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Interested to notice recently that intiatory has been simplified – whites only (as in clothes not skin color), no gown. I expressed my surprise, and was told it had changed last year. I’m rarely in that section… they’re always pulling folk off it to help with the endowment. The more I think about it, the better the baptistry is… my favorite part of the temple other than the celestial room.
SamBee wrote:
Interested to notice recently that intiatory has been simplified – whites only (as in clothes not skin color), no gown. I expressed my surprise, and was told it had changed last year. I’m rarely in that section… they’re always pulling folk off it to help with the endowment.
For those interested in learning more about this change in the initiatory it was discussed in the following thread from May 2016:
Yes, I’m pretty sure it has been more than a year since the change. I haven’ t been in during that time. I notice on the other thread they talk about initiatory being a potential bottle neck. It is for me – if we go down with the ward on a day trip then initiatories are hard to get done. The process only occurs at certain times, and every time I do it, some of the men get taken off it to go and work on the veil. Our ward normally goes down on a Saturday so it is ultra-busy. I haven’t been able to get much done recently despite going to the temple for a few days. Even on the quiet days, men keep being removed. I’m lucky to get seven names done in one go. Twenty? Forget it.
On our ward trips I always head for the baptistry. After sitting on a bus for hours and getting up very early in the morning, I want to stretch my legs. I might be able to get a single endowment done (not a good use of time), or get sealings done, but initiatory never works on those days.
No, initiatory isn’t the bottleneck, it’s endowments. You can do 5 names in about 35 minutes for Initiatories. Endowments take 2 hours per person. I submitted a bunch of female names to the church. Initiatories were done within a month. It’s been 3 months since the initiatories were done, and the temple hasn’t even printed the endowments yet. Endowments are absolutely the bottleneck. The endowment needs streamlining. They should let you take 10 names through per session. “Think of the first given names,” etc. Heck, just about everything could be parallelized like that! If Jesus could be punished by proxy for everyone at once, and we’re supposed to be saviors on Mount Zion, why not? My first temple experience was good. Weird, yes, especially since my parents took me to the Salt Lake temple for a live session. I went with the flow, took it all in, and didn’t notice the problems that are so obvious to me now.
They couldjust make the endowment shorter. Maybe cut out the signs and tokens, the movie, and the robes and just make it a series of covenants that you can get through in 5 minutes per person… 
I think there’s more to it than the practicality. God could make the endowment as short or as long as He wants, assuming it’s his doing and not just tradition stolen from the freemasons and modified to fit our needs. If he wanted efficiency, He would have turned down Joseph Smith’s original 8-hour endowment proposal. The long session gives you time to think, for one thing. There is some pretty cool symbolism in the signs and tokens as well and the movie has some pretty interesting parallels.
If you can get over the sexism and weirdness of the rituals, it’s not so bad. Just long and boring.
Alternatively, endowments are long to slow down our rate of temple work to match the rate of family history work. Since it’s the most consistent ordinance, they’d run out of work to do if it were any faster. Baptism is the only ordinance that outpaces it (which is why some temples require endowed members to bring family names unless you’re a MP holder doing the baptisms themselves), so the bottleneck is probably at initiatories, which is probably why they keep simplifying it. Sealings are non-blocking, so they can’t cause bottlenecks. They’re considerably less popular in my experience, so there is probably a massive backlog on sealings.
I can’t help but wonder if temple work is just busywork to make us feel special and in the end, God just snaps his fingers and everything all works out the way it’s supposed to. I mean, if he’s omnipotent, he can do that, so why wouldn’t he? Why would he, other than for the symbolic value, make such… arbitrary… rituals to signify making a covenant? He could just as well shake our hands and it would mean the same thing.
The endowment is one part I’ve never seen the point of being proxy work, why do you need a physical body for it? But maybe it’s just a brainwashing technique. 😆 gospeltangents wrote:
No, initiatory isn’t the bottleneck, it’s endowments. You can do 5 names in about 35 minutes for Initiatories. Endowments take 2 hours per person. I submitted a bunch of female names to the church. Initiatories were done within a month. It’s been 3 months since the initiatories were done, and the temple hasn’t even printed the endowments yet. Endowments are absolutely the bottleneck.
3 months is nothing in this regard.
Beefster wrote:
Theycouldjust make the endowment shorter. Maybe cut out the signs and tokens, the movie, and the robes and just make it a series of covenants that you can get through in 5 minutes per person… I’ve thought about that before. I’d be more likely to participate in endowment sessions if they didn’t last 2+ hours.
They could have streamlined sessions where the sessions themselves are shortened to just the covenants, signs, and tokens (dispense with the movie entirely), make it a sub one hour experience. They could also continue to run traditional sessions with the movie for those that want to do them or for people going through the temple for the first time. You’d check the temple schedule and know when to show up to get the traditional endowment session vs. the endowment express sessions.
Attend the version that fits your current needs.
Beefster wrote:I can’t help but wonder if temple work is just busywork to make us feel special and in the end, God just snaps his fingers and everything all works out the way it’s supposed to. I mean, if he’s omnipotent, he can do that, so why wouldn’t he? Why would he, other than for the symbolic value, make such… arbitrary… rituals to signify making a covenant? He could just as well shake our hands and it would mean the same thing.
I don’t think the goal was to create busywork to make us feel special. I think we created the demand. Once the endowment became a saving ordinance we started worrying about our deceased ancestors. Vicarious endowments grew from an organic need to fix the logical hole that making the endowment a required ordinance created… plus, our temples wouldn’t get much use without vicarious ordinances.
The film is the one thing which makes it bearable. That’s true but 2+ hours is one of the main reasons that I don’t do them. The video has a lot of: Tell people to do this elaborate list of things > Telling people to do the elaborate list of things > Did you do the elaborate list of things, listing them anew? > They did the elaborate list of things, listing them anew.
I get the value and symbolism but it really adds to the time. I have a green personality (value concise communication) when it comes to this. I feel like channeling Monty Python, “Get on with it!”
But I can address my issue directly by simply not doing endowment sessions.
nibbler wrote:
Tell people to do this elaborate list of things > Telling people to do the elaborate list of things > Did you do the elaborate list of things, listing them anew? > They did the elaborate list of things, listing them anew.
Apparently, It used to be worse. They cut out a lot of the repetition in the 50s or 60s I think.There was a “sectarian minister” in it I believe who gets told off for saying God has no body. The condemnation was of the entire Westminster Confession – the foundational creed statement of mainstream Protestantism. The snippet simply was perhaps the most recognizable part of the statement itself.
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