A relative recently told me an inflamtory story about what an EQ President said to a less-active brother who my relative works with. This brother rarely shows up to Church, but does like to baskeball. One day he showed up to play basketball at the Church, and the EQ President said with righteous indignation "Playing basketball is only for active brethern." This less-active man proceeded to leave. The EQ President said, "Where are you going?" The less-active man responded, "You said I could not play basketball because I have not been going to Church." The EQ President then said, "People who should know better should not show up and play basketball when they don't come to Church."

I bet that poor less-active brother will go the Church again! Can you believe the never of that EQ President? I hope that EQ President burns in Hell with the rest of self-haughty ones! I would love to write an nasty letter to that EQ president, his bishop, his stake president, and CC Tom Monson.

Wish I could say the same about myself when I die.

Anagrammy

That is ridiculous. When I was active there was one ward that brought in like 6-7 ringers to play for their team every week. I'm pretty sure that none of them had ever set foot in any other room besides the gym. That EQ is a toolshed.

Yep, Mormons are sure Christian aren't they?

We had similar things happen with the YM all the time. Some YM would bring their friends to play and sometimes include them as part of the ward team in the YM baketball chanmpionships among the stake or stakes. I was in one of the 'poor' and forgotten wards of the stake with a lot of converts and diversity. I suppose someone complained that our ward would win 'because they bring non-members to play'. Our YM who were already discriminated against were told to not bring friends, then someone came back and said 'its's missionary work'. Finally they had all these rules as to could and who could not participate and came up with something like the boy who wants to play must attend at least one Sunday and have been introduced to the missionaries. I thought it was dumb, the kids just wanted to play basketball and I think that if they had been welcome regardless they would have eventually felt so good they would have joined.

Some years later the Stake leadership is very concern at the very low numbers of ym going out on a mission from our ward and o ther wards in our area. There were times went there was 1 or 2, or even 0.

Fast forward some 10 years, the stakes in the area are encouraging the youth to bring their friends not only to play basketball but also to join them at Ym camp, conferences, etc. When before, only those who were seriously investigating would be welcome.

Even in my most TBM days I thought some of the people were nuts and damaging the church.

In this area we 'lose' our youth between the ages of 16-25, well over 50% of them. And the leaders could never figure out why.

You know what happened to these young men? They couldn't bring their friends, so they join them elsewhere. I used to feel so sad fo them, now I say Good for them!

D

Setting proconditions to play basketball will just piss them off. They'll probably never go back to basketball OR church.

He would probably deny a starving homeless person the bread and water because they weren't baptized.