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He might be acting on his own – or not. No way to know without talking to your Bishop. In your case (not all cases), I would talk with your Bishop and ask him directly to tell the man to back off. Seriously.
I agree, you will never know unless you ask the BP. However, I completely understand your apprehension of meeting with the bishop since you just barely had that meeting with him. I also must admit that this post stressed me out and here is why: My recommend expired 9 days ago, the first time in 18 years. I never even let it go even for one week before. I don’t want my name to be on that list. I don’t know why I am so scared to have an open discussion with my bishop, or any other leader, for that matter. It was bad enough that I had a zealous family friend over here tonight giving me a Old Testament SS lesson since I told him I have never read the Old Testament and don’t ever intend to…I just don’t love being preached to or trying to be “sold” something that I am not interested in. I don’ feel the need to be “saved” and I know that would be the intent if leaders started to come to my house.
Last week my DH and I had a discussion where I opened up more and told him more concerns and the fact that I started drinking coffee again. He was really sad, not because I drink coffee, but because I can’t get a temple recommend. I told him that I could easily quit drinking coffee, but that wasn’t my biggest concern regarding renewing my TR, far from it. I can’t imagine how I would answer the questions. I also didn’t enjoy my last temple experience at all and don’t have a desire to return any time soon, if ever. But I was so sad that and felt like I was breaking my husbands heart, that I was half tempted to go get an apt with the bishop and “fix’ everything. But I just can’t. I wouldn’t even know how to “fix” it. I would feel so dishonest answering those questions, I don’t believe much of anything anymore.
Thanks for the support. Right now the ball is in their court to set up an appointment on a time that works for me. It might just go away and fall through the cracks.
If I do get an appointment I will follow through with the meeting. I will probably tell him that I am enjoying my new calling and remind him that this will only work for 2014 as it will conflict with my work schedule when the church time flips again.
I’ll need to tell him that I am still working through my issues and working to nurture my relationship with God and I appreciate his concern. I can tell him that my experience changed me fundamentally and it would be a mistake to assume that I can go back to the old me. I am in favor of moving forward but I need to go at my own pace.
Knowing my bishop, he won’t fully understand but he should respect that.
He might ask some more questions but as long as I keep to the spirit of the above response then it should work out ok.
Can you maybe stop the bishop in the hall and just say something like “Hey, we just met a little while back but your secretary wants me to make another appointment. Nothing has changed and I don’t want to waste your time. Do we really need to meet?” His direction to the ES may well have been to make appoinments with everybody on that list without really looking at the list. He might appreciate you not wanting to use up time that might be better served for other purposes. This way is non-threatening and non-refusing, it’s really more of a heads up. DarkJedi wrote:Can you maybe stop the bishop in the hall and just say something like “Hey, we just met a little while back but your secretary wants me to make another appointment. Nothing has changed and I don’t want to waste your time. Do we really need to meet?” His direction to the ES may well have been to make appoinments with everybody on that list without really looking at the list. He might appreciate you not wanting to use up time that might be better served for other purposes. This way is non-threatening and non-refusing, it’s really more of a heads up.
Good idea. I’ll try that first.
Excellent suggestion, DJ. So just to give an update. I got a call last Sunday after church from the ES telling me that bishop was waiting for me. I don’t remember setting a time but whatever. I only live a block from the church so it was easy to stop back in.
I told Bishop that I only had 15 minutes to spare.
He confirmed for me that the ES was working somewhat independently from a list of expired TR holders.
He asked about my new calling. That discussion was mainly positive.
He asked about tithing. We had already established that as being the only thing keeping me from a TR. I told him that I felt payment of tithing to represent a significant leap of faith. While I am working on it, I don’t feel like I am there yet.
He told me that he would like to see me attend the temple. I agreed and said that I too would like to go. He said that it is also important that my children see DW and I attend the temple. I internally disagree with this premise (that I believe to be based on the importance of children seeing parents make sacrifices for the church) but I am not about to get into a discussion about it so I just nodded.
There was some other friendly chit-chat and we ended with a prayer.
There was a question in another thread about possible interactions with the bishopric over non-payment of tithing. In my experience the subject comes up every time I meet with the bishop. It came up in the meeting about DD’s baptism (though thankfully he permitted my performance of the ordinance), it came up during tithing settlement (and then DW and I got a calling), and then it came up again when my name was red flagged for having an expired TR.
I hope my experience can be helpful in providing an example of how one might get through such interactions in a respectful and non-confrontational way.
Well the saga continues. As you may remember the ES had contacted me some weeks back because my name popped up on a list of expired TR holders (my TR expired maybe 4 years ago). He wanted me to come in and meet with the Bishop to work towards renewal. I met with the bishop 2 weeks ago to pacify the ES and avoid confrontation.
Well here we are almost 2 weeks later. I’m leaving the church with my 6 yr old DS. The ES stops me in the hallway and asks me if I have a plan to renew my recommend. I told him that I am working on it. He tells me that his understanding is that I am supposed to call him in the next month or two to set up an appointment. I am trying to get out the door so I say, “Ok.” He then tells me that if I haven’t called him by 3 months then he will be calling me. I respond with, “Sounds like a plan.” The ES shoots back with, “No that’s not the plan – you need to have your own plan and I’m just here to follow up on your plan.” I say ok and leave.
When I arrived home and told DW what had happened she was incensed. She was worried that this would push me out of the church. She went right back to the church to set an appointment with the bishop for later in the evening. Bishop did confirm that the ES was working on his own out of some sort of misguided attempt to “magnify his calling.” Bishop had not asked to meet with me 2 weeks ago and he even rolled his eyes when he heard about the 3 month deadline. Bishop said that he will talk to the ES and that in the future I can call him directly for appointments. They had a nice long visit on other topics for about 40 minutes.
If the ES apologizes, I plan to tell him that I understood from his approach that if I didn’t get with the program and make progress towards a TR in the next 3 months then I would suddenly become a little less welcome at church. If he doesn’t bring it up, I don’t plan to talk about it.
Even after these years of progress in my relationship towards the church – it is surprising how one jerk in a key position can create such hardship. I am truly blessed to have a supportive spouse and a humble bishop. Without them this could have gone another way.
Sorry to hear that. It sounds like your ES is trying to earn a promotion. It’s pretty cool that your DW is willing to go to bat for you like that.
Wow, I agree with Nibbler. It just goes to show how even a somewhat minor character in the ward can cause angst and heartache for others. I’m sure he is just trying to “magnify” but I don’t think Jesus badgered anyone. It’s also likely you have been a topic in ward council and they have made a goal for you to go to the temple. Next friendly chat with the bishop you might remind him that we all have to set our own goals – others can’t set goals for us. My mission president often chided us for saying things like “we set a goal for so-and-so to be baptized.” He said we can set a goal to do a baptism this month, but we can’t set a goal to baptize any individual – we can’t set goals for others. Absolutely, we should not set goals for others. To give the ES a bit of a chartable break, he probably is trying to magnify his calling and help people get back to the temple. He probably sees things in very black-and-white terms and simply can’t understand how anyone can have real meaning, peace and joy in their lives without what gives him those things in his own life. He sounds like a jerk, but he probably is a sincere jerk trying to help people the best he knows how.
I have seen a similar situation get out of hand with a man like I just described – a good man outside of the assignment he was given to find inactive members, which he took as license to ask them, proactively, at the time he found them, if they wanted to start coming back to church immediately or if they wanted their names removed from the records of the Church – no middle ground. The Bishop stopped it as soon as he learned of it, but the man really was a good man at heart.
Old-Timer wrote:To give the ES a bit of a chartable break, he probably is trying to magnify his calling and help people get back to the temple. He probably sees things in very black-and-white terms and simply can’t understand how anyone can have real meaning, peace and joy in their lives without what gives him those things in his own life. He sounds like a jerk, but he probably is a sincere jerk trying to help people the best he knows how.
Yeah, I can see that. He sees things in black and white and is very vociferous/pushy about his view. He used to have a stake calling. The way that he would make comments and correct others in SS with such presumptive authority – I had the impression that he was representing the stake to keep false doctrine out of the classroom. Looking back, that was probably just him doing his own personal whatchdog routine.
I don’t envy the bishop’s predicament. On one hand he has a TR holding, calling magnifying, descended from pioneers, priesthood holder without a filter. OTOH he has a collection of individuals who are either investigators, new members, or people with a lower sense of church commitment that are more prone to take offense at his rhetoric. It must be a hard balancing act.
Ah, man. That’s rough. I would have a really hard time with that. I’m both nonconfrontational and don’t think fast on my feet, so I probably would have reacted a lot like you did—just agree in the moment to get him off my back. Then I would have stewed and gotten really anxious about it trying to figure out what to do. Your wife is awesome, going to bat for you like that. Sorry you have to deal with this guy.
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