persentation on the Area Plan for 2019 for the North America Northeast Area. This is the first time I have seen a presentation on an area plan.
I have to admit that I wish the Deseret News had more reasonable and consistnt moditering of comments. I especially find it outrageous that some of my comments that call out true outrages are not allowed, but comments that mock the Church and a belief it is lead by revelation are allowed. I tire of the rude and flippant comments so often allowed. I tire of narrow minded people who seek to find fault with changes. I really, really tire of people who seem to try and see everything wrong with the inspired leadership of President Nelson, and I even more tire of the hate mongering use of the term "corporate" as if it designates something that is inately and in and of itself evil.
Having worked for both publicly traded corporations and privately held companies, I can say that the former are generally better to work for and generally show more concern for their employees than the latter. Corporations are not evil, and corporate means an organiztion that is built around pooling strengths.
That said, the Church may in some ways have vague forms of a corporate body, but it is not run as a corporation, the top leaders do not run it according to corporate norms, and people who act otherwise tend to be more motivated by anti-Mormon rage that causes them to bear false witness against the Lord's annointed than the truth.
On a slightly different note today I learned of a very major role change for young women in the temple that was initiated a year ago, but not very well known. To understand this one needs to bear in mind that most, if not all, of those who perform reconding entry work in temples are women. In many temples those carrying this role out do so on a church service calling assignement, but in a few temples this role is in some cases filled by paid employees. What I learned today is that the entry of baptismal data into the computer system and stamping of the cards to reflect this work can be done at a station for this set up in the baptistry and does not need to be done in the temple office, although currently it is done in the temple office at the Detroit Temple. What I also learned is for baptisms and confirmations done in the temple the new guidelines issued at the end of last year allow young women to be the ones to enter these records into the computer system.
Thus, my initial suspicion that the expanded role of young women was about more than just handing out towels is fully confirmed.
I have noticed the double standard hypocrisy od Deseret News editors on comments. Thanks for confirming it.
Sad thing to see a Church affiliated rag to side with detractors instead of defenders, or at minimum a balance of ideas.
John: at least post your would be Wiki work on a blog. Send some to me and I will post on my blog: clinchitsoonerorlater.
Thankyou for the support Eduardo.
I am feeling a little better after improving the article on Ray Matheny, an emeritus professor of archeology at BYU.
Perhaps after the Kinshasa temple has been around a little longer and becomes a recognized icon of the community it will be harder for them to ignore its importance.
Once the actual open house and dedications happen there should hopefully be more non-LDS source articles from the area to cite.
Relatedly, Jeffery M. Bradshaw has done a presentation on the Church in the DRC based on the recent mission he and his wife served there.
Part one here https://interpreterfoundation.org/the-church-in-the-dr-congo-a-personal-perspective-part-1-prologue-what-brought-us-to-africa/
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