You Are Now Ours: The LDS Church in NYC

For those not familiar with the LDS Church, our congregations are divided geographically into what are called wards.

Here's a short 2 minute video that explains what a ward is in our church community.

I've always wondered how those not in the LDS faith move to a brand new place with no friends or family close by.  It must take a lot of bravery and confidence.  Or, I imagine it would, because I have never had to.

When my two youngest kids and I lived in France one summer, one of the first things we did was try to find the LDS Church building.  At the building we met two sister missionaries and were invited to a baptism which allowed us to meet several members of the ward.  By the time we attended Sunday service, we were already part of the family.


Here in NYC, the wards are divided based on subway lines, not neighborhoods.  Our ward is relatively close to the 1,2,3 subway lines in lower Manhattan.  We are called the Union Square Ward because our church building is near Union Square.

New York City's population is .36% Mormon.

Which is a huge change from Pleasant Grove, Utah which is 89% Mormon.  Which might explain why my last ward's boundary looked like this.

Almost every home in our ward has a Mormon living there. 

After a long day and night getting moved into NYC  , we pulled ourselves out of bed (the 2 hour difference from Utah is felt the most in the mornings) and went to church.

We have attended service in this ward before, so it was nice to see familiar faces.

As the Bishop (the congregational ecclesiastical leader) opened the meeting, he welcomed the Stake President, President Buckner, who was sitting next to him on the stand.  The stand is the area behind the pulpit.  Multiple wards are grouped together in what is called a stake.  Manhattan is one stake with 15 wards and branches (small congregations are called branches).

I didn't think anything of the announcement because a Stake President will frequently visit the different wards within his stake.

The Bishop then said that the Stake President was going to speak to us.

Pres. Buckner stood up and said that he was there to call a new Bishop.

He then gave some interesting statistics.  I learned some others that day as well, that I'll also include.

• The Manhattan Stake has 15 units, because of this, the stake has permission to have 15 members on the High Council (a group of High Priests who support the Stake President and his two counselors), most have 12.  
• The average time someone is a Bishop of a ward in the Manhattan Stake is 1.8 years.  That number is skewed a little high because two bishops have been currently serving for 7 years.  Typically an LDS Bishop serves for 5 years.  
• In the Manhattan Stake, there are 3000 members of the Relief Society, the women's organization within the Church.  Many stakes have around 900 and many much less than that.  
• The membership of the Manhattan Stake has a turnover rate between 20 and 30 percent, every year.  

President Buckner said that being the Stake President is like running an aircraft carrier.  There are airplanes constantly landing and taking off.

While learning all of this, I was starting to wonder if we would just be viewed as one of those many airplanes.  Today you land, tomorrow you take off.  Please get out of our way and leave quickly so that we can get back to work.

Later that night, I ran into the wife of the newly called Bishop.  We ended up riding the subway home together (another great reason to divide wards by subway lines.)

She said something that brought me comfort.

"Once you move to New York City, you are now ours.  We will immediately bring you into our family.  Some accept the embrace and jump right in, others just wait on the sidelines until it is their time to go back home."

I plan on jumping right in.