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DarkJedi wrote:
The only other one that really struck me was when they were talking about young adults and brought up the stat that 70% are inactive by age 20. It’s more than I thought, and they knew about it years ago. It does explain the missionary age change for me, but I don’t think it’s going to bring the results they want – I know many RMs who come back with very different views of the church and gospel (including my own son) and I know several who went inactive within a couple years of returning (not my son, at least not yet). I do have an inactive YSA daughter, and I understand her quibbles – which they did not address in that video.
According to a former bishop, he couldn’t see much difference between how YSA/SA are handled at the local level now and how they were handled 12 years ago. The same “give them enough busy work that they won’t have time to notice how they’re being treated” didn’t work any better then, either; some would stick with it and others would realize what was going on and leave. AFAICT, they pretty much have a bunch of yes-men telling them what they want to hear.
Ann, that was galling hearing them call on the sitting RS president and merely saying “Let’s get a mother’s point of view.” She’s traveling internationally for the church, meeting with people all over the world, working as hard as anyone to build up the kingdom, but let’s ask her to speak “as a mother” as if the only POV she’s representing is in her capacity as a mother. That’s IDIOTIC. My calling it idiotic is not a knock on motherhood. It’s patently ridiculous that they are calling on her in that capacity given her stewardship. What is wrong with people??? She speaks up and is in fact the most engaging, energetic, informed, challenging, spiritual voice in the discussion up to that point, and then Packer jumps in with “That’s all the time we have for this topic,” cutting her off and ending the discussion with no actual discussion. She was also a single person at some point. She meets with single people. While I’m at it, why not meet with any single people?? Maybe they did in another meeting. In any case, I also feel it’s important to point out that this meeting predated the mission age change, and likely was part of the catalyst for it. For good or bad, I do think that was a creative, status-quo-busting solution. Lowering the age to 18 for men was IMO dead wrong, but for women to 19 was a huge improvement.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Lowering the age to 18 for men was IMO dead wrong, but for women to 19 was a huge improvement.
Yep. I had a son that went right out of high school. I told him it would be better to go to college just a bit, but we left it up to him. He wasn’t ready, just eager. My next kid I am going to lean quite a bit harder on at least one semester first.But even with the sisters, it is noticeable that maturity of the younger sisters is down a bit even for them. I had a great bishop and he had to put out several fires from their lack of experience. We had sisters before the change and never had these issues for years. But I agree it was good.
hawkgrrrl wrote:She speaks up and is in fact the most engaging, energetic, informed, challenging, spiritual voice in the discussion up to that point….
My feeling, too. She also said something like, “There’s a lot we’ve never doneor thought ofto strengthen wards to take care of people.” The idea that something hasn’t even been thought of yet…. I was proud of her. Hawk makes a good point. In the company where I work the CFO, IT Director, and other important positions are held by women. To ask for their opinion on almost any topic not directly related to mothering by asking for the POV of a mother would definitely be odd and off putting. I suppose it is some small consolation / step in the right direction that any women were present and that any input was sought from them.
I (almost) always like Jana’s take on things. She points out some good things in her latest post on her study of one of the videos. http://religionnews.com/2016/10/05/leaked-worldwide-only-25-of-young-single-mormons-are-active-in-the-lds-church/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://religionnews.com/2016/10/05/leaked-worldwide-only-25-of-young-single-mormons-are-active-in-the-lds-church/ Jana’s article was great. I’m glad she captured that bit about the role of the family & parents because I listened to the video, and I literally couldn’t follow the logic of that comment. I didn’t know what parents they were talking about. These are independent adults with careers who simply don’t have a spouse. The role of the parents is that they don’t live with them and aren’t minors anymore. hawkgrrrl wrote:Jana’s article was great. I’m glad she captured that bit about the role of the family & parents because I listened to the video, and I literally couldn’t follow the logic of that comment. I didn’t know what parents they were talking about.
These are independent adults with careers who simply don’t have a spouse.The role of the parents is that they don’t live with them and aren’t minors anymore.
And in that statement is proof they need more (smart) women in their councils.Ann wrote:hawkgrrrl wrote:She speaks up and is in fact the most engaging, energetic, informed, challenging, spiritual voice in the discussion up to that point….
My feeling, too. She also said something like, “There’s a lot we’ve never doneor thought ofto strengthen wards to take care of people.” The idea that something hasn’t even been thought of yet…. Watching their discussion, I have to wonder if they’re as closed-minded to Spiritual revelation as they are to opinions that don’t fit the old-married-white-guy party line. It’s certainly possible to shut out the Spirit when it’s saying things you don’t want to hear, and they demonstrate a fair amount of talent at doing that with people.
So far for me these videos mostly confirm what I already thought about these Church leaders, namely that they look like they are basically just TBMs that have risen up through the ranks based on seniority and strong loyalty to the Church. The fact that they would be mostly politically conservative and worried about things like the “homosexual agenda” and the legalization of marijuana is no surprise to me whatsoever. What would surprise me would be if there were any videos that support the idea that top Church leaders are supposedly faking it and primarily care about money the way some cynical critics of the Church like to think. So far I don’t see any indication of that notion even in the form of them asking “What can we do to get more members to pay a full tithe?” in the context of obedience and separating the wheat from the tares (to not let underlings in on the supposed end game). The most interesting thing to me about these videos was some of the statistics in the video about young single adults. For example they said only 30% of young LDS single adults are active in North America and only 20% are active internationally and that most of these become inactive by age 20 as well as that married members are more than twice as likely to remain active in the Church as singles the same age. Also they said the average marriage age for members that marry outside the temple was 27 for men and 25 for women but for those married in the temple the averages were 24 for men and 23 for women and only 6% of international members have been married in the temple by age 30. Also they said that worldwide there were only 70 active single LDS men in the Church for every 100 active single LDS women and that many of the single LDS women had more education than the remaining single LDS men (I guess the significance of that is that some of these single LDS women don’t want to “settle” for a man with less education).
I thought their reaction to these trends was interesting as well because Boyd K. Packer acted like the activity of single adults was supposedly the responsibility of parents until they are married and someone else was talking about possibly focusing on service and responsibility earlier for youth more than entertainment. Personally I think they are missing one of the most obvious reasons why single adults are more likely to fall away than married members namely that they simply have more freedom to think for themselves and make their own decisions whereas married members will typically have to worry about what their spouse will think about it if they don’t go to Church, don’t obey the WoW, etc. Well why should this level of outside influence from parents and/or spouse be necessary in the first place unless the Church simply does not appeal to many individual members all that well compared to the alternatives? This would also help explain why activity rates are even lower outside the US because many of these foreign members are converts without the same level of social pressure (if any) coming from their families and friends to go along with in the Church.
Good analysis DA. I agree that if the discussion focused on money that would be a terrible thing for the church given its reputation for wealth and non-disclosure about it. I expect these kinds of discussions happen behind closed doors, rather than in forums that act as hearings on challenges faced by the church; the fact that money does not come up may be an indication that it’s not a problem.
To determine the extent to which the problems with YA activity are really a problem, I would like to see comparisons to activity rates in other churches, though. Although you can say that if 70-80% of the YSA’s are less active then that is a big gap, no matter who favorably or unfavorably we compare to other religions.
Is anybody else following the mormonleaks? They generally release a few documents on Tuesday and then Saturday AM they released the speaker lineup for Women’s conference? What is the purpose of that? The only thing I can figure is just trying to say, “We have moles in the church EVERYWHERE!!!” More to say “nah nah nah nah nah” to the church leadership that releasing something revealing.
That is one of the reasons I can’t take them all that seriously, honestly. If anything, they simply are proving that they don’t have explosive information – and, ironically, that makes it appear that there isn’t any truly staggering stuff that can be leaked. I think the leadership is made up of really good, honest people doing their best, and, while there absolutely are issues that I believe need to be addressed (some of which are serious), what I have seen so far from this confirms that view.
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