LisaB, absolutely true. The harsh statistics and inside information are there to proof it. Even in Utah: “In Utah, 144,000 children currently live in violent homes. Every 15 minutes four Utah children witness domestic violence.” See e.g. here and here. Though there are signs that Utah is doing “a good job” in the combat.

Still, a recent report mentions that “domestic disputes claim one Utahn every 21 days“.

At the same time, to build on your comparison, we must probably recognize that on the old rust-bucket the risks of getting crushed by poorly lashed down cargo, or of falling off the ship through a rusted railing, are much greater than on the well-kept tanker with all the safety well in place. And thus, in a small struggling Church unit, the advantages of the learning process are partly offset by the higher ratio of people who become inactive. Refiner’s fire. Would they have remained active in a well-functioning ward and in a Mormon environment? Probably, but also probably not as strong. For those who survive the small unit, the net-result is precious. Tenacious, experienced, contemporary pioneers.

There’s a parallel to church work there. One doesn’t grow very fast when everything is running smoothly in a ward. It is in the conflicts, tragedies, emergencies, shortcomings, failures, and struggles where the principles of the Gospel of Christ are illustrated where we can see them.

Teen members who are preparing for missions should pray to be posted to small branches where the church is not well-established.

It seems to me that you’re asking why “being loyal to the church” and “being Christlike” aren’t one and the same, and suggesting that the disparity impairs the spiritual development of church members. Is this right? If we think of “Being Christlike” as a large set of attributes and actions, then “Loyalty to the Church” is a subset of Christlike behavior—and it happens to be the subset that best predicts readiness for temple initiation, for the reasons I suggested above.

As for your suggestion that “temple-ready” is not a fully adequte substitute for “Christlike”, and that misunderstanding the relationship of the two can hamper spiritual growth, I think you make a good point. Holding a temple recommend, even if one has no opportunity for temple worship, has been fetishized a bit by church leaders in recent years—probably precisely as a way to build loyalty to the Church in areas where it is institutionally weak. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that the recommend is a non-refundable ticket into heaven, that we have no more spiritual growth to accomplish, or, worse, that those who do not hold recommends are necessarily less Christlike than we.