11-Year-Old Deacons and Beehives

That’s super interesting. Growing up, I always thought that the age for getting the priesthood, and advancing in the offices, was tied to unchanging, doctrinal revelation. Turns out, it is just policy that can be changed whenever “those in charge” see fit. This change does make quite a lot more sense.

On a semi-related note, I wonder what it would take to change the D&C revelation that kids be baptized at age 8. If I were in charge, I’d bump up the age of accountability to 16.

That’s super interesting. Growing up, I always thought that the age for getting the priesthood, and advancing in the offices, was tied to unchanging, doctrinal revelation. Turns out, it is just policy that can be changed whenever “those in charge” see fit.

Some (truncated ) history on that subject:

https://www.lds.org/new-era/2000/01/now-and-then/a-century-of-aaronic-priesthood” class=”bbcode_url”>https://www.lds.org/new-era/2000/01/now-and-then/a-century-of-aaronic-priesthood

In 1900 there was no official age schedule for ordinations in the Aaronic Priesthood. It wasn’t until 1908 that a schedule was set: young men served as deacons from 12 to 15, teachers from 15 to 18, and priests from 18 to 21 (see General Priesthood Committee Minute Book, no. 6281, 13–15). In 1934, the age at which a youth could be ordained an elder was changed to 19 (Journal History, 29 Dec. 1934, 10), and in 1954 the schedule for ordinations was changed to what it is now (Improvement Era, Nov. 1954, 834–35).

I’m guessing the rationale was to get the youth synced up into the same groups for Sundays where they do SS and Sundays where they do YM/YW.

Currently a kid that was at a boundary age attends SS with other kids that have a birthday sometime during the calendar year but kids came and went from YM/YW quorum to YM/YW quorum based on their actual birthday. It creates a scenario where you hang with a different group during the 2nd and 3rd hours.

Under the two hour block kids will alternate classes and my guess is that this was done to:

1) Have the kids interact with the same group each week, which builds unity.

2) Go ahead and ordain younger kids to the AP so they don’t feel like the odd man out, as would be the case if they had the 11 year olds meet with the deacons and wait until they turn 12 to ordain them.

My take on it as well. The (now) old system had plenty of pitfalls. Back in the day when I was YMP there was a boy whose birthday was like January 15. So, since he was in Primary on Jan. 1 he stayed in Primary for “Sunday School” that whole year (Bishop was a letter of the law kind of guy) and went to priesthood starting middle of January. He was the only boy who turned 12 that year, but his friend, whose birthday happened to be in Dec., turned 12 right before him and got to leave Primary, etc.

So this new policy will solve those kinds of issues.

Just as a side, when I get particularly annoyed with the people who want to vehemently assert that the church has been restored to exactly the way it was when Jesus formed the original church I like to bring up those 12 year old deacons the Bible talks so much about. 😈

I like it. Makes a lot of sense.

There will be youth who are not ready and youth who are super ready – just like there are now. There will be downsides for individuals, but I see no collective downside.

Revelation? Probably not. Inspiration? Definitely could be. Recycling? Yep. Do I care? No. I like it, so I am happy about it.

The first thing I thought when I saw this was that now kids are going to experience worthiness interviews at a younger age. With the bishop arrested in Draper this week who was taking advantage of youth, reportedly under the guise of conversations about masturbation, this seems pretty ill-timed.

Personally I’m glad to see that President Nelson is apparently not afraid to change things around left and right. But it does beg the question that if some of these changes were such a great idea then why did it take so long for them to be made especially when the Church literally claims to be led by living prophets, seers, and revelators? I mean why is it that I had to wait until I was exactly 12 years old to receive the priesthood if it would have been alright for 11 year olds to receive the priesthood all along?

If I was still a TBM, then seeing all of these changes after no significant changes other than the missionary age change as long as I can remember just as soon as Nelson became Church President would definitely have obliterated my shelf fairly quickly and I doubt I’m the only one that thinks this way. Sure there are plenty of faithful members that will say how great some of these changes are but I suspect that there are also many quietly thinking, “This doesn’t really make sense” regardless of whether the individual changes are perceived as good or bad simply due to the overall implications for the fundamental LDS teachings about how prophets and revelation are supposed to work in theory. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out over the long run.

“If I were still a TBM” you would be rejoicing at the outpouring of revelatory change. That kind of is the definition of term.

Maybe for one or two changes if I happened to like those changes, but not one after another like this including some that seem rather petty and/or pointless. For example, I could rationalize the Church abandoning polygamy (in this life) and the racial priesthood ban (both changes that were clearly for the better in my opinion) without too much effort with excuses like maybe too many of the early saints simply weren’t ready to accept blacks as Church leaders and God understood this so that’s why he didn’t ask them to until enough of them were ready to accept this change. But I definitely wondered why God would allow these to continue for so long only to end up changing anyway later and then when I found or heard about more and more contradictions or things like Gordon B. Hinckley acting like it was so important for women to only wear one pair of “modest” earrings eventually my breaking point was reached.

That’s why I like the shelf metaphor, basically it seems like most believing members can shrug off or rationalize a few things that don’t really make sense (e.g. it is added to the shelf) but for many of them after more and more things add weight to their shelf eventually it can’t hold up anymore unless they are a super hardcore apologist. To me the definition of TBM is simply Church members that actually believe in the restoration and prophet/revelation claims to the point that they feel an obligation to go along with what they are told to by the Church or at least feel somewhat guilty if they don’t; it doesn’t mean they have to really like all of it that much. My point is that all these changes, good or bad, could be viewed as a contradiction between what the Church teaches about revelation and prophets and what we actually see happening over and over again in real life and thereby add more weight to or even break the “shelf” for many current faithful members.