Kinda like the strange paths that Nephi saw people wandering on in the Tree of Life vision–there’s a bunch of them. But the iron rod leads to a narrow and well-defined path to happiness.

The Robert Fulford quotation is fantastic and rings true in many respects. Thank you for sharing it.

In fairness to Tolstoy though, I don’t the first line of Anna Karenina was meant to lay out a sociological truth, so much as to express how those from disfunctional families perceive families other than their own. Families that seem happy (and probably often aren’t) also seem alike. And if one’s own family is unhappy, again it *seems* that this is so for reasons not shared by other families precisely because they often involve private disfunctions. The lack of transparency concerning what makes families (or groups) unhappy hides the fact that these properties are frequently shared.

So, still an insightful observation by Tolstoy. Or so I say.

I agree. our ward is currently around 660. Too big, but splitting it is not in my hands.

Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but if you have suggestions on how to overcome this particular “belonging” issue, then please join the (lively) discussion on my post on this topic.

I grew up in a ward such described. But for the last 12 years or so, I’ve lived in a ward (series of wards) with incredible growth. What was our ward when we moved here, is now 7-8. It’s almost like irrigating a wound — when you have such growth, stagnation has a hard time taking root. There’s always someone new at Church, every single week…

I think smaller wards are happier

In my own experience, this hasn’t been the case. In the last few years I’ve been part of one smaller ward and a larger one. The larger ward, regardless of the potential problems you noted, would be the one of these two that I would classify as “happier.” But I think a lot of that has to do with the general types of people in the larger ward but little to do with the size. In fact, I personally like a larger ward because it provides a larger base of people to socialize with and a larger group to choose from when looking to make new friends.

In the smaller ward it seemed like everyone *had* to be friends with everyone else or someone’s feelings would get hurt. Even just going to the temple with another woman from the ward caused shock from a few others we saw there who “didn’t know [we] were friends” and one in particular was hurt that neither of us had called to invite her to the temple, too (yes, I see the hypocrisy here since she didn’t call either of us before driving up to the temple).

I’ve seen unhappy branches where a visitor never goes unnoticed and the Branch President and RS President know everyone personally. I’ve seen very happy branches as well. And the same goes for large wards.

I do believe a lot of a ward’s happiness or unhappiness can be set by the tone of the leadership in that ward but I also think a lot has to do with how willing the members are to serve one another and pitch in when needed. In the unhappier of my two most recent wards, the visiting and home teaching efforts were abysmal and most of the members spent far too much time worrying about the social elements rather than trying to improve themselves as individuals.

No ward is perfect and I think everyone has a different comfort level when it comes to ward/branch size but I don’t think size is the only factor in determining the overall contentment of people in a ward or branch.