End Career Church Employment

Should friends and church members help you find a job?
You may feel frustrated that friends, family and church members do not help you find employment. Since they do not feel your pain, they may take your crisis lightly. Wrote Gordon B. Hinckley:

"A man out of work is of special moment to the Church because, deprived of his inheritance, he is on trial as Job was on trial—for his integrity. As days lengthen into weeks and months and even years of adversity, the hurt grows deeper, and he is sorely tempted to "curse God and die." Continued economic dependence breaks him, it humiliates him if he is strong, spoils him if he is weak. Sensitive or calloused, despondent or indifferent, rebellious or resigned—either way, he is threatened with spiritual ruin, for the dole is an evil and idleness a curse. He soon becomes the seedbed of discontent, wrong thinking, alien beliefs. The Church cannot hope to save a man on Sunday if during the week it is a complacent witness to the crucifixion of his soul."

Gordon B. Hinckley, Helping Others to Help Themselves [pamphlet, 1945], The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Should churches offer career employment?
Is it fair to their members, especially when they too are qualified, want to serve and need a job? Let's explore this.

The Book of Mormon says that paid religious laborers shall perish

But the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish.

(2 Ne. 26:31)

Did you catch that? If they labor for money they shall perish! So how do Mormons reconcile having 10,000 paid, full-time employees? Is it priestcraft?

He commandeth that there shall be no priestcrafts; for, behold, priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the welfare of Zion.

(2 Ne. 26:29)

One could argue that paid employees seek for the welfare of Zion so they are exempt. A better argument may be that Joseph Smith himself employeed scribes, or that the living prophet overrides dead prophets.

As stated in the Encylopedia of Mormonism:

Inherent in this definition is the concern that Church leaders must labor to build Zion into the hearts of the people, and not for their personal aggrandizement or reward. When leaders "make merchandise" of men's souls (2 Pet. 2:3), they turn religion into a business, and pride, materialism, and unrighteous dominion follow.

Career church employment must be abolished because:

• It is inconsistent with the Lord's plan for revolving individual growth and service

• It does not justify the efficient use of the sacred widow's mite

• It can tie up positions for an entire career span

• It creates inefficiencies and bureaucracies

• While those called feel special and productive, on the outside it creates an elitist, and in some cases arrogant working class

• Positions are sometimes given to unqualified insiders who would have no hope of getting the same job from the outside

• Costs soar because less thought is given to simplify projects to be handed to the next person or group

• Innovation stagnates because fewer professionals can bring fresh new ideas and insights

• Training and knowledge are not cycled back into the community

• There are more than enough qualified church members to fill the positions. For example, every BYU professor would argue that his or her students should qualify. If they don't know something they can learn it quickly.

• Middle age and older people are disqualified because of their slower response times or their failure to respond to memorized facts, but that is exactly how are brains were designed to work—The older we become the more we discard information we can easiliy look up. Therefore interviewers may misjudge older professionals.

• When churches fail to give their own members a chance, they become enemies to the people who sacrifice to pay the tithing that payrolls these jobs.

• Like governments, when churches employee people, they will continue or increase their expenditures annually, often becoming larger and more inefficient.

• It is often extremely stressful and depressing to be unemployed. To be rejected by one's own church feels like being rejected by God.

Are career church employees the best stewards of the widow's mite?
The widow's mite represents anyone who is forced by circumstance to make a very difficult decision—Pay bills or pay the Lord?

Today, the widow's faithful sacrifice could include any necessity—food, clothing, utilities, taxes, insurance, mortgage or even a payment to the IRS. But the Lord promises us blessings for faith and sacrifice—even at the peril of hunger, foreclosure, or financial distress.

In rare cases are career church employees the best stewards of the widow's mite. How could they feel her plight?

What would change if employees reported daily to the widow?
Suppose each morning employees had to explain to widows how they would use their money that day, and followed up again after work?

Since this scenario is unlikely, unless their term of paid service is limited, time, comfort and not feeling the widow's pain would distantly remove employees from the widow's plight.

Certainly spending the widow's mite on full-time, career employees cannot be efficient or justified by the widow!

Full-time church employment should be last no longer than 3-5 years.
How can a church that shuns a paid ministry, justify lifetime paid jobs with entitlements? Why should church employment be any different than missionary service where members serve for just enough time to make a contribution, learn and grow from the experience and then someone else takes over?

What if missionary service was patterned after full-time career employment?
Only the select few would be called to serve. The majority of qualified members would have no hope of being chosen for missionary service, and no hope of learning and growing from the experience regardless of how much they trained and prayed for the opportunity.

It would create an elite class of paid ministers.

Church employment must be limited in duration just as it is for missionary service.
That way people with fresh new talent, skills and ideas can have their time to serve.

Career church employment creates positions for unqualified insiders
I was recently interviewed for an LDS Church search engine optimization (SEO) job by Dave Prestwich, a manager who had no experience in SEO. In fact, his background was in routers and switches. From the outside I would have no hope of running the church's router team without experience, but this man was given the SEO management position.

I emailed him and asked if he would admit his shortfall and resign? "What," I asked, "can you do that an expert with both SEO and diplomatic skills cannot?"

Then I was told by another manager, Rich Farr, "Well, he manages other teams too," and then listed a few. "Oh no," I said. "That's even worse than I thought. That means he can't focus and do any one thing well."

We ordinary members become experts in our fields and make huge sacrifices to pay our tithing and fast offerings even during times of hardship. Why then are internal employees given positions despite their incompetence?

Should that same policy used for non-paid member ward callings be used for church career employees (i.e. Give positions to incompetent church members and watch them learn and grow into a position—)? That's debatable.

Being qualified can work against you
In 2000 I was thrilled to interview for a genealogy programming position at the LDS Church. I regularly did genealogy research and loved it since I was a teenager. Plus I had contract programmed for six months on Family Tree Maker. They rejected me and explained, "We don't want to hire anyone who understands genealogy."

Career church employees will create a complex, bureaucratic mess
I stopped Greg Richardson at Home Depot. He was a programmer on my team at WordPerfect who now works on the Family Search project. I asked why it had gone more than five years over budget. He then explained how the problems become more and more complex—some were even unsolvable.

It reminded me of an article I read years ago, "Why you want to fire your best programmer." Smart people will take a complex problem and offer a complex solution. Brilliant people will create an easy, elegant solution for the same, complex problem.

Dave Prestwich told me of how difficult it was to create a Web page on LDS.org because of the many departments and committees that had to first review it. What is the cost of such bureaucracy to the widow?

FamilySearch.org vs OneGreatFamily.com — Disaster versus efficiency
In the year 2000, the LDS Church began hiring software professionals to build FamilySearch.org—a five-year effort to reproduce what Alan Eaton and a few other programmers had done at OneGreatFamily. Now ten years later, development on FamilySearch.org continues—late and millions of dollars over budget.

An employee at the LDS IT Department told me on Sunday, July 4, 2010 that FamilySearch.org requires 5,000 Web servers.

So I called Alan Eaton, the founder of OneGreatFamily.com on July 7th. He told me their website uses only 15-20 servers.

Upon hearing this, former BYU Computer Science professor Dr. Phil Windley remarked, "FamilySearch is over architected."

Ten years ago I begged LDS Church employees to use the OneGreatFamily.com code—it already worked and was written by Alan Eaton and other former Church employees. Instead, they hired more than 200 people and created a complex, monstrous mess that consumes far too many computer resources.

If confronted today, I bet every one of those church employees would justify their job and work.

Trusting that her money would be well spent, after hearing about this, which project would the widow feel more pain?

If turnover was the norm, employees would make it easy on the transition team.
They would remember the pain and frustration they experienced when they began their job. Extra attention would be given to make things easier for the next person or transitioning team.

We cannot have one standard for widows and another for church career employees.
We hate career politicians, so why should the widow's mite be spent to create an aristocracy of church career employees?

Should our greatest achievement be to become a full-time church career employee?
We could then receive a full salary, and health and retirement benefits comparable to those of Congress—especially today when so many are unemployed or partially employed.

Once hired, we could then expect to be promoted to positions despite our incompetence because someone thought we would be good for the job.

If I was promoted to a church position I was not qualified for, I would resign and not spend the widow's mite.

I do feel strongly about one thing—the proper role of church government and employment must require asking the same question repeatedly, "Is this the best use of the widow's mite?"

For some, church employment may be a marvelous blessing. For others, to borrow the words a former Bishop told me, "Be happy that God spared you a miserable path by shutting that door. We don't often see it that way, but it can be true."

Isn't it time churches end full-time career employment?

On Obese Career Church Employees (June 8, 2011)
Several times a particular career church employee has told me he is fat. In all sincerity and with all due respect, I suggested that maybe it is time he stop eating those meals at Church headquarters.

I took a poll and my children unanimously agreed that fat, glutinous career church employees and the widow's mite are contradictions.

Yes there may be medical, addiction or genetic issues but are you aware of any overweight people in third-world nations?

How do struggling Church members feel in those nations when they meet or see obese General Authorities (clergy) on TV?

I have difficulty losing weight myself in prosperous times but reason suggests it is highly probable that circumstance may be forced upon me soon as the United States sinks deeper into this depression.

While I lie in bed wondering how much longer I can feed and provide shelter for my wife and children as we approach worldwide food shortages, I wonder how few career church employees would give up their position so another can have a chance.

Whether or not I can successfully end career church employment, I hope my sons will.