In our Stake, and I believe the church as a whole, is pushing for youth to do geneology work. THey want the youth to put their computer skills to use. They are now arranging sunday school classes around the issue.

It seems to me that there is a distinct effort to stop the obvious bleeding of members by keeping member's lives extremely busy with church work. In our ward, there is a hard push for temple attendance, service projects, seminary, geneology. In my perspective, there as an increased business of assignments, etc. I really do think it is a deliberate effort to keep people entrenched in the church, by having it dominate every area of their life.

Sick of it.

why would people want to stay with and organization that overworks them and fills all their free time with busy work? I think it will have the opposite effect.

It was the late '60 when we had special lessons and assignments about genealogy. It was boring then, too.

Genealogy is work for the dead by the dead!!!! Youth are not going to be excited being with that crowd.

Why would you want to do genealogy after the letter read by FP saying if you don't do it right you will have your wrists slapped. Youth are smarter than that.

Youth use their computer skills for more exciting things than looking at records. This is a program that is designed to be a failure before it starts. Youth wants relationships with their peer group not deceased people.

The Church needs better activities for the youth than what they offer now!!!! I guess that genealogy is a cheap activity as everything is in place.

Oh the poor kids must have done some dunking for Jesus and Hitler....

The paradigm is changing. Youth aren’t buying the snake oil any more.

So if snake oil is the only thing you have to sell… it's only a matter of time before you're going to find yourself out of business!

Hilarious! Brilliant! I suppose no one over there at COB realizes that humans, by nature, are pleasure seeking. They're going to keep pushing this until they learn the hard way. The natural man isn't an enemy to God but certainly an enemy to tscc.

I think it's a crazy attempt to keep the kids busy on the internet so they don't look at anti-mormon, and porn.

Nice try, but it won't work!
Mom: Johnny are you working on your genealogy?
Johnny: Yes Mom, click, click, click (hiding porn)

Does it count as genealogy when the porn you're looking at is old and possibly contains people who are now dead?

YM lesson this past Sunday on exactly this: a pep talk from the ward Family History specialist, trying to get the boys excited about indexing. We're going to the FH center in a few weeks, where they'll show the kids how to do the work. I'm not sure where they're headed with this. Yes, kids are computer savvy. Yes, kids like computers. Are you trying to drive them AWAY from computers? Or to get them hooked on Family History as a means of hooking them in the gospel? I don't think this is a good method, especially for kids whose parents/grandparents are already rabid FH buffs--they will very quickly run out of names for them to work on.

And, as the above post said, there's not much depth to it. Names and dates--that's it.

Just shows TSCC is led by a bunch of old fogies, who are out of touch.

When I was in nursing school, I studied the stages of development and needs at the different stages. Teens and young adults need peers of the SAME age group and need to focus on their future...not their dead ancestors.

I think it's natural for aging people to get interested in geneology, but not teens.

I'm glad the church is doing this...it's going to drive the teens out even faster.

even as a TBM i never understood why 'everyone' should do geneology

on each side of my family i have a TBM uncle that's rabid about geneology - so even when i wanted to be a good morgbot i figured why bother with all of the tedium when these guys are doing all the work for me?

This. It made no sense to me, either. My dad was pretty into it and managed to go back seven generations on all sides from him. So, in YW, when I was advised to do my four generations back, I photocopied Dad's records, quizzed my nevermo mom's parents for a few minutes, presto, goal met with probably less than an hour's work.

And I never gave any of it another thought until at least my 30s. Now, I am interested and keep doing the research on my mom's side once in a while, but I have no nefarious motivations for doing so. I'm just interested in trying to see if I can answer the question: What was going on in [Northern European country] in [insert year] that made my ancestor(s) get on a boat and head for the Colonies? I'm terribly interested in what that kitchen table discussion was like. Otherwise, you couldn't have paid me to fake interest when I was a teenager.

I think it's because of the Bednar's talk last GC when he told the youth to do family history and stuff.

This is is no different than every member a janitor.

The cult is just using the members for free work again.

Heretofore, significant volumes of names have been supplied to temples by the church name extraction program, where missionary-types microfilm names of entire communities from publicly-available databases around the world.

But guess what, they are running out of names because many old world Western European areas have been covered, but also the mormons are not easily able to just show up and begin collecting names anymore, and anecdotal reports are that they are often refused. This is likely to get worse due to all the negative publicity.

Once upon a time mormons were admired for their dedication to genealogy, but the hidden agenda is more exposed than ever, and people are likely figuring out that the "service" offered by the cult is only a lure.

A little math suggests that the volume of names required to allow temples to operate cannot be generated merely by the core members alone from their own relatives, and now the church has been embarrassed into restricting name submission to direct ancestors only.

It's a good bet they are just lying, and still harvesting names where they think they can get away with it, but they need to trick the members into filling in the gaps.

Is there anything the cult doesn't lie about?

Why can't people serve in a way that fits their interests and talents? That might actually work. Some people enjoy geneology and some do not. The church just can't accept that everyone doesn't fit their mold.

I can't imagine my teens ever wanting to sift through old geneaology record. Another way the morg takes any fun out of Mormonism. Another way to pound those square pegs into round holes. Another way to keep the masses so busy they don't have time or energy to think.

I have always been interested in genealogy. I am sure SOME of the youth are interested, the rest are guilted into being interested. I still want to learn about my ancestors even if I don't want to get myself baptized for them.

This is more UNNECESSARY busywork! Look at the records. The cult is baptizing each dead person 7 times. Often, a proxy baptism isn't even recorded. Just as long as someone pays tithing to do this temple work, who cares?

Is God so incompetent in his Perfect Heaven that he needs the help of Mormons and their faulty record-keeping? Have you ever seen those microfilm vaults in the granite cliffs? Now, that is creepy! I suppose someone has the job of transferring the data from old microfilm onto microchips--hey, this project could take the place of canning food or working on the welfare farm.

Farm work and canning could actually be not-unpleasant. We would go with our friends, and talk, and sing songs, and have a party afterwards. Genealogy requires no social skills or creativity. You don't learn anything about ancestors--you just get their names and dates.

If the church wants to keep kids active they need more fun activities with the possibility of sweet NCMO action in the parking lot.

Isn't all the geneology done by now? :)

When I was 16, hell would have froze over before I would have done genealogy. I was way more interested in the living.

TSSC already has a problem with inaccurate records.

So, having teenagers work on the records is going to ... increase the number of errors in the database.

Genealogists not associated with TSSC should calling the LDS Church out for sloppy work.

How do you do genealogy once your parents have done it? Or a sibling has done it? Doesn't it get robe a matter of filling your name in the last blank?

The church would have much more success in getting their young aaronic preisthooders into GYNECOLOGY.

If the handbooks has pix these young men would study the scripture daily, and not complain about getting up early to do so.

They would also have less depressed missionaries.

tscc seems to go through these geneology spells every decade or so. Personally, I found it fascinating because I like history. I found studying my dead ancestors fascinating and felt really connected to history as I learned which ones fought with Washington, who was in the Civil War, etc. I also learned the hard lessons of life, the "bad things happen" part. Most of all, I talked to relatives who lived during the early 1900s, through the Depression and WWII. Their attitude toward life influenced me greatly. It might do today's kids some good to get their noses out of those stupid iwhatevers and learn something.

I'm in my 50's with no children and even I could think up better ways to engage the youth. Why not have youths reach out to other youths in other parts of the world? Some kind of social network like face book. The minute an adult's back is turn, you can bet the kids well be looking at other stuff on the internet.

You can put lipstick all over this pig- but it still wont be pretty.

It is not working in our ward. There was a big push to get the kids to arrange for a name to take to the temple for baptism. Ninety-five percent of the kids failed to find anyone. Another inspired "keep busy" program in the TSSC. The church FamilySearch site is so terribly screwed up, with names baptized a dozen times, etc.

Genealogy is interesting as a hobby, but as a commandment, not so much.