I attended today and it was obvious the only reason it exists is for bishopric/other ward leaders to:

1. brag about all the "sacrifices" they make and those others don't
2. talk bad about people in the ward that don't do what they want them to do

Somebody please tell me how a loving Jesus would be happy with something like this?

They bishopric brings names of members who "need help" or are "struggling with personal problems," and talks openly about them sometimes in front of about 20 people. This gives ample opportunity for all the personal information to escape the levy by sharing it with too many people who don't have the need to know. Then they take the information and blab it to their spouses and neighbors. I'm now very cynical about it and believe it to be a wonderfully designed program that promotes and instigates shunning and control.

Yes, I fully agree. Talking about people who are "slipping" and are "only at church for the financial help" were common topics.

and of course bugs me 10 times worse now, is the way they talk about the children of inactives. I was Primary President in one ward and in a presidency in another ward and so maybe I got more than my share of discussing the poor "lost" children, as one woman described them. The president in the former would talk quite cuttingly about how sorry she felt for the children who's parents were inactive, how could a parent do this to a child, what could we do to get the child to church, who could we assign to offer to go by and pick him/her up etc. We were supposed to visit every inactive child, at least once a month with cookies or a copy of the lesson they missed or whatever picture they weren't there to color, tell the child how much he/she was missed and so on. I mean, looking back on it ... how DARE we? They weren't our kids but we sat around in Ward Council, talking about how we could save them from their parents. Unbelievable, if I hadn't been there to see it.

also one of the women there was talking trash about her inactive husband the whole time.

I used to put on classes for the reielf society. I would get there early and get set up. All the women wanted to talk about was the women that wasn't there,,and how bad other peoples kids were.

when i was a missionary we used to go to ward council and they kept referring to one of our converts as "that colored boy".

I remember serving in GA, and having members complaining to us that we were bringing too many colored investigators, and should be refocusing on more 'delightsome' colored people.

i served in california.

One time the RS president started trash talking my wife and then realized I was in the room. Priceless.

I'm sure they trash talk me now. But my freedom is worth it.

What a nasty organization! They actually hold official meetings which turn into trashing sessions against their fellow members.

I have a friend who attends the ward where I live only about once a year when her best friend's kids do something significant. Twice in the last few years these creeps have brought up in SS "my" case and alluded to how *I* have persecuted them for harassing me over the years. I have never once attended this ward. My only contact has been to tell them to stay away from me. What sore losers.

I agree with cludgie. (Hey isn't that a kind of ice cream?)

I had no calling of any significance, no reason to hear the confidential information about ward members, but I got to hear everything. It made me sick. Had I ever known these meetings existed like this, I would have never confided a couple personal matters to my bishop when I was a young convert and needed some support. I had assumed things you tell the RS president and the bishop were confidential. Boy was I in shock listening to everything they knew about people (information they got in confidence) spilling out in a full room of others who had no right to know. I hate the Mormon church's disrespect for privacy.

When I was SS pres., the bishop was always nagging me to go to ward council.

I told him I don't want to have to sit through the confidential "gossip". I want to be able to think the best of people.

I went on to tell him that ward council is the reason I will never go to him with any kind of problem. No confidentiality.

He was pissed, but had no real response.

This is exactly why I am very cold to home tea cheers. My TBCM (Totally brain controlled) DW love to see them and I TOLERATE them (barely)