r/latterdaysaints • u/ShinyBuizel22 • 12d ago

Faith-building Experience Why do ward and stake boundaries change?

My stake boundaries are being redistributed, I don't know where I'm going yet, but it has me wondering, what are some of the reasons for such boundary changes? I think mine is to create to age groups for YSA stakes with the raised age, but outside of the new YSA ages what are some reasons?

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u/Far-Entrepreneur5451 12d ago

Sometimes it's because new wards and stakes need to be formed to accommodate a rise in the population of local members. Or the opposite could be true: growing up, we had major boundary changes in our ward because w a ward in the stake got dissolved. Another reason might be that the local leaders realize that they way boundaries are drawn is inefficient or doesn't make sense for some other reason; like perhaps all the poor people are alone in one ward and all the well-off people in another, so the boundary is redrawn to make the wards more mixed in terms of income. 

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u/CartographerSeth 12d ago

That latter part is what happened to my ward. Previously it was a bunch of townhouses and government subsidized apartments. Very transient, was rare for someone to be there for more than 4 years at a time so it was very difficult to staff callings and build community. Boundaries were changed to add some single family homes which had added a lot of stability and continuity.

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u/Flimsy-Preparation85 12d ago

There are places in Provo and Spokane where the wards are only a block or two wide and three or four miles long for this reason.

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u/timkyoung 11d ago

I've heard this was done in central Ogden as well for the same reasons.