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For the past month they’d been plugging this special stake fireside for this evening. Sacrifice an hour of your time, they said, to hear vital and timely information about how to save our families. A special fireside to give us a special boost of know-how in seeing our families through these troubled times – but of course the meeting is for adults only. No attempt at providing any babysitting. But if for no other reason than they hyped this thing so, I was curious and almost looking forward to it. Were they going to read us a riot act about porn and that was why they didn’t want children there? We took our four-year-old daughter and sat in the foyer with her. I kept her quiet drawing pictures. She and a baby were the only children I saw there.
The way they had talked about this special meeting made it sound almost like they were going to give us secret directions to pack our handcarts for Jackson County. Instead, eight
mengave short talks – short in length, mercifully, but also short on substance or focus. There were a couple of things I thought were good reminders, but nothing really went deep enough – nothing ever does, it seems. At least they didn’t unveil some master plan to strike at the Gay Agenda or something like that. In fact, nobody made a single mention of any gay-related issue, and there were only two mentions of sexual immorality or porn.
I don’t know what saddens me most:
*the fact that a fireside about saving families was so exclusive of children,
*the lack of a single mother’s voice in the whole thing (because of course there was plenty of the usual ceremonial man-guilt: I don’t say this because I’m doing everything right . . . I have to do a lot better myself, etc.),
*the overall gap between the publicity – they’ve been working hard to prepare these messages – and the actual content that was no different from what we hear in every other meeting, showing a lack of really cohesive planning – falling for that bait-and-switch,
*or wondering how many others would have the courage to admit to themselves that they found the meeting disappointing.
Do we really believe in a God who expects us to give up restful family time in order to hear things that would be just as well presented during our regular meetings?
Quote:Do we really believe in a God who expects us to give up restful family time in order to hear things that would be just as well presented during our regular meetings?
No, but I can accept sincere but unaware mortal leaders who do – even though I believe it takes a good meeting to be better than no meeting.
Riceandbeans wrote:I don’t know what saddens me most:
*the fact that a fireside about saving families was so exclusive of children,
*the lack of a single mother’s voice in the whole thing (because of course there was plenty of the usual ceremonial man-guilt: I don’t say this because I’m doing everything right . . . I have to do a lot better myself, etc.),
*the overall gap between the publicity – they’ve been working hard to prepare these messages – and the actual content that was no different from what we hear in every other meeting, showing a lack of really cohesive planning – falling for that bait-and-switch,
*or wondering how many others would have the courage to admit to themselves that they found the meeting disappointing.
Maybe just give yourself a pat on the back for your willingness to go and be inspired, even though you weren’t. I understand why there wouldn’t be kids at a meeting like this, but by the same token, when you ask people to get a babysitter and leave their homes for the night, you really hope it’s worth it.
After paying my dues by sitting through over 3500 Sacrament meetings in my lifetime, as well as at least that many other meetings (Sunday School, Priesthood, and then extra-Ward activities), I don’t go unless I know the agenda, and I believe the speaker will be of value. I also encourage my daughter to do the same. Life is too short to spend it driving around, wasting gas, and time for meetings without a published agenda.
There is some value in giving leaderes and opportunity to learn, to speak, and to assess their own initaitives, but I cannot support that effort to the extent the church seems to want us to.
Is it just me, or is the number of these “special” meetings growing exponentially? Every stake conference, every fireside, every youth activity – they’re all so damn “special” that none of them are actually special. 👿 Kumahito wrote:Is it just me, or is the number of these “special” meetings growing exponentially? Every stake conference, every fireside, every youth activity – they’re all so damn “special” that none of them are actually special.
👿 I especially find irony in the “training” meetings that don’t do any training. When I was in the YM presidency there was a training meeting in the Las Vegas temple. I rode up with our Bishop (over 3 hours each way). The sole speaker of the meeting talked about the history of temples and how the saints sacrificed to build temples and thus the importance of temples overall. Bishop was rather perturbed as he was already well aquanted with church history (he bought me a copy of RSR and had read much of M. Quinns works) and felt that the outlining areas should have been excused from this “training.”
Now whenever DW goes to a training meeting, I ask her what they trained her on.
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