I will come back to that topic in another post.

Time to close comments, thanks all.

Basil, thanks, and yes, we will follow up on faith-promoting experiences. That’s the kind I love to tell – perhaps have a look at many of my early posts on T&S. As to the topic of tithing, affluence, poverty, etc., that should not become part of this thread. NV’s tongue-in-cheek remark was not to be taken that serious.

KLC, thanks! Embarrassing. Quite appropriate to compare the closing of a unit to a parent passing on —always too early. Time to mourn, to be a little angry with death, to show understanding for the challenge of change.

Kayson! Another of our missionaries who found us here. Thanks for your comment. Hmm, reunions are going to be difficult. Stay in touch with the members you know, it’ll help them cope.

I served as a missionary for 8 months in Brugge, also for a short time in Gent, Brussels, and was the Zone Leader for Kortrijk, Leuven, and other cities closed. This was in 97-99. I’m saddened by this announcement. I was a firm believer that if we “worked and prayed, and prayed and worked” that the promises of a harvest would be fulfilled. That the blood of Israel was still in these lands and that the population would listen. I probably knocked on every single door in Brugge’s binnenstad at least once in 8 months. I baptized a family there and in other cities. This is so, so hard to know that the missionaries and active members there have worked so hard for so long only to see new converts fall away. I suppose, we nedred hope or a plan or revelation — not spin about how a train ride and a bus to church is a good thing.

I do appreciate the outside the box thought. Maybe it will come to that if we continue to not grow (I ca n just image a dystopian future where home teaching becomes a Church version of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to track down immigrant members who aren’t paying tithing or attending church – whew!). Also, please tell the new members congrats for me.

Now, tell someone in the Third World that he or she will need to move to the U.S. or Western Europe and you’ll have people banging down your door to be baptized (assuming the Church would sponsor emigrees). However, I don’t think that’s what the Church wants nor do I think most members in the target country would be very welcoming of masses of Third World immigrants pouring into their wards (or maybe I’m just jaded).

To be blunt, I think the Church is desperate to have first world-middle class, educated people to fill the ranks and coffers (and I don’t mean that in the skeptical sense). It sees the trend lines and concludes that missionary work isn’t going to do that job (ask yourself how many middle to upper middle class people have been baptized in your ward in the last five years – if you have any, I’ll bet $100 that they are the spouses of members). Thus, the emphasis on retaining multi-generational families. While the booming work in West Africa is encouraging, I’m increasingly not surprised that the Church isn’t sending more missionaries there as it’s not something that can take the place of First World tithe payers.

In that bigger picture, however, we would not know why the Lord first inspires leaders to open cities with prophecies and promises of growth and then, decades later, inspires a next group of leaders to close those cities. Perhaps, as you suggest, to teach the members how to cope with change and challenges? Maybe. Or, as you mention, to “recognise the need to refocus their faith and vision and call upon the Saviour”? Possible, but I am not totally convinced the Lord plays in that scenario when He first inspired leaders to open cities.

The same dynamics of opening and closing places happened in the Mormon settling of the West, with hundreds of locations that pioneers were sent to develop — and are now abandoned ghost towns. The Saints moved on. At the same time, however, pioneers reflected on the reasons of their failure, which was never intended to happen. Leaders learned from their mistakes to build more successful settlements. To admit those mistakes is a courageous step. As President Uchtdorf said, “And, to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the Church have simply made mistakes.”

In your words, “members resorting to whining and whingeing about transport and the likely social and material impacts of such changes and supporting a view that it is ‘poor PR’, is a reflection of shortsightedness and a lack of faith”. I don’t think it is appropriate to identify honest concerns and a call to do better as shortsightedness and lack of faith. Even if well-meant, such judgment adds to unnecessary feelings of guilt in people who have toiled so hard to build the Kingdom and still unanimously sustained the decision to move on.

I consider this little side-discussion closed as our commenting rules ask to not question the faithfulness of others.