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Spawned by another thread when I discussed Russell M. Nelson and his hustle in making large changes to the church. He advocated getting rid of Mormon in favor of the long, official name of the church. I wish RMN would have a revelation that the name of the church in digital, latter-days should be renamed to something shorter than The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I can’t think of any options that aren’t already taken by other religions — the best one being The Church of Jesus Christ.
How about The Latter-Day Church of Jesus Christ? Any thoughts? Isn’t the full name cumbersome? Very glad to be rid of the Mormon moniker, as it only adds to the weirdness of the religion, but I would love to be called a Latter-Day Christian rather than a Mormon. “Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” is just way too cumbersome.
I also think the digital age screams for something shorter than the nine-word name of the church. No wonder people went with Mormon, just like they went with Baptism, Pentecostal, Anglican etcetera — the tendency is to shorten really long words. Thoughts?
“LDS” is pretty short but we got rid of that one too. 🙄 I’m reminded of that episode of Big Bang Theory where Howard’s efforts to set his own nickname, Rocket Man, backfire and his peers end up calling him Fruit Loops.
Did the Anglicans decide to call themselves the Anglicans, or would they prefer to be called members of the Church of England?
Did the Pentecostals decide to call themselves the Pentecostals, or would they prefer to be called members of the Church that Fixed the Errors of the Catholic Church and Believe in Bible Inerrancy?
Maybe those groups decided to call themselves their respective labels, maybe others chose those names for them and they stuck. Either way.
I guess I share Hinckley’s view. The word “Mormon” only has bad connotations if you decide that it has bad connotations… or if the community tarnishes the name through actions. If the “world” has the impression that Mormons aren’t Christian then there are much larger problems with Mormonism that a name change isn’t going to fix.
SilentDawning wrote:
Spawned by another thread when I discussed Russell M. Nelson and his hustle in making large changes to the church. He advocated getting rid of Mormon in favor of the long, official name of the church.
I still interpret the change as a pedantic, literal approach to scripture. I appreciate the advertised spirit behind the change, to focus more on Christ. That said, if that is the advertised spirit behind the change I’m left wondering why I’m still sitting in sacrament meetings dedicated to Joseph Smith, or dedicated to the restoration, or dedicated to following prophets, or dedicated to anything other than Christ… I mean, if it’s that vital that we place Christ at the center of everything, so much so that we won’t tolerate the word “Mormon” anymore, where is he in our meetings? Or was the change more about outward appearances?
I’m also left worrying that all of our bicentennial celebrations will focus on praising men or even praising the church itself.
I’m left to believe that the name change was more about trying to send a, “We’re the true church” message more than it was an attempt to reorient the minds of members… even though I hear plenty of members getting onto other members for saying “Mormon” all while worshiping at the altar of Smith or Nelson or the church itself.
1. Sort of related, and this is breaking news. Starting now wifi access at church is changing. The network will be known as liahona and the password is alma3738. Users won’t need to reenter their password each time they access it, but will need to do the user agreement each day. LDSaccess will remain active for a few more weeks during the transition and then will cease. The stated reason for the change is the proper name of the church. The stated reason for doing the user agreement each day is to protect bandwidth. 2. We had a GA Seventy at our last stake conference. Frankly he loved to drop names, and bragged about how often he meets with the prophet and how much high level stuff he is involved in (although when his name was announced a couple weeks before the conference I had to look him up, I’d never heard of him). He shared a story about the new website address. As is common, especially with businesses, all of the things that could have been used had been bought a long time ago by an individual/company and were not available without paying a high fee for the name. But lo and behold, somehow this entity didn’t pay the annual fee for churchofchrist.org and it became available for a song. Interestingly, he also shared details about how the church used a foreign shell corporation to actually buy the name. Are we clever, now?
3. I agree with you both. I also fear too much “praise to the man” in the coming weeks, especially where I live. I can’t say we are more focused on Christ since the name emphasis, but I think we were already ahead of many areas because of the influence of our SP who I do admire. He is very Christ centered himself. I still don’t see outsiders changing their use of Mormon, nor do I see that the general membership is more focused on Christ than before.
EDITED to fix the password. It is alma3738.
DarkJedi wrote:
1. Sort of related, and this is breaking news. Starting now wifi access at church is changing. The network will be known as liahona and the password is alma3738. Users won’t need to reenter their password each time they access it, but will need to do the user agreement each day. LDSaccess will remain active for a few more weeks during the transition and then will cease.The stated reason for the change is the proper name of the church
Is this a joke? “LDSAccess” wasn’t Jesus-y enough so they changed it to “Liahona” which is? There’s your new name SD: The Liahona alma3738s. It’s catchy.
It’s funny in a way. Why can’t they change the wifi access point name because… drum roll… it’s been a while and they just feel like changing it? Why does there have to be some contrived spiritual reason behind it? Especially when the contrived reason doesn’t even match the change.
DarkJedi wrote:
2. We had a GA Seventy at our last stake conference. Frankly he loved to drop names, and bragged about how often he meets with the prophet and how much high level stuff he is involved in (although when his name was announced a couple weeks before the conference I had to look him up, I’d never heard of him). He shared a story about the new website address. As is common, especially with businesses, all of the things that could have been used had been bought a long time ago by an individual/company and were not available without paying a high fee for the name. But lo and behold, somehow this entity didn’t pay the annual fee for churchofchrist.org and it became available for a song. Interestingly, he also shared details about how the church used a foreign shell corporation to actually buy the name. Are we clever, now?
I bet a dump truck full of money can go a long way towards helping people forget to pay an annual fee. Maybe that story is faith promoting for some but I find it a little too corporate. Maybe we’ll do a hostile takeover of the Catholic church next.
DarkJedi wrote:
1. Sort of related, and this is breaking news. Starting now wifi access at church is changing. The network will be known as liahona and the password is alma3738. Users won’t need to reenter their password each time they access it, but will need to do the user agreement each day. LDSaccess will remain active for a few more weeks during the transition and then will cease. The stated reason for the change is the proper name of the church. The stated reason for doing the user agreement each day is to protect bandwidth.2. We had a GA Seventy at our last stake conference. Frankly he loved to drop names, and bragged about how often he meets with the prophet and how much high level stuff he is involved in (although when his name was announced a couple weeks before the conference I had to look him up, I’d never heard of him). He shared a story about the new website address. As is common, especially with businesses, all of the things that could have been used had been bought a long time ago by an individual/company and were not available without paying a high fee for the name. But lo and behold, somehow this entity didn’t pay the annual fee for churchofchrist.org and it became available for a song. Interestingly, he also shared details about how the church used a foreign shell corporation to actually buy the name. Are we clever, now?
3. I agree with you both. I also fear too much “praise to the man” in the coming weeks, especially where I live. I can’t say we are more focused on Christ since the name emphasis, but I think we were already ahead of many areas because of the influence of our SP who I do admire. He is very Christ centered himself. I still don’t see outsiders changing their use of Mormon, nor do I see that the general membership is more focused on Christ than before.
Didn’t holland say something about being too involved in the thick of thin things? I see this branding to be one example of that. BTW, if we are truly concerned about having the church be represented by Jesus, why are we about to have a general conference that is going to ‘worship’ Joseph Smith?
2. I’m glad to know stake conferences are being used to share the successes of the political and business structure of the church, instead of on Jesus Christ and the unique blessings the church claims to provide of the priesthood, eternal life and salvation.
3. My mission president was an awesome man, somehow he found ways to show us how to be like Christ more than teaching it. He always gave Christ credit for achieves and goals met, he always reminded us to pray and form a relationship with God. It was never about building a testimony of Joseph Smith or even reading the BOM. Great man.
nibbler wrote:
DarkJedi wrote:
1. Sort of related, and this is breaking news. Starting now wifi access at church is changing. The network will be known as liahona and the password is alma3839. Users won’t need to reenter their password each time they access it, but will need to do the user agreement each day. LDSaccess will remain active for a few more weeks during the transition and then will cease.The stated reason for the change is the proper name of the church
Is this a joke? “LDSAccess” wasn’t Jesus-y enough so they changed it to “Liahona” which is? There’s your new name SD: The Liahona alma3738s. It’s catchy.
It’s funny in a way. Why can’t they change the wifi access point name because… drum roll… it’s been a while and they just feel like changing it? Why does there have to be some contrived spiritual reason behind it? Especially when the contrived reason doesn’t even match the change.
DarkJedi wrote:
2. We had a GA Seventy at our last stake conference. Frankly he loved to drop names, and bragged about how often he meets with the prophet and how much high level stuff he is involved in (although when his name was announced a couple weeks before the conference I had to look him up, I’d never heard of him). He shared a story about the new website address. As is common, especially with businesses, all of the things that could have been used had been bought a long time ago by an individual/company and were not available without paying a high fee for the name. But lo and behold, somehow this entity didn’t pay the annual fee for churchofchrist.org and it became available for a song. Interestingly, he also shared details about how the church used a foreign shell corporation to actually buy the name. Are we clever, now?
I bet a dump truck full of money can go a long way towards helping people forget to pay an annual fee. Maybe that story is faith promoting for some but I find it a little too corporate. Maybe we’ll do a hostile takeover of the Catholic church next.
No joke. From the notification itself (it’s the first sentence of the memo):
Quote:To align with direction regarding the correct use of the name of the Church, the wireless network in meetinghouses and other Church facilities will be changing from “LDSAccess” to “Liahona.”
The GA’s whole point was that it wasn’t a boatload of money, it was a few hundred dollars. And it was presented as a faith promoting story, although I saw it as more corporate as you did, especially since he threw in the part about the European shell corporation that actually made the purchase on behalf of the FP because of the fear that if they found out who was really buying it they’d jack the price (and this was before it was more common knowledge the church has $100 billion dollars mostly cash laying around).
grobert93 wrote:
2. I’m glad to know stake conferences are being used to share the successes of the political and business structure of the church, instead of on Jesus Christ and the unique blessings the church claims to provide of the priesthood, eternal life and salvation.
In fairness this was shared in the leadership session. His general session talk was more Christ centered. FWIW he also shared in the leadership session that when people start their testimony with “I know the church is true” the Brethren cringe (his words). I wish he had said that in the general session or that somebody had the chutzpah to say that from the GC pulpit.
DarkJedi wrote:
The GA’s whole point was that it wasn’t a boatload of money, it was a few hundred dollars. And it was presented as a faith promoting story, although I saw it as more corporate as you did, especially since he threw in the part about the European shell corporation that actually made the purchase on behalf of the FP because of the fear that if they found out who was really buying it they’d jack the price (and this was before it was more common knowledge the church has $100 billion dollars mostly cash laying around).
Ha. That’s the spirit for you. It can guide you through a nice scheme.
No, this was my cynical train of thought on the dump truck of money:
The church surreptitiously rolls a dump truck full of money up to the person that owned the domain to get the person to “forget” to renew. They roll a second dump truck full of money up to them to keep both dump trucks full of money on the down low. Then they get to brag about getting the domain for “next to nothing” …so GAs will have something to talk about during stake conferences I guess… but it really cost them two dump trucks full of money plus the nominal domain purchase. But hey, they can hold a presser saying they didn’t spend a dump truck full of money on a domain and the secret two dump trucks full of money they paid is peanuts compared to the negative press they may have gotten about the opportunity cost of spending a dump truck full of money on a name change. In other words, this way no one is saying, “The church spent how much on their stupid name change!?!?!?” because everyone thinks they paid next to nothing.
With closed books and corporate scheming as faith promotion stories (up to and including creating shell corporations to trick people) it’s easy to imagine a scenario like that. It’s seems slightly more plausible than the person squatting on the domain name not realizing the value of the property they held. Imagine a person squatting on coke.com getting lax and forgetting to renew at $100 or whatever when they know The Coca-Cola Company is waiting in the wings and would pay them a small fortune.
And the GA bragging about it in SC doesn’t even have to be in on the scheme. It’s need to know.
Breathes sigh of relief.
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!I think it’s very similar to coke.com. I think the previous owner of churchofjesuschrist.org (and owners of similar domain names) know exactly what they have. The church did some early buying of their own (mormon.org, for example) to stave off such a scenario. FWIW, the GA did present it as a miracle and insinuated that divine intervention caused the previous owner to forget or overlook the payment – a Jedi mind trick of sorts, I suppose.
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