Many ‘missions’ are also side entrances or back offices of franchisees’ real businesses. The mission holders probably wouldn’t pay separate rent for an operation that likely isn’t bringing in enough to even cover it, but when it’s just taking up part of a bigger space it’s easy to ignore the loss; and that’s why no one is opening up new missions.

All the various sorts of mission operations have been shutting down and vanishing at a rapid rate for the last decade or two. And I don’t think we know yet how many of their dwindling number, were lost during the pandemic.

Hi Tory, didn’t you post an interview video with an ex-Scientologist who had been in the Sea Org in the last 5 or 10 years? He was, maybe, in his late 30s, and the interview was at an outdoor table at a restaurant. He talked about how the claims about the 76 million-year-old volcano made no geological sense. I don’t remember the interviewee’s name and I can’t find the video…can you please reply with a link?

Not only that — most of those missions aren’t real missions. They are places in people’s houses that are open a few random hours a week…

Also, haven’t they done almost nothing along these lines in the US, since the pandemic began? It seems they got a few people out doing photo ops after the hurricane that hit the ‘mecca’ side of Florida, but that wasn’t much and is all I can remember seeing in their homeland.

Mary, history shows that cults have surprising numbers of diehards and dead-enders who will remain loyal true believers even when it seems to make no sense, unfortunately.

One question is whether DM, like other authoritarian leaders, isn’t at the point where his underlings feed him so much misinformation in order to keep him happy and themselves safe, that he has no idea of how much the CofS may actually be shrinking.