Today after having been inactive since he was 10 years old, my son received a letter inviting him to a District Conference later this month the theme of which is -

“Hastening the work of Salvation through the faith, prayers, and efforts of individual members, their families and full time missionaries”.

Having been excommunicated many, many years ago I didn’t get one (stamps foot and pouts), but being such an evil person I couldn’t resist telling my son that the translation of the “Hastening of the work…” part was –

“ Hurry up, get a move on, we are praying that after 25 years of total inactivity you will pull your finger out and hasten back for the salvation of TSCC. As we all know Faith can move mountains, but she is inactive at the moment and the efforts of our few individual members and their families are not enough to clean the toilets, the full time missionaries have no-one to teach in this God-forsaken little town and most importantly we want more tithing”.

My son’s reaction to this invitation needs no translation -

“WTF? The church and I have ignored each other’s existence for 25 years and now they’re inviting me back. What the shit makes them think I’d want to put on a white shirt every Sunday, shave my face, cut my hair, hide my tattoo, stop smoking and drinking and pretend I wasn’t gay so I could be part of some mind f…..g cult that was started by a low life pedophile and adulterer? Not only that, why the bloody hell should I be expected to pay some billionaire organisation for the privilege of cleaning their shitty dunnies?

Sounds like a form letter that was sent to everybody that is on the district's records. Your son should not take it personally----just throw it out along with all other junk mail.

Yes it was a form letter with his name on top but he didn't take it personally as he was grinning from ear to ear and we both had a laugh about TSCC taking 25 years to catch up with him.

One thing he finally admitted though was that both he and his two older sisters stopped attending about a year before they told me they didn't want to go any more.

Apparently when I used to drop them off at the chapel on Sundays they would walk in through the back door, hide in the toilets until the meeting started then head off out the front door and go downtown to spend their tithing money playing arcade games.

Being only a small branch (with a disproportionate number of screaming babies and naughty toddlers) in a small Australian country town 40 kilometres from home, no-one ever really noticed their absence.

So I guess now that they all played their part in hastening the work 25 years ago - hastening the work of apostacy.

Mail his response back to them.

Nah, he thinks a better form of protest would be to hold a "gay pride" march around the block where the chapel is one Sunday. But I don't think anyone would even notice as it is such a small branch everyone would be too busy doing their multiple callings.

Hastening the work of resigning.