Apparently the brethren are worried that not enough young people are following the church's proper pathway

mission -> marriage -> children -> finish education

so they have started a new dating program at church colleges

https://www.thechurchnews.com/members/2024/1/24/24049772/ces-date-night-events-reset-dating

"Within the next week, the Church Educational System will be hosting a Date Night at each of its institutions: Brigham Young University, BYU–Idaho, BYU–Hawaii and Ensign College, even BYU–Pathway Worldwide and Institutes of Religion."

"During a devotional broadcast last year, the Church’s second-most senior leader shared loving but direct counsel to young single Latter-day Saints regarding marriage and dating.

On Sunday, May 21, 2023, President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency — sitting side by side with his wife, Sister Kristen M. Oaks — asked his young adult listeners to remember an important truth: “A loving Heavenly Father has a plan for His young adults, and part of that plan is marriage and children.”

During his address, President Oaks showed two charts: one showing the reduction in the percentage of adults in the United States who marry and the other showing the increase in the average age of Church members who marry. He also noted a national poll which showed that the importance to adults of having children has dropped in the last 25 years from 66% to 33%.

With that in mind, he reiterated dating counsel he gave in 2005. To the single men, he said: “Gather your courage and look for someone to pair off with. Start with a variety of dates with a variety of young women, and when that phase yields a good prospect, proceed to courtship. … Men have the initiative, and you men should get on with it.”

"BYU President C. Shane Reese and Sister Wendy Reese will kickoff the party with Kahoot!, an interactive online game/trivia platform. The night will also feature a variety of activities for a variety of interests including karaoke, dancing, bowling, board games, video games, international cinema, a “Meet Cosmo” activity, s’mores, service and food. Admission is free."

The other schools sound just as exciting - like Ensign College:
"Students can enjoy free tacos and treats, play games, mingle and interact with President and Sister Kusch, who will be responding to dating questions during a question-and-answer session. Participants can also earn raffle tickets to enter for prizes at the end of the evening."

So in other words, not enough baby (future) tithe-payers are being produced. That $100 billion dollar trust fund is not going to keep itself going, people! Get to it.

Missionary program isn't bringing in many new members. So maybe missionary position instead?

Will there be information about Soaking ?

The secret slogan of the G.A.s has always been, "Get 'em while they're young". Roped, tied, and branded.

Because the world not only needs more people (8 billion is just not enough to destroy the planet and fuel the wars)-- what the world really really needs is more LDS Mormon people!

I guess with birth rates declining rapidly, this is the chance for Mormons to increase their rates and up their percentages and claim the fastest growing religion as it declines.

Perhaps The Oaks and the Kushes might stick with lawn bowling….or lawn darts….the great blessings of nepotism don’t fall on everyone….raising a passel of junior tithe payers is best done with a good solid cash flow that the average member only dreams about….geez I’d have had a few more with that 120k stipend and the warm smiles of a loving gawd beaming down from heaven….as one entitled dough boy once said….I wish I was as sure of my daily bread as I am of my salvation

" . . . I wish I was as sure of my daily bread as I am of my salvation"

Nails it. That is pretty much Mormonism in a nut shell for most of them.

Yep. That's pretty much the entire scam. You go without and give money now for the promise of being rich in an afterlife. People are so gullible.

My dad gave my grandma's house to the church when she died. It is now part of their parking lot. When I saw her sweet little house gone with all it's history, like dad built her another room when he was 16 with some help from neighbors, and now all I see is asphalt, I find it an apt metaphor for what that church does to its members. Asphalt. Something to walk on, drive on and park on.

My parents really needed the money from the sale of that tiny house and it would have been a great starter home for some young couple. Oh, well . . .

Exactly. That's a good metaphor. The same happened to a grandfather in my family. He had a house he built with garden galore in Utah. They raised their many kids there. The church built a stake center across the street. The kids fought to keep the house, but guess who ultimately got hold of it.

when it comes to birthing the most tithing future candidates, I'm sure my first wife & I beat all of the 15 & most of the other GAs, we have NINE (yes 9) children;

Can anyone here top that???


..waiting...

Perhaps this is a bit off the OP's topic, but this is what came to mind as I read their post. Let's not forget what the pathway of early marriage, having kids right away, and then finishing school progression sets up going forward. This is where the money is, and it is always about the money. Here is what I came up with when I tried to figure out why I did not have the sense to leave early on in my life.

My experience. Between raising small kids, earning a living, and church callings, I had little bandwidth to do anything else but survive. When I ran into bothersome things, they went on the shelf, and I worked around them. From what I could see, things seemed to work for others around me. So what if I was pantomiming my death in three gruesome ways during the temple ceremony? All my friends and people I looked up to in the ward were doing it. It was not causing me undue distress, and so I was not motivated to spend the time to dig into more. Frankly, temple trips took a lot of time, and I was more worried about checking the box and then having enough time to eat something on the way home and still have enough time to get the babysitter back to their house at a reasonable hour. And I paid tithing so that I could do all of this, and I had a good job and could manage it.

Like most Mormon men, I was an elder during this phase, and my callings ran the gambit of teaching Sunday School, YM/YW, and elders quorum presidency. These callings are mostly about many hands making the work light and helping others. For some, I did have to have a current temple recommend, which meant paying tithing.

Then, after being 5+ kids down the road, I found myself in high priest-level callings. This is where things got complicated for me, as I ran up against being required to carry out policy and ensure that others carried out their callings in a manner consistent with policy. This is where I first ran into ethical conundrums that I could not easily work around. It is one thing to write checks to help an elderly widow pay their bills; it is quite another to be asked to sit on a disciplinary council. By this time, the church was integrated into every aspect of my life, and now the stakes for leaving were quite high. I was also expected to maintain a current temple recommend, which meant paying tithing.

When in doubt as to why something is the way it is, or why something new is being pushed, keep in mind that in the end, it is always about the money.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2024 04:32PM by Mannaz.

I'd say that is totally on topic. Yours is a story shared by so many. The Mormons have got a very good gimmick going for them. Glad you saw through it.

That's a great post.

The church wants people overwhelmed, so committed to immediate problems that they can't bother with the big questions.

It's called "Being one with the herd..."

That there are shortcomings is easy to acknowledge, but if you truly believe that the alternative simply isn't conceivable, the shortcomings (as opposed to those longcomings of our frivolous youth) are easy up with which to put*...






*Mrs. Taylor, my 6th-grade teacher, used a paddle, and to this day, I can't end a sentence with a preposition ... and I can diagram a sentence like nobody's mofo...

I may not have made it clear, but I had two points. The first was the inanity of universities having to schedule events like these for 20 year olds.

The second point was that LD$, Inc. has a standard life path it wants all people to follow which involves having children as soon as possible - even before starting their careers. As you so eloquently noted, that has long term consequences. More mormon young adults are realizing that, and declining to follow it - instead waiting until they have graduated and started their careers before marrying and having children. As summer noted, the church is concerned that will decrease the number of BIC tithe-payers in the future.

So they plan events like this to try to encourage everyone to get back on the church's life track.

It is indeed about the money.

Wow. Video games and free tacos?

I can't think of a more exciting social event for third-graders.

NPR ran a story about the inability of people in states with anti-abortion laws to seek abortions after having been raped on Wednesday.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states

From that story comes the following profile:

"Each number, a story

Samantha Hansen has been an outspoken rape survivor for years, but only recently shared that she became pregnant as a result of the attack. She was a college
student at Brigham Young University in 2014, when she was watching Netflix with someone she considered a friend.

Samantha Hansen is opposed to a Utah bill that would keep clinics from offering abortions to rape victims who can't provide a law enforcement-generated
case number.

Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune

"I went into the other room to go pop popcorn," she recalls. "It's my belief that he slipped something into my Coca-Cola, because when I came back and
started sipping my Coke, it wasn't too long before I couldn't move a single muscle."

She doesn't remember the details of the rape. "The rest of the night is bits and pieces of flashes — and me trying to fight to regain control of my limbs."

The next day, she took a long shower. "Then I went through my apartment — anything that was touched that night went in a garbage bag, which then went in
the dumpster outside of my apartment," she says. Then she took the emergency
contraception pill called Plan B.
Like many rape survivors, she didn't go to the doctor or report the incident to law enforcement; she just tried to pretend it never happened. In the following weeks, she couldn't sleep, she lost weight, and her grades fell.

Weeks later, she noticed she'd missed her period, and a pregnancy test came back positive, despite having taken Plan B. She went to Planned Parenthood
to talk through her options and wrestled with the decision. She had decided to continue the pregnancy but ended up having a miscarriage.

Hansen still lives in Utah. She has
written about
why she thinks abortion bans without rape exceptions harm rape survivors. Last year, she
spoke out against a state bill
that would have required rape survivors to file a police report to have access to abortion.

"Having had my autonomy stripped of me that night that I was raped, having the ability to make that choice of — can I take back control of my body and
either keep or abort? — was so, so pivotal to my healing," she explains."

Combining the NPR story with the original post, I would say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is being tone deaf (again). I'll bet that there are a lot of Samantha Hansons who were raped by their returning RMs before they got married. I mean with all that pent-up sex drive...Jesus!

The church has been holding singles dances and dating events for decades. I don't see this as being anything new.

From the title I thought you were going on a date with the BYU pres.