LDS Opinion on Appropriate Missionary Behavior

[askandanswer]

7 hours ago, old said:

This huge issue and the husband of the wife is in the High Councilor, the Bishop the Stake Clerk.  I've been in the business world long enough that it feels like a "you did xyz job I gave you, now here is your promotion".

Lol, more work with the same reward is not usually regarded as a promotion, anywhere.

[Vort]

On 12/18/2023 at 10:27 AM, NeuroTypical said:

In his mind, every organization must change to keep growth a possibility, so he was certain eventually we'd have some sort of revelation-or-other formalizing the practice - within 30 years.   I bet him no it wouldn't, and the loser has to put on a pink tutu and sing "I'm a little teapot". 

Make sure you video it and let us see.

[Vort]

On 12/18/2023 at 11:19 AM, zil2 said:

(Then, if they don't have to lose all, hooray!  If they do lose all, hooray!)

The Saints will be required to give all they have. All. There are no exceptions. Their fortune, their family, their very lives will be required at the hand of God. Just as certainly as Christ told the rich young man to give all he had to the poor and follow him, and just as surely as king Lamoni's father offered not only his sins, but all he had, even to forsake his kingdom—an offering he was in fact required to make—and just as surely as Christ required Amulek to forsake his fortune, his family, and his very life (only the last of which he was saved from), so Christ will require us to offer everything we have and everything we are on the altar of his worship.

Those who fail to give all, those who value possessions or titles or honor or glory of the world or even their own parents or siblings or spouses or children above Christ, will lose their exaltation and will instead receive what they are willing to receive. Those who are faithful despite their own weaknesses and imperfection will gain all that the Father hath, and in the end they will find that they lost nothing—unless you consider the abandonment of venality, pridefulness, selfishness, and corruption to be a loss.

Don't think you will escape the test of sacrifice. You will not. Embrace it. Thank God for it. Then live it.

[old]

40 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

Methinks there's an awful lot more to the story than that.

Sure, it's possible my retelling is inaccurate; it ain't like there is a judicial record of what happened or everything that I've said.

You are more than welcome to poke and prod.  In fact, I welcome it.  It causes me to reflect and say "is my own retelling of it to myself accurate". Or other questions, whatever it might be. 

"More to the story" . . . the SP did not like me at all.  I had a temple recommend with him and went toe-to-toe with him for about 4 hours on the whole LGBTQ+. Everything he brought up, I either had a scripture refence or something that backed up what I was saying.  He denied it the first go around.  Which is cool, he gave me things to think about, I gave him things to think about.  3 months later he approved the recommend.

I know what the bounds are of "apostasy" and I made darn sure I stayed within the bounds working as best within the system.  Go up the chain. Don't go outside the chain of command, go up. Address concerns to the guy above, present with the Spirit of God the concerns and hopefully he'll be convinced enough to give an audience with the guy above him.  Work the system.  So I did always being respectful and staying within the proper bounds and never going outside it.

Literally after I had my 4 hour talk with the SP (which at that time there were no problems in the ward, it was talk about the general direction of things), we had Stake leaders attend the ward every Sunday for the next month.  Oh that's cool. Trying to sniff out if I was a malcontent.  Nope, I never said anything publicly, never worked to destroy anyone's faith-which would be silly.  Everyone is at a different place, why would I ever want to do anything foolish like that. Never mentioned anything I brought to the SP to anyone. Kept it to myself.

It was only when problems started in the Stake in the Ward that I brought concerns to my chain of command and no one listened.  So I wrote a letter to the entire High Council and Stake Presidency.  Backed EVERYTHING up with solid evidence, laid it out, presented a case as to "hey leadership over the Stake, this LGBTQ+ is a BIG problem, I was quite before because it wasn't in the Stake . . . but now it's in the Stake and it's affecting my kids and the youth program here . . .here is the evidence that a) this is not isolated, b) it's spread throughout multiple geographic areas c) I expect my leadership to start leading and start taking action.  Given that one of the counselors in the SP has an openly queer kid and his wife and him blab about it at every Stake Conference  . . .that letter didn't go over so well.

How do I know? Because the Sunday after I wrote the letter, the entire SP was at the ward (unannounced) and mentioned the past week, they had an emergency High Council meeting which was 2 days after I sent the letter/e-mail. Again for about a month later every Sunday, the SP leadership was a the ward. Sniffing things out.  I had the distinct impressive given the case that I laid out in the letter, well documented and backed to the hilt that the SP had to do quite a bit of damage control in the HC . . as in I think quite a bit of HC members were pretty upset.

I write a pretty intense letter; they send the SP to the ward for over a month trying to see . . .am I a bad apple. Am I an gasp "an apostate!!" because I don't follow lock-step with what the SP and HC states; I don't polyanna say "all is well in Zion!!". Yet even with the letter, not a single soul of the HC, SP ever and I mean EVER said hey brother, let's have a conversation about this.  Absolutely 0 response; nothing. No talks nothing. No hey the SP would like to address your concerns.  Complete and utter radio silence.

So a couple of months pass; I go to Stake Conference and Elder Holland's son was there. I ask a question, politely about "hey Elder Holland, I don't hear a message about repentance and change anymore". His response was, well we do, but what we say is we just ask questions of people, that's how we tell them to repent". Like "should you be saying your prayers, or I invite you to say your prayers".  Umm okay . . .the question wasn't "hey I need to hear that if you do xyz you are damned to hell" but simply "I don't hear clear delination of right and wrong anymore". Inviting me to say my prayers is different than saying "you should say your prayers". "Will you say your prayers vs you should be saying your prayers".  One is declarative; one is not.  I don't find in Scripture God saying "Will you not murder?  or Should you murder your brother?" I hear God saying "Thou shalt not murder". But okay . . .I guess.   

So afterwards, I go to Elder Hollands son and say hey here is in very brief what has been going on; please help. I mentioned I wrote a letter to the SP and HC (the SP was like a protector sheepdog, right next to the GA-he wasn't going to let me talk to Elder Holland alone . . .okay fine lol whatever). I had planned to give him the letter I wrote; but it just seemed unnecessary at the time.  He said he would talk to the SP.

The next day, he actually changed his talk.  It was quite hilarious the first thing he said is "we must sustain our called leaders and anyone who doesn't is in danger" . . .okay cool thank you for the preamble you need to give to verbally show your support to the SP.  And then the rest of his talk addressed matters of the heart.  He did NOT directly address homosexuality or same-sex; but he did address that any sinful passion could be overcome.

Honestly best talk I had heard in YEARS.  But he only gave it because I pushed so incredibly hard . . .yeah well a few months later the new YW presidency was called and off to the races we went.

SP didn't like that I went around him; didn't like that I pushed back on him; didn't like that I theologically challenged him; didn't like that he couldn't pin ANYTHING on me to get rid of me.  So when the time came that we opposed publicly in the ward a YW Presidency for such vitriol; that was his time to strike. 

We never told anyone outside the Bishop what was done, nor why we opposed, no one in the ward knows the full text or full extent; no one knows locally knows what really happened.  I've only told individuals that are either far, far removed or in very select settings. But the Bishop pretty much made it real clear-we were malcontents and we needed to go and that he had the full backing of the SP to make it happen.  After we left; promote up the Bishop to Stake Clerk, promote up the husband to High Council; rid the ward of the bad apple. The bad apple that caused the HC discontent the bad apple that caused (in their minds) the YW councilor to go inactive, the Bishop to lose a councilor and over 10% of the ward is gone.

Okie dokie.  Should I have done things differently, yeah probably. What I'm not sure. Every discussion, every talk, every action was doing with forethought, with planning, with prayer, with a simple desire to have someone in leadership recognize "hey THIS IS A PROBLEM!!!!" please let me know that you are addressing it and to do it in the best way possible. No rumors, no drama just "this is a problem, please address it".

The last Sunday we went I bore my testimony and witness of Christ, scriptures of his love and of God of the power of change in the human heart that there is no passion, no thing which cannot be overcome through Christ that he changes our hearts to something different, whether it be passions of ungodly sexual attraction or greed, or pride or ego. 

And then we got up as a family and left; as we were leaving the next testimony bearer was bearing witness of how God was inclusive of all; that no matter what someone deals with it's totally cool and God is a God who excludes no one, it's okay somethings just simply cannot be changed.

Yeap  . . .bingo.  Those two viewpoints cannot be reconciled.

If the Church is the Body of Christ . . .then when there is skin cancer on one finger and it is growing and growing and the other finger starts to sense it's is in danger of being infected, it's the fingers job to alert the head and say "hey folks, we've got a problem down here-it ain't my job to fix the problem, but please let me know you are on top of it". If the head ignores and ignores and ignores . . . maybe this ain't the right body to be in b/c if this finger stays in this body it runs the risk of getting infected with cancer.

 

[zil2]

5 minutes ago, Vort said:

The Saints will be required to give all they have. All. There are no exceptions. ...

Very true, and well said.  I was considering from the wrong perspective, so yeah, the first commandment is the first commandment for a reason.

[old]

34 minutes ago, askandanswer said:

Lol, more work with the same reward is not usually regarded as a promotion, anywhere.

Hey man . . I TOTALLY agree.  Yet there are plenty of people who see it as such. They can have that job.  You can tell in conversations with people some women like to show off their husbands.  Oh my husband is the councilor in the Bishopric .  .okay cool for you. That was definitely the attitude presented.

[Vort]

On 12/18/2023 at 12:09 PM, Carborendum said:

That's just a dang shame.  BTW, a former forum member (Anatess) had similar experiences in her ward and stake.  And she lives in Florida.  They're certainly struggling.

I fear this will get much worse before it gets any better. My own son was in such a stake and such a ward. He carefully recorded what happened and informed the area authorities, who seemed very sympathetic and sounded like they were going to take action. They took no action at all, except to release the stake president at the end of his ten years and then call the ward's bishop (who had been at the center of all the weirdness, not only in his own ward but in the stake), as the new stake president.

My son left Chicago and now lives in Houston, so he's away from that particular cancer. But I have reason to believe it's not contained to a mere handful of stakes. Our general authorities need to learn some hard and important lessons about administration (and ministration) in a world-wide church of tens of millions of people. I wish I had some wisdom to offer them; sadly, I do not.

[NeuroTypical]

Ok @old, I'm calling it.  We've let you have a good 6 pages of venting your issues about your ward and it's members, and your leadership.   I'll go ahead and close this thread now, I think everyone has had ample opportunity to weigh in, not only on the thread topic, but also your personal story.  Again, I'm not judging here, but I will take the opportunity to remind everyone of site rule #1, which everyone agreed to in order to post here:

Quote

1. Do not post, upload, or otherwise submit anything to the site that is derogatory towards The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its teachings, or its leaders. 

 

If you feel like you still need a platform from which to voice your grievances anonymously and publicly, I can forward you to mormondialogue.org, which has no such rule.  But consider yourself put on notice, we're done with the bishop and SP bashing, and the theology and doctrine 2nd guessing.