Vital presence

LDS Church membership growing with Valley

January 10, 2006

JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - They're relatively new on the world's religious scene, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is marching in greater numbers than ever before - both worldwide and locally.

The LDS Church - also known as the Mormon Church - now boasts roughly 25,000 Alaska members, with more than 3,500 in the Valley, and their numbers are growing fast. Rapid Mat-Su population growth in general, coupled with aggressive missionary outreach and family-centered activities, have helped the church expand to roughly 5 percent of the Valley's population.

Worldwide, LDS members total more than 12 million, with an additional 1 million new members joining every three years.

Valley resident Michael Logan provides spiritual oversight to LDS chapels throughout the Mat-Su area. As the ecclesiastical leader for the area, Logan presides over six chapels in Palmer, Wasilla, Willow, Glennallen and Valdez.

&#8220This Valley is a very good place for families,” he said. &#8220We are family-oriented, so it is a natural place for us.”

Organized in 1830, the LDS church formed after 14-year-old Joseph Smith claimed to have a vision in which God told him all churches on Earth had veered from

the truth after Jesus and his first apostles died. Smith claimed that God told him to restore the true church of Jesus Christ.

Eventually, Smith led a group of followers from New York to Illinois, where he was murdered in 1844 by a mob that was angered by his beliefs.

Brigham Young, Smith's successor, then led the followers to Utah, where the church settled successfully.

From those early years, the church has now expanded to more than 26,000 congregations across the world.

In 1957, a group of Valley residents established the first Mat-Su Latter-day Saints chapel in Palmer.

This past August, the most recent Mat-Su LDS chapel opened across the street from Colony High School, where 900 members quickly packed the pews each Sunday.

&#8220As we grow there will be more chapels built,” Logan said. &#8220At our projected rate, we will probably have another two chapels in the next five years.”

The new chapel contains time-tested LDS fixtures that have successfully contributed to the expansion of the church throughout the world in recent years. Emphasis on youth training, along with programs where young adults can meet each other, and family-centered activities all help grow and preserve church membership numbers.

Equipped with a standard LDS seminary for high school students, the new chapel trains nearly 60 high-schoolers each morning, from 6 to 7 a.m.

After morning seminary classes, students head across the street for school at Colony High. Similar LDS chapels in Palmer and Wasilla also sit near high schools, making the morning study sessions easy for students to attend. In total, more than 200 high-schoolers actively participate in early-morning seminaries.

&#8220The seminary is a religious foundation that helps young people understand their religion so they can decide whether they want to be a part of it or not,” Logan said. &#8220In the case of young people, it also prepares them to serve as missionaries.”

More than 60,000 young men and women currently serve as LDS missionaries around the world, including the Valley, where missionaries travel door to door preaching the tenets of the LDS church.

Theologically, the Latter-day Saints hold to teachings that many mainline denominations do not. One unique tenet of the LDS faith is that individual families can last for eternity so long as they are consecrated in sacred LDS temples.

The emphasis on eternal families affects many of the church outreaches.

Like other large chapels in the Valley, the new facility contains three separate congregations of 300 each. Each congregation shares the facility at different times on Sunday morning.

One particular congregation is reserved for single adults between the ages of 21 and 30.

Throughout the year, the young adults hold special activities and sporting events to get to know each other.

&#8220It is so young adults can meet and date and maybe find someone to marry,” said Gary Adams, a clerk and member at the new chapel.

As LDS families continue to form and expand, and as new people move into the Valley, Adams said he expects to see more chapels crop up as needed.

&#8220Before this new one was built, we were sharing the building in Wasilla, and it was just more congregations than normal for that building,” he said. &#8220There were just so many members.”

Contact Joel Davidson at

352-2266 or joel.davidson@

frontiersman.com.