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That’s what I loved about the british young men’s program. Independence. What’s the priesthood purpose to playing football, x-box, watching DVDs and making pizza on a fairly permanent cycle, with an occasional expensive trip to go bowling, laser tag or indoor rock-climbing? Who cares. The boys are chilling together, having fun and bringing their friends.
That’ll do pig, that’ll do.
Quote:4th: the church sucks at connecting with young boys….not sure how to fix it. Unreal expectations, stuffed shirt leaders and most of the cool stuff like road shows dance festivals etc are all gone now. Go sit in a room and come up with something that has a priesthood purpose…the rest of the time go rake old peoples lawns and feel bad if you are not thrilled with it!
Amen, brother! Though I would qualify that and say certain young men of certain ages. The young men leaders in our ward are well intentioned but perpetually disorganized. As my son gets older, he becomes less enthusiastic and I don’t blame him. As for scouting, just forget it. The bishop said to me that he would get him (my son) on the next fifty miler they do. I said “good luck”. My son has no desire to participate in such an activity and neither do I.
I think the boy scouts has been and is a great organization. My father was a scoutmaster for many years, and my best friend growing up helped to run a boy scout camp in the summers. I saw the impact they had on a lot of boys, and I am proud of their efforts. The activities for merit badges are worthwhile educational experiences. But I think boy scouts has become another set of items on the LDS checklist (as if we needed any more things to check off!) I wasn’t very involved in scouts, partly because I didn’t have the best relationship with my dad and the others boys in my ward at the time. A few years ago, my HT companion was the ward scoutmaster. He asked me to help him with the weeklong summer camp, because the leadership needed to be “two-deep”, and no one else could do it. I was a junior high teacher at the time, and had the time to help. My bishop was fully aware of the situation, and nobody got molested…
I think the “fears” around having homosexuals both as fellow scouts and as leaders are way over the top. An earlier commenter wondered whether some scouts would want to go to camp knowing that some of the boys in other troops might be gay. I guarantee you they already have gone to camp with gay scouts. It’s not the end of the world. And I appreciate that hawkgirl pointed out the gay
= child molester. It’s been a while since I lived in utah, so the comparison takes me back a little bit, but come on…I think the Church, ironically, is much more progressive than the BSA is currently on this issue. I am certain that I am not the only gay man who has served the scouts in his ward with his bishop’s blessing.
I just listened to Fast and Testimony meeting (which becomes torturous sometimes). A woman who’s husband works for the scouts bore testimony that the church is true and will do something else if this evil comes to pass in the BSA.
There are times I want to offer a rebuttal testimony. Sometimes out of anger….
Other times out of compassion…I listened to an elderly sister in the same meeting wondering why after 80+ years of devotion her knee surgery was causing her such problems even after a priesthood blessing that said it wouldn’t. I felt so sorry for her as she wondered what she might have done differently and how she will just have to settle in to it is all part of his plan…I hugged her afterwards and asked if I could help (hard to see her like that…she is normally one of those lovely spunky older ladies I love to flirt with). In my heart I wanted to let her know that God wasn’t doing this to her…it was just part of getting a medical procedure….anyways…thread jack…sorry about that.
This is, just like the fact that we have discontinued the penny, another reason I’m proud to be Canadian as Scouts Canada does not have any policies against gays. 🙂
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