![\"\"](\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/scranney_Photo_of_Mormon_Missionaries_going_into_a_van_that_say_e4f3558e-ebdb-4366-aba0-5c29caef42f2-800x800.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Yes, I know, the “Jesus” in the bottom-right hand corner has a t, at the end, but still, it’s almost there.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I typically like to avoid making too many posts that take the form of\u00a0 \u201cwhat I think the Church should do,\u201d in part because the gospel of the almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, is so much bigger than this or that policy from North Temple Street; also, a lot of my thoughts on that topic have typically already been said by others in some place or another, sometimes more elegantly than I could have, so I don’t have a lot to add.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Still, occasionally something comes up where I haven\u2019t seen much discussion and I might have something unique to add, so here I\u2019m discussing\u2013Jesus Vans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you live in a more urban area with a lot of churches you\u2019ll see these zipping around on Sunday to pick up parishioners (I get the sense that Korean Christian churches have a lot of these, but that\u2019s just anecdotal).<\/span><\/p>\n Also if you have been a member in a high-needs, urban area you know that transportation is the bane of the Church\u2019s existence in those places. Many of the members are immigrants that do not have their own vehicles. If you\u2019re lucky your urban area has good transportation (e.g. my ward in Philadelphia), and if not they don\u2019t (e.g. my current ward outside of DC).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m convinced that for high needs, inner-city wards having a reliable form of transportation to and from church could increase sacrament meeting attendance by \u00bc to 1\/3; this is an innovation from the gentiles that we could fruitfully adopt. In lieu of something more systematic, members are constantly asked to provide rides for members, recent converts, or investigators on a case-by-case basis. Of course we are happy to help, but there is a finite amount of energy that we can give to Church responsibilities, and in these wards such energy and time is in short supply, so there really is a limit to how much ferrying the members can do. This probably wouldn’t work in a suburban context, where one could spend hours giving rides each way, but in a denser inner-city context the benefit-to-time ratio would be significant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I know there are a lot of legal liability issues. Still, such wards often have one or more missionary pairs (my current ward has four companionships and a senior sister), and assigning a companionship or two to systematically provide rides in a huge 12-person van could really help take a lot of the weight off of the shoulders of short-staffed, inner-city, high-needs wards. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, I know, the “Jesus” in the bottom-right hand corner has a t, at the end, but still, it’s almost there.\u00a0 I typically like to avoid making too many posts that take the form of\u00a0 \u201cwhat I think the Church should do,\u201d in part because the gospel of the almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, is so much bigger than this or that policy from North Temple Street; also, a lot of my thoughts on that topic have typically already been said by others in some place or another, sometimes more elegantly than I could have, so I don’t have a lot to add.\u00a0\u00a0 Still, occasionally something comes up where I haven\u2019t seen much discussion and I might have something unique to add, so here I\u2019m discussing\u2013Jesus Vans.\u00a0 If you live in a more urban area with a lot of churches you\u2019ll see these zipping around on Sunday to pick up parishioners (I get the sense that Korean Christian churches have a lot of these, but that\u2019s just anecdotal). Also if you have been a member in a high-needs, urban area you know that transportation is the bane of the Church\u2019s existence in those places. Many of the members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":46768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2970],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-leadership-and-policies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/scranney_Photo_of_Mormon_Missionaries_going_into_a_van_that_say_e4f3558e-ebdb-4366-aba0-5c29caef42f2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46767"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50236,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46767\/revisions\/50236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}