I accompanied my mom yesterday to her ward. I agreed to this as she sits alone when one of her church friends is out of town. My mom did not want to arrive too early as she did not want to be asked to give the invocation. Instead we arrived about 4 min late. The opening hymn was in progress and my mom sat in a middle pew next to her church friend.

From the middle, I had a pretty good view of the chapel.

Announcements: they were asking for volunteers for the upcoming church celebration of pioneer day. The ward is responsible for a pie booth. I thought to myself: Sure I'll volunteer for 50 bucks an hour. -I'm not going to be in the area, but it was a funny thought.

Sacrament in the ward. In my previous visit in 2019, they had one priest age young man and two deacons. The ward uses 3 priests and six deacons. Yesterday, there were no young men. They were using 3 elders (missionaries) and high priests to fill all 9 duties.

When sacrament had concluded, the men leave. They dismiss themselves instead of waiting for the bishopric who is conducting to dismiss the those administering the sacrament.

Another oddity involves the organist. She leaves the stand after playing the the hymns to sit with her spouse. Before singing the the concluding hymn, she has to ascend the the stand. Additionally, a sister who played a special arrangement on the piano walked up to the stand and walked back down. I remember all the sacrament participants sitting on the stand for the entire duration.

The talks: This was the ugly part. Members are assigned to read the latest conference talks. Very few people are paying attention. I looked around and half of the people were busy on their phones. The church sucked out any creativity in giving a semi-interesting sacrament talk.

I heard a few crying kids and I liked the little boy making airplane noises :) I could see four young women. They were in the same family.

What was not heard during sacrament: No Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, no blessings upon Nelson or the current GA's or local leaders. All scriptures referenced in the talks were from the NT of the Bible.

Prayers were very simple and a lady who offered the opening prayer used all the wrong pronouns (you and your) instead of thee thou and thine.

People were nice to me and my mom. I wore a solid color polo shirt and cotton pants with canvas tennis shoes.

We did not stay for the second meeting. Others left too so there was a mini car jam leaving the parking lot.

I guess the paucity of formality has finally arrived.

Who gave the Sacrament Gem?

Were there any Aaronic-aged boys in the audience?

Any idea on how many Aaronic-aged boys are on the ward roll?


For me the shocker is that "reading old Conference talks" counts as 'giving a talk'.

Really? Reading talks is standard.

It wasn't standard the last time I attended Sac meetings ... circa 1974

Reading someone else's canned General Conference talk did not used to be standard.

Well it was when I left the church over 20 years ago.

I was instructed to only use what was in the manual and nothing else. I wasn't to have people get up and give an experience or tell of experiences I had. I wasn't supposed to use the Ensign. With what was in the manual, I should have just read it and been done in 10 minutes.

They reminded me over and over and over again, although the women liked my lessons. I was biding my time waiting for Mr. Ex to be released from ex. sec. Then they wouldn't release me and so I told them I wouldn't be back and I never have been.

So they started this at least during the 1990s. They had started doing stuff like this in the YW when I was in YW in the late 1980s.

I remember that. Brigham Young had only one wife in the manual.

How about those lessons stressing how loving and mutually supportive Joseph's marriage to Lucy was?

Ugh!!!

In a futile attempt to reactivate me, a friend gave me a JS year book of lessons some fifteen years ago. I looked at the one chapter, which said nothing at all about polygamy, before tossing it in the trash.

How the church "cancels" women's histories and women's lives: isn't it marvelous? Isn't it wonderful?

And the women who support this cancelling like my polygamist sister. Ugh! I sent her the link in the church News about our Kerby ancestor and she thought it was so great all the hardships they endured.

With a mother like ours I guess I understand idolizing pain and marginalization.

And there is the bridge to the conspiracy theory thread and particularly to Henry's assertion that Amy Coney Barrett couldn't possibly be a misogynist.

The truth is that people participate in their own victimization, or the victimization of others like them, all the damn time.

Whats the point of even attending, you can only water down the gruel so much before there is no longer any nutritional value.

It was nice of you to accompany your mom. I thought people used to give original talks at least some of the time?

Back in the day they were always original talks. Right after my mission I used to really go all out for a Sacrament Meeting talk. So much so that I got invitations to other stakes in other counties to speak. Boy was that another life time. For me, and, for the Mormon church.

Now sounds like they might as well be reading Karl Marx along with the Conference talks. Is there a difference?

They used to assign "topics" 30 years ago. My wife and I were newlyweds and we we assigned repentance and forgiveness. What we were encouraged to do was to write an eight minute talk using scriptures and incorporate a quote from a church leader (if possible).

My wife stole the show as she kept repeating the phrase "I know I need to forgive Messy but..." She had everyone laughing so hard that I really couldn't keep a straight face talking about repentance.

Too funny! :)

Some people were good when I was young. But many just read their talk without a teleprompter. Their delivery was so dry many fell asleep. There was a thing that everyone had to speak so I endured some really awful talks. As a young adult every have some awful ones myself, rambling on about nothing. I prepared it but it was bad. At least when I left it was like someone reading a talk that was good enough for the masses and done by speak writers

I don't recall ever being "dismissed" after passing the sacrament. We just went back to our normal seats once that was finished.

As for the organist and guest pianists sitting in the congregation until they are to perform seems sensible to me. They can see what is going on and sit in a chair with a backrest. Presumably they sat in chairs on the stand in the past, so they at least had a backrest. In any case, that does not seem like that big a deal.

Not having **any** young men for sacrament service does seem like a big deal. If that goes on week after week, it just shines a spotlight on the fact that the ward has completely lost the youth of the church,

It is a lot like small towns in the Midwest. Once the local school shuts down, the town is well on the way to dying. When the Post Office shuts down, the town has died.


Oh, and needing a volunteer for a pie booth at Pioneer Day is precisely the sort of social event and volunteer work that people ought to be doing. Most organizations, not just churches, depend on volunteers for all sorts of jobs like that.

You could have volunteered to bring the beer for pie n beer day.

Are N/A beers mormon-legal?

In 1969, as the EQP, I had a couple of dairy-farmer elders show up at an EQ outing with a couple of six-packs of infamous 3.2 Utah beer, claiming that the alcohol content was so low it had no effect on them and thus was okay with ghawd, which they knew because they'd checked with him...