I think the loss of enthusiasm for the church is the same reason I lost enthusiasm working for big corporations. Everything was ran by committee and there was a overpaid CEO at the top who had no vision. You would just work on stuff that much of it went nowhere. You showed up and that gets boring.

The church has no vision. Some old guy ends up in the top seat while committees circle jerk and the result is a camel that was intended to be a horse. The church has plenty of money to keep the circus going but the members are growing weary of stupid slogans and crazy decisions. New temples generate some excitement for awhile but it’s gotten ridiculous.

It’s the same thing corporations do. They eventually do some really stupid shit and hit the down slope unless something drastically changes. Mormonism will always be remembered as white shirts and name tags and polygamy. Nothing will change that and no you can’t kill the use of Mormon.

> It’s the same thing corporations do.
> They eventually do some really stupid
> shit and hit the down slope


    So...  What do you think the mormon cybertruck will look like?

It's almost like they are a big corporation too. :-)

Will the CEO be nimble to pick the right products for the future? Or will they keep producing buggy whips and wagon wheels?

Will temples be the product that become the Sear's catalog or Amazon delivery?

Stay tuned.

    There used to be a lot to do as a mormon teen ... or better stated, "There used to be a lot to do as a horny mormon teen!"

I take it your little factory was busy before it was sealed to a celestial bride in the temple.

    I had productivity goals to meet!
    I had productivity goals to mete!
    I had productivity goals to meat!


    I trust I've covered all the bases...
    I trust I've covered all the basis...
    I trust I've covered all the bays, sis.



    The English language is a lot of fun, even with your clothes on!

They wish to appear as dynamic, but inertia rules; I think Dieter Uchtdorf is acutely aware of this, others = ?

Question: are they Still doing the annual lesson rotation over 4 years????



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2024 01:36AM by GNPE.

Yep. The four year rotation is still going. It's BOM this year.

PHIL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yep. The four year rotation is still going. It's
> BOM this year.

Original :)

Uchtdorf can still pass a pilot’s physical. Russ and Holland will soon be gone. Oaks won’t last long. Chances of Uchtdorf becoming prophet are pretty good. He’s not part of the Utah good ol boys club. He’s a fairly liberal church leader. He might make some interesting changes in the church.

The Q15 is factional. That's why Uchtdorf never grew powerful and was banished immediately after his sponsor's death.

He lacks the network to be a strong leader whether as an apostle or a prophet, among whom decisions are made consensually.

He won't be able to change much.

Not as an apostle. You are just an employee. As president of the church you not only are chief executive but you own the corporate shares of the church as long as you are alive. Look at all the crazy stuff Russell M Nelson has done. Yeah the church tends to be run by committee but sometimes the Big Guy uses his authority.

The reality is you can’t change church’s too quickly. The RLDS lost 1/3 of it’s membership changing too fast.

Nelson has changed nothing of substance. When major adjustments occur, they are subject to unanimity among the 15. As you know, on at least one occasion an apostle sent out of the country so that he could not block the proposed changes.

The internet has taken a lot of wind out of their sails.

    Remember when counting how many doors you knocked on per day was a standard of measurement for missionaries?

    Do they now count how many feeds they invade with a message from the lord?

Boredom. going to church is like watching paint dry, grass grow.

Other pastors/ministers get paid, a few rise to the top & get their own jets, nice expensive trips paid, and speak to large congregations every week;
When LDS leaders do such, it's pretty much on the down-low.


I've seen other congregations put on skits that increase attention to the message and audience participation; the most for LDS is when a rank-and-file member (mostly menfolk) gets to stand up before the 'ward' and regurgitate a GA speech that's already been published.


the 'Jesus is Coming <soon>' shick has pretty much lost its appeal, it's OPD.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2024 12:44PM by GNPE.

    Perhaps recognition should be made that "church" isn't about having fun or enjoyment...

    "Church" is about battering the "Natural Man" into bloody submission, lest "Natural Man" trap you into going to a lesser kingdom.

    It may be that the church of the first half of the 20th century erred in making church fun and enjoyable! Certainly, nothing in religious literature proclaims that going to church, MIA, Seminary, Sunday School, or Primary school should be fun or enjoyable.

    If 'fun' and/or 'enjoyable' are found in sacred texts, it would be news to me.  Maybe 'fun' and 'enjoyable' should replaced with 'lift' and 'tote,' as in bales and barges?

    If ghawd made salvation and exaltation easy, everybody would be doing it!!  

    

They've backed a lot of the wrong horses in recent years, including certain mainstreamnarratives.

Permit me one more-

Although some Mormon 'tbms' can do & can caught, ...but through Repentance & Forgiving, they're welcomed back to 'Fellowship' even though the basic person hasn't changed, with little or no church consequences.

ChurchCo is a bully, sometimes subtle, sometimes not.

The leaders are basically Actors.

Well, I coulda been an actor
But I wound up here
I just have to look good
I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

Maybe it's because the church can't decide what it is? It actively promotes some things in some areas it discourages in others.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1f-0-rrf4d4

That’s the result of running by committee which the church currently does.

"Some old guy ends up in the top seat while committees circle jerk and the result is a camel that was intended to be a horse."
----------------

If Big Nellie reads this you might find a Revelation coming explaining that "horses" in the Book of Mormon were really Camels.

We have proof Camels were here because they are on Packs of Cigarettes and the mascot symbol of Campbell University.

Can't get much better proof than that!

When people get worried that our current president is old and senile I just say I grew up in a church that was ran by senile old men and it just manages to keep going.

Rusty & his cohorts don't represent much of a future for today's younger generations; pick-up basketball doesn't feed the soul now that we have the internet with fiberoptics, world-wide social, political & economic messes if not chaos.

People want something to satisfy them more than superficial, quickly transitory,



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2024 05:31PM by GNPE.

    I think mormon logic regarding living a temple-worthy life is based on the above-noted quote I borrowed from an anonymous guardian angel.

    If I'm wrong, please don't tell me, as I am temporarily suffering from a delusion of adequacy.

    Thank you.

That's not what your fifth wife said.

Titled: "I worry that boredom at church, as much as anything else, scares away Latter-day Saints"

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/07/15/gordon-monson-i-worry-that-boredom/

A few excerpts:

"...area leaders, stake presidents, bishops, Relief Society presidents, counselors, clerks, teachers, speakers in Sunday meetings, missionaries — are not paid. They are asked to fill those significant roles, nonetheless, as duty-bound volunteers. Their training might be and often is limited because, well, they’re amateurs. They’re winging it, relying on varying amounts of education, life experience and common sense to get church jobs — known as “callings” — done."

"The problem with depending on a bunch of amateurs inside the church, especially in promoting increased faith among members, can be exactly that — they’re amateurs. Sometimes they don’t know what they’re doing or don’t know the best way to lead, teach, inspire and motivate.

Consequently, Latter-day Saint gatherings, including sacrament meetings, the faith’s main Sunday worship service, as well as instructional classes of various kinds — such as Sunday school — for adults and kids, can be an utter drag. In some cases, they’re about as boring, as redundant and remedial, as unimaginative and uninspiring as learning and relearning the alphabet."

"The first is that many preachers and teachers inside the church are just plain lousy at it. They may be good-hearted, well-intended and well-prepared, but they’re as dry, drab and dull as the devil."

"The second is a different matter, one that’s the church’s own fault — its emphasis on keeping lessons and talks firmly inside the guardrails of narrow and strict doctrine, so much so that they are made to be stale and monotonous. Even monotony can be intriguing if it is presented in a way that allows for varied modern-day application of doctrinal principles."

"Maybe the church wants to cull the herd and simply let the hungry, the eager to learn, the defiant walk out of church doors. The defectors then could be replaced by the happily bored, those who find comfort in hearing the same limited messages over and over again, those who do not want discussion or expression, rather the familiar humdrum that reaffirms to them that everything is OK, as long as they don’t ask questions and quietly, dutifully follow along. Sacrament meeting speakers and Sunday school teachers might present no fresh perspectives, spurring no deep thought, just passing along the same quotes and scriptural passages as members have heard a thousand times before. There’s safety in that.

There’s less safety in discussing, dissecting and debating whether the story about Captain Moroni, a Book of Mormon commander, was an account of heroism or a cautionary tale."

"All of which is to say, don’t bore rank-and-file members with the same ol’ same ol’, let them, you know, explore and think these things through, and come to their own conclusions. Let them voice what’s on their minds.

A church that consistently has told its members to rely on the aforementioned spirit for direction, that that’s their right, their privilege, can give those same members space to hear and study and ponder various paths to the truth, to find it without being afraid that such exploration will lead to apostasy.

The way I figure it, boredom and its twin siblings, educational torpidity and weariness, are just as likely to chase away members."

I thought the same thing when I saw this essay. Monson is of course right - the LDS curriculum is so narrow that by the time a kid is out of Primary, they have heard every bit of doctrine they are ever going to hear for the rest of their life, or very nearly so.

OTOH, Mormonism has way more than its fair share of nutcases. Denver Snuffer and Chad Daybell come to mind, with their inventive interpretation of scripture. I'm not sure if Ammon Bundy is a religious nutcase, or just a garden variety nutcase. Several of the Montana Freemen, back in the day, were Utah nutcases. The SLTrib just had a very long article about #DezNat - Deseret Nationalists, yet another group of nutcases. And then there are the nutcase polygamists, and nutcase survivalists, and......

So the church leadership is trying to ride herd on a group of people, many of whom are a few bricks shy of a load. They can't manage a bunch of "religious creativity". That's what got JS killed and the Mormons driven out of the US in the first place.

They had enthusiasm?

    It might be difficult to tell the difference between mormon enthusiasm and mormon euthanasia . . . or getting called to preach the mormon gospel to youth in Asia.

R&File members who make suggestions or ask for better information or policy - procedures are routinely smacked down into conformance-compliance with the SOP, and that's the PH 'brothers'.

If they'd focus on such as Honesty & Kindness, their claimed leadership would spin out of control post haste...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2024 06:34PM by GNPE.

The Second Anointing.

As hard as TBMs have worked, the majority will never get the coveted second anointing. Now they know it exists they are feeling unimportant and downtrodden. They just didn't make enough money to make the church happy and make it notice them.

    Remember, the really 'good' members of the church didn't 'earn' their money, they were blessed with it.  This view allows church leaders to do away with having to judge people; they just check tithing totals.

    What if there's a magic number for 'tithing paid'?

>     What if there's a magic number for
> 'tithing paid'?

Could it be, Jesus, that you were just a nickel short of becoming an apostle?

    I last paid tithing while still at the Y, on my $90/week salary, with a house rental payment of $75/month.  (My parents were paying my tuition, and my temple bride's parents were sending her monthly 'fun' money...)

    Was I blessed, or what!!  So don't try to prove to me the church isn't true!!

Still, just one more nickel. . .

Apparently the adults U mentioned hadn't heard much about you or your lust-filled ways...

GOOD GOING !!!

It's so ridiculous and sad that the church demands their ten percent cut from broke college students. I needed every dime I earned in grad school and then some.