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I wanted to share some thoughts I had in the shower today (sorry for that visual). I honestly think that a site like this has the potential to do more good than activation efforts in our Wards with many people. In your Ward, you can’t share your deepest darkest thoughts about Church — the doubts, angst, etcetera, or get guidance on how to deal with situations which challenge your commitment. To do so in person, in your Ward, can have many undesireable consequences.
As a priesthood leader, I would visit people who were less active and many wouldn’t share their feelings with me at all. I think in an Internet environment, you can be more open due to the perception of anonyminity — and truly get to the real issues in people’s hearts. You can feel connected with the Church in a way you can’t locally — still reading about and discussing spirituality with like-minded people, and feel a sense of community with other LDS people who embrace divergent thinking.
I don’t know whether there’s been a serious attempt to measure the impact of this site on activation, or even name-removal prevention. But I want to say it’s helped me significantly — I’ve learned to be less of a loose cannon at Church, have found some reasons for protecting the local Ward from my rebellious tendencies, and gotten support with some of the challenges along the way. I’ve also come to grips with tithing, and feel good about it. My wife is spared listening to my divergent ideas too, and I’ve come up with my own reasons for respecting the LDS culture even though parts of it used to bother me.
Honestly, I couldn’t get this kind of support from people in my Ward. So, thanks to you all.
I just pictured a big black horse in the shower. The site has not only helped me understand that my unfaithful thoughts are okay but it also helps me understand that people who are having a crisis of faith aren’t scary people!
Thanks SD! I echo all of your thoughts. This forum has helped and continues to help me. It is very nice to visit with y’all!
Thanks for the post, SD – but now I have to go wash out my brain. (Oh, and observant, your image didn’t help!) 😯 Quote:I honestly think that a site like this has the potential to do more good than activation efforts in our Wards with many people. In your Ward, you can’t share your deepest darkest thoughts about Church — the doubts, angst, etcetera, or get guidance on how to deal with situations which challenge your commitment. To do so in person, in your Ward, can have many undesireable consequences.
It’s a two way thing. Once or twice I wished to discuss issues, and found people backing away from me. In one case, the conversation topic (the priesthood ban) was initiated by a TBM who didn’t like it when I mentioned I had issues with it.
There is no question that STayLDS has been huge in my decision and capacity to “stay” and find a middle way. The How to Stay After a Trial of Your Faitharticle is scripture to me. Well said, SD. I am not one to believe there is only one way to do things. So I agree that there is great potential for a support forum like this that seeks to help each other with open dialogue, and it has been a great thing for me, and many others.
I also accept it may not be everyone’s “cup of herbal tea”. And there is also no substitute for personal, face to face, visitations.
But in no way do I want to detract for your point, SD…this forum I think can help fill a gap for many that can not be found at church. (By the way…you think of deep things in the shower
🙂 …You’re way beyond me even from the start of the day! …thanks for your words!)I agree!! There is virtually no way to have open discussion in a ward setting. Even a doctrinal or historical issue is not open for discussion, due to either lack of knowledge on the part of the members (at least in my ward) or lack of interest. Just try sharing a belief that not everything in the bible is literal and see how that goes over. Perpetuating LDS doctrinal and historical myths though, now that is done weekly.
You can’t really have any in-depth conversation with priesthood leaders, at least in my experience, again, lack of understanding, lack of training, lack of time, and, seriously, the risk to your membership status for just discussing things or for having an alternate view.
A controversial issue gets shut down immediately. We are pretty much restricted to replaying the same banal repetitions. That’s what seems to make people feel comfortable, although I would suggest that just because something said is familiar and comfortable does not make it the ‘spirit’ you are feeling.
Last Sunday in Gospel Doctrine, we had a member in our ward who suffers from mental illness say that her challenge is to stay alive in this life, and PEOPLE LAUGHED. They thought it was a joke. She cried through the whole of sacrament meeting.
Thanks so much to staylds! It is a bastion of reason for me!
I value this community for that too. And whodathunk we who don’t really care whether we activate anybody (all we are trying to do is survive and grow and love each other) might end up being the activation catalyst for many? Tom Haws wrote:I value this community for that too. And whodathunk we who don’t really care whether we activate anybody (all we are trying to do is survive and grow and love each other) might end up being the activation catalyst for many?
I had the same thought — an eternal principle that I’ve often thought about is that as soon as you stop wanting something, you often start receiving it.
It’s one reason I think activation never worked very well in face to face Wards. To truly activate someone, I think there needs to be an investment in them — time spent, listening, sharing, being their friend. To have influence, they have to know that your commitment to them transcends their activity in the Church.
Too often activation efforts on the ground are hit and run attempts to get the person to come back to Church. There are sometimes number pressures which muddy the waters and affect the purity of motives. And when the person doesn’t respond immediately, we tend to move on, without ever showing long-term commitment.
In an online forum you have many, more frequent interactions with other people, and cut right to the chase of their issues. The lack of face-to-face experience actually increases trust, surprisingly. I’m also surprised how quickly and accurately you can actually get to know someone’s character without ever meeting them in an online forum. People in other forums have cited my strengths and weaknesses (ouch) at times they have been dead-on.
This flies a bit in the face of Bednar’s talk a while ago about how you need your body to have realistic interactions with others, but I’m not so sure. I never see Heavenly Father but I believe I understand his character pretty well. I have a close friend in a foreign country I haven’t seen in 6 years, but we talk weekly — the communion of our personalities on the phone is enough.
In fact, I’m glad we have taken the bodies right out of the online interaction — by focusing only on what people say, or think, biases born out of body-type stereotypes, or the implied wealth and status of their appearance/possessions disappear. It’s truly more of a spiritual interaction, where we react to the quality of the person’s ideas and character and not their temporal existence.
I share all the thoughts already expressed. This site is as much “therapy” for me as it is for anyone else. We can say a lot of things here that desperately NEED to be discussed precisely because we aren’t a part of the official organization in any way. To be perfectly blunt though, I would be happy if the Church put this site out of business by providing the ministering and support members need. Seriously. I would be just fine if there were no compelling reason for anyone to need StayLDS.com.
But until that happens, we’re here doing what we can to help each other.
Brian Johnston wrote:To be perfectly blunt though, I would be happy if the Church put this site out of business by providing the ministering and support members need.
I had the same thought. I wondered if an LDS support site, sponsored and staffed by the Church, would be able to do any good since people would be spared of the stigmas, potential gossip and other negative consequences inherent in “coming out” as someone with issues with the Church locally. Basically — I wondered if a Church-run support site could find a way to harness the anonyminity of the Internet, and nullify all those negative cultural consequences like this site can do.
My conclusion was that it could not. The typical answers given on a Church-sponsored, member support site would probably tend toward Standard Mormon Answers we already hear and have rejected — because it has to. You can’t be sending one set of messages through the face to face line (the Ward), only to get the REAL story, or a different, less committed line of reasoning online from the Church. Imagine how a Bishop might react if, upon approaching a less-active member about their lack of Church attendance, they are told “I spoke to someone at the Church online member-support unit and they are handling it”. Or, “The Church sponsored member support unit suggested I take a short sabbatical until I come to grips with my feelings about this Ward”. The official Church solutions to many problems we face here are readily available at Church, and people come here because those haven’t worked for them.
Perhaps there is room for a Church-sponsored online support forum on a narrow range of topics — such as getting along with other Church members, or other non-trial of faith issues, but I think the scope of such a Church-sponsored support forum would have to be pretty narrow to prevent trodding on the ground of the local leadership.
Here’s another thought…no one from this site can come through my computer and contact me. I’m here because I came and I want to be here. silentstruggle wrote:Last Sunday in Gospel Doctrine, we had a member in our ward who suffers from mental illness say that her challenge is to stay alive in this life, and PEOPLE LAUGHED. They thought it was a joke. She cried through the whole of sacrament meeting.
I hate hearing stories like that. Clearly nobody was being intentionally insensitive, but people should be more careful. Of course GD is not a place where people usually put their thinking caps on.
I’m always amazed (and sometimes dismayed) at what people will laugh at at church. Same at GC. Seems like they’re always ready to laugh at the feeblest excuse. Maybe it’s nervousness or boredom.
Brian Johnston wrote:I would be happy if the Church put this site out of business by providing the ministering and support members need.
This will happen just as soon as the church is populated with a critical mass of Rationals/Idealists. Which is to say it won’t happen.
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