Article content

Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is on an upward curve these days and that’s evidenced by what is happening in Calgary.

Elder Larry Spackman, who oversees the Mormon church in the city, said the church has established a new stake — an organizational unit comprised of wards (congregations) under the leadership of bishops.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Mormon church creates first Calgary stake in more than 15 years Back to video

The Bow River Stake is the seventh in the city and the first stake established in Calgary since 1999.

“That gives you the idea of a pretty significant event for us,” said Spackman. “When you consider there’s probably 3,000 members of the church or more in each stake, it’s a significant event for us to create another stake.

“We try to keep the stakes around 3,000 to 4,000 members. When they start to get up around 5,000 or 6,000 it gets too big, so we divide it.”

Spackman explained that under the church’s organization, a number of wards — usually between eight to 12 — fit together geographically to form a stake. In Calgary, it works out to be about 10 wards.