I want to thank and acknowledge exminion for sharing her perspective of being invited to church activities when there is no genuine concern for a person's welfare.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2240712,2240900#msg-2240900

I briefly served as the ward activities chairperson for a short time after serving as a ward missionary. It probably was one of the most boring callings because nobody knew what the heck the person was supposed to do. I wasn't given keys to church buildings, yet I was ***required*** to show up for the duration for the activity (basketball, dinners and socials).

So here's what blew my mind! Some prominent sisters in the ward had invited several of their assigned inactive sisters and their families to a ward dinner. However, NONE of those that invited these unknown families were there to greet them and fellowship and socialize with them. It was an awkward situation because they were asking about Sister ____ and of course, she was nowhere to be found. I alerted one of the counselors in the bishopric and he was too busy gossiping away. He told me "Just deal with it, Brother Goop."

My next choice would have been to utilize our ward missionaries except that there weren't any at the dinner. I did contact a set of full time sister missionaries that had recently been assigned to the ward. One was sitting in the foyer twirling the curls in her hair while the other one was pacing back and forth. When I explained the awkward situation, one sister blurted out, "We're kind of busy. We invited several investigators to this dinner. We are waiting for them so we can introduce them to the _____ (family) and the _____(another family). " Both of the name dropping families didn't even bother coming to ward dinners because they were too good to attend them.

So I mentioned that they might assist with helping to reactivate some members so they could be happy with activity in the Lord's church (I myself was an RM). One hastily added "Oh, we no longer work with inactives." The other one piped up. "Yeah, our mission president said our [missionary] time is too precious to be frivolously wasted on dead wood. We're here to baptize."

Anybody that has attended church socials knows that members can be very cliquish if not stand-offish. So these "visitors" were relegated to sitting in the far corner. In my ward, certain families staked out certain tables, then mix in the territorial high priests and then the undesirables (older singles, divorcees and widowed) all trying to claim a satisfactory position within the slippery slope of Mormon social hierarchy. I don't believe that any of them ever returned after such a fiasco.

The social order of the Mormons at a ward dinner gathering? Yeah, that sounds just about right.

They sound so boring (and pretentious) to me now, that even the food wouldn't be a draw to want to be enticed to one of those get-togethers.

Well, the inactives that attended the dinner learned their lesson rather quickly, that they would not be welcomed nor included in the ward's social life. I'm sure that it was a painful couple of hours, but at least they knew not to bother ever again.