Advice: Spending a day with a 70

The few 70s I’ve met have been total pills. Sorry to say my experiences with them have left a universally bad taste in my mouth. They seem to be very judgmental and uber-orthodox types who are also of the “when the brethren speak, the thinking is done” mold. And their wives are mostly worse.

I hope he’ll be the kind of guy you can talk with. I would love to hear back.

The most recent Seventy to speak at our stake conference was well-spoken and gracious. No dogmatism or leader-worship in his very Christ-centered talk or the leadership meeting I attended. I’d be surprised if he was something different in the inner circle meetings. The first third of his talk was thanking and acknowledging the other speakers and his hosts in a way that wasn’t boring. He didn’t pat himself on the back, but revealed enough about his personal life to remind me that his time away from home is quite a sacrifice.

The one before this one was, to put it mildly, not like that. When I sense the intent to generate excitement in surprise calls to the pulpit or self-consciously bestow attention by naming “certain” people by name, I kind of check out.

leadership roulette . . .

I like DJ’s suggestion.

Thanks for the advice. We are going to a ward in our Stake that has a higher normal amount of issues (as in dragging all those stake stat averages down). So I’m hoping that is the reason and I just happen to be speaking there or if there is something more to it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I wouldn’t change my talk. The way I see it, Driving Miss Elder is a pretty cool opportunity. I’d rather spend that time taking with him about my real feelings than talking around a façade I had put up.

My take is different. I would err on the side of caution. Make sure any comments are well-backed up with quotes form General Authorities if they are part of the new way of thinking.

Now, I’m coming from a place where I’m assuming you want to preserve your flexibility to “move” within the stake, within callings, etcetera, and not hurt your reputation.

What to say during periods of unstructured time, when there are opportunities to make conversation? I personally would use a few principles such as a) Flying under the radar. Don’t initiate controversy, and don’t try to lead him or his wife into middle way discussions b) ignore any comments that smack of judgmentalism. Don’t respond to them in a supportive way, or non-supportive way, be neutral. If you have the ability to make him think about his views, in a way that is artful, but not offensive, then consider that, but do so carefully. And think seriously about whether it’s worth the risk.

My goal would be just to get through it without blowing my cover! I don’t see sweeping change occurring with a few comments to a GA anyway, so the price of open unorthodoxy is far greater than the rewards. What matters is your circumstances after this GA moves on. Those are the ones you have to live with for the long-term. You don’t want to make them any worse.

In fact, I think a wonderful goal is to speak the words of the more liberal GA’s that don’t seem to be percolating down to the local leadership. It takes a while for the water to get to the end of the row. Facilitate that process. Uchdortf, Wirthlin, and even BKP’s comment that members should not be viewed as simply resources to staff the church — stuff like that.

Reporting Back:

I drove our area 70 down to the ward that we both spoke at. Mostly we just shot the breeze, talked about our families, careers, background. He was a really engaging, kind, genuine person. With about 10 minutes left I asked him what major struggle the church is facing – he mentioned ROI (he didn’t put it in those terms but I will) on our investment in missionary work (meaning that the church didn’t get much for the increase in missionaries), growth in developing countries, youth engagement with the church (the subject of my talk was “Be an example to youth”). So kind of interesting to hear that. I did not get into much more detail since right then we arrived at church.

Our area 70 is a Baptist convert. His talk sounded like a Baptist Preacher at a Mormon church. It was fantastic! Really really engaging, he talked about Christ almost the whole time. He was funny, self-deprecating, and loud and animated.

The only low point was in combined third hour he voluntold two men to stand and state why the church is opposed to same sex marriage, and made it a point that we must be ready to defend this position. (I don’t agree with that view, but am willing to give people a pass on this. Even though it didn’t feel right to me I still tried to make that viewpoint work for a long time, but realized I couldn’t). I wish I would have raised my hand and made the point that people can disagree and still have a temple recommend, but I didn’t. It felt like that would have felt like a confrontation and I wasn’t quite ready to do that with the area 70. Oh well, win some, lose some.

Also, area 70’s do not have written talks. They have been instructed to be open to revelation as they speak so they don’t have defined talks. I like the idea of being flexible, but that would terrify me. I am much better processing my thoughts beforehand.