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So I wrote a while back about some of my struggles. Well, I just had a meeting with the bishop and he asked me to be the second counselor in relief society! He said I need to renew my temple recommend to accept the calling and asked why I haven’t renewed. I didn’t want to get into it all do I said there was no particular reason.
Is it true you “have” to have a recommend for this calling?
I’ve been avoiding the renewal because I’m still working through my feelings. I don’t want to broadcast that I have a struggling testimony and I’m not 100% on board with the church. At this point I mostly go to keep peace in the family. I just feel really conflicted right now. I asked them to release me from visiting teaching in January because I was tired of being harassed about it and I think the program is kind of dumb.
Ahhhhh!!!!
Very simply, no, you do not need a TR to be a counselor in the RS. You don’t even have to be Temple worthy. Yep, there is no organizational requirement for a temple recommend for that calling. You have a few options, depending on whether you decide you want to accept the calling or not. I think you could do good things in that kind of calling, but it would depend on the RS Pres. and whether or not your Bishop will relent and allow you to serve in that calling without a temple recommend. You could tell him that you thought that calling didn’t need a temple recommend, but that might be seen as a challenge, depending on your Bishop’s personality.
If you don’t want to accept it, you simply could tell him that you are working through some things and don’t feel comfortable renewing your recommend right now.
Frankly, I would suggest you decide if you want to accept that calling, no pressure either way, and then approach it from that decision.
I did accept the calling. I was thinking I would just go through with the recommend interview? I feel like if I’ll decline he’ll think I’m “unworthy” and that’s why I don’t want to do the interview. I don’t want to out myself to people in the ward. Mormons aren’t the most accepting bunch ya know? Some are; some aren’t. 🙂 As long as you can answer the questions honestly, according to your own interpretation of them, renewing the recommend is the easiest way to solve it all. Don’t go into any detail; just say “Yes” or “No” and wait for the next question.
Yes and No answers allow for a lot of the nuance to be unsaid. It may help you if you want to read through some threads on this topic from the past.
In the search window, search on “TR Question Survey” and there are a string of threads started by Wayfarer that go through all the questions and we had some good discussions on them and how we might answer them. (For Example:
herehereThat may be helpful.
I also liked the thread on some history behind the TR questions: (
hereIts good for me to remember these questions have changed over time and what that teaches me about the purpose of them.
If you feel you must go through with the interview, or simply desire to, I’m in the camp of simply answering yes or no as appropriate. There is no need and no requirement to elaborate. I don’t want to know specifics, but is there a question that you may not be able to give the right answer? If that’s the case, I’d probably skip the interview – it would be futile unless your looking for the bishop to intervene. I would simply give the required answers. Your “yes” or “no” may have more nuance than the bishop’s, but that doesn’t mean you’ve crossed over to the other camp either. Unfortunately, some stakes have goals around how many TR holders they have, and they use tactics like this to increase the %s.
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