April 2009

October 20008

April 2008

Last fall I broke the news that the church was considering allowing members to watch the Priesthood Session live this year by using the planned LDS Account login functionality.  The LDS Account system was finalized and released earlier this year and rolled out to a number of church websites.

Making the audio and video available after the Conference Report Ensign magazine has been publish may represent a new policy for Priesthood session media.

We’ll see if the church makes an official statement.

(Hat tip to reader David S for the tip)

In the April 2009 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder L. Tom Perry, who is one of the Twelve Apostles of the church, spoke about the responsibility of every member of the church to facilitate the missionary effort to teach the Restored Gospel.  He urged us to step up “to do a job that is rightfully ours and for which we are better suited” than the missionaries. He urged us to open our mouths
to our friends and family. (Read the whole address: “Bring Souls Unto Me“, April 2009)

A few months prior to his conference address, Elder Perry presided over our stake conference.  I had the opportunity to attend the priesthood leadership training meeting where he introduced us in more detail to the church’s vision for member driven missionary work and reactivation.   Without creating any new manuals, establishing any new organizations , or requiring any additional meetings, he told us that the church intended to radically alter the work of building up the church through missionary work.

He then introduced us to a ward mission process by which wards and stakes will prayerfully identify teaching opportunities for the full-time missionaries.  Lessons to both less active members and non members will be treated as equally important. Increasingly, members will be expected to drive the work forward by sharing the Gospel.

The church has known for many years that the most effective missionary system is driven by member referrals, but officially shifting the responsibility for finding new people to teach onto the stakes and wards, and holding them accountable for it, is an important, fundamental change.

My Revolutionary Proposal

Elder Perry’s words reminded me of an idea I had at the end of my own mission that dovetails perfectly with this new effort.  Since his presentation I haven’t been able to get it off my mind.  The more I think about it, the more I think that it needs to happen.  Here it is:

Sacrament Meeting Invitations

Yes, I think that Sacrament Meeting Invitations could revolutionize the member missionary effort. Here’s how:

It requires a simple, but fundamental shift in how we treat Sacrament Meeting speaking assignments.

Most weeks, the bishop of the ward asks a number of members of the congregation to speak on assigned topics.  The church could establish a policy that all sacrament meeting speaking assignments be made with the ward’s missionary responsibility in mind.  When the bishop or his counselor asks a member to speak on Sunday, he would also hand them a number of invitations with a challenge to give the invitations to friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, or other acquaintances who are not members of the church, or to those who are less active members of the church.  The invitations could read:

Come hear me preach a brief sermon at my church on Sunday ______________________.

I will be speaking about ____________________________________.

The service begins at __________________ and lasts about 70 minutes.

Our congregation meetinghouse is located at ____________________________________.

Sunday best dress is usual but not required.

Hope to see you there,

The bishop would fill in the date, topic, time, and address, and the speaker would sign the invitation.  Similar invitations could be made for those performing musical numbers.

This is a very small change, requiring little additional effort or resources, and leveraging existing practices and organization, but it’s implications have potential to be revolutionary!

1. Personal and Less Awkward

Real or imagined, inviting someone to church feels awkward. It often doesn’t feel socially comfortable or even appropriate to invite someone to church without an antecedent that indicates some kind of existing interest or disposition.  So we wait around forever for the topic to come up and the right opportunity to make the leap.

But inviting people to come to hear you speak in church is different.  It’s about you, not just the church. It’s like inviting people to come hear your band play, or attend a baby shower or your daughter’s dance recital, or to come to a barbecue at your house.  There is no reason to wait for conversational queues that might indicate interest or disposition.  If they can’t make it or aren’t interested that’s fine.

2. A Physical Reminder

Because the invitation is physical it is easier to give.  Instead of having to strike up a conversation that leads to an invitation, you can simply pass out invitation cards.  If you are especially shy you can simply leave them taped to the door, mail them, or leave them on a colleague’s desk.  When being delivered in person, you can simply say “Hey, I’m giving a sermon at my church on Sunday and wanted to give you an invitation,” and hand them the card.  The physical invitation then stays with whomever you have invited as a reminder.  It will sit on their desk, their coffee table, the passenger seat of their car, or be stuck to the fridge.  It has all the information needed to attend and sets expectations for dress and duration.

3. Time Dependent

The invitations benefit from a specific deadline.  Currently, a goal to invite others to church is too open ended.  Artificially imposed deadlines aside, you can always put it off until another day because there is a meeting every Sunday.  But you speak on a specific date.  It is a real deadline.  The time sensitivity helps people to overcome the tendency to put off the invitation.  It also puts a deadline on those who are invited because if they don’t come, they will miss your sermon.

4. Outward facing

Inviting non-members to hear you speak changes the focus of sacrament meeting talks from inward facing to outward.  If there is a chance your non-member friends or family will come to hear what you have to say, it matters more.  A sacrament meeting talk becomes an opportunity to share your testimony of the gospel with your friends and inspires more thought and preparation.  Are you using words that your friends will understand?  Do you need to explain some things that members take for granted? Consequentially Sacrament meetings will become more visitor-oriented.

5. Self-Reinforcing

Every time you remember that you need to be preparing your talk, you will also remember that you need to extend the invitations.  Every time you see the person you have invited, it will remind you that you need to be preparing your talk.  The invitations and the talk preparation feed back into each other.

6. A Positive Conversation Starter

Instead of the invitation being the culmination of a conversation, the invitation initiates and facilitates conversations about the gospel and the church that may have not happened otherwise. People will be curious or even surprised that you will be preaching a sermon. Instead of passively waiting for discussions initiated by others about dietary restrictions , temple ceremonies, or whatever negative thing they may have heard about the church, the invitations actively lead to discussion of some of the most appealing and interesting aspects of the church: participatory membership and the lay ministry.  A conversation about how the congregation is run by the members and the sermons given by the members themselves provides a positive, memorable introduction to the church that is likely different from their own experiences with other churches and will inspire curiosity that will reinforce the invitation.  It also helps people understand that our meetings are open to visitors.

7. Youth Experience

Many congregations have a teen-aged member speak.  Youth speakers would benefit from real missionary opportunities on a regular basis.  And it will be easier for them than to invite their friends than before, even though it does add some stress to what for some teens is already a difficult assignment.

8. Unique

The invitations take advantage of the participatory nature of the church.  There are few other churches that could consistently replicate this kind of program on a large scale.  Latter-day Saints will come to be associated with invitations and member sermons.

9. Low Tech

While technology could certainly be used to augment and simplify the invitations system, it isn’t required.  It would be nice if the church graphic designers produced attractive invitations, like pass-along-cards, that were properly branded, and distributed to each ward and branch.  Or perhaps the church software developers can add a section to the new stake and unit websites that would generate attractive invitations on the fly for printing and email-able invitations.  But realistically the proposal can be implemented with a simple PDF that can be printed and filled out.  Or a printed invitation template that can be photocopied. (A simple PDF template can be downloaded at the end of this article)

10. Hunting and Fishing

Currently, inviting people to church is like hunting.  The missionaries pray about and identify a member family that they will invite to prayerful identify a couple of friends or family members to invite to church or a meet the missionaries .  They identify a couple of people who may be “ready” or “prepared” and approach them with some trepidation.  They aim for a specific target.  Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail.

Sacrament meeting invitations are more like fishing.  You cast your net wide and see how many people you bring in.  Some slip through, but you get a lot more yield.  While bishops should still seek inspiration in making speaking assignments, and speakers should still seek inspiration concerning to whom invitations should be given, realistically you could invite everyone to your workplace with the hope that a couple might come.

We need both hunting and fishing approaches to grow the church.

11. Easily Implemented Locally

While I would like to see this proposal implemented as a standard policy church-wide, it is simple enough that individual Stake and District Presidents, Bishops and Branch Presidents could fairly easily implement it in their own congregations at any time, if they felt that the Spirit guided them to do so.  Even individual members could print out and distribute invitations on their own initiative when asked to speak in church.  I’ve put together a simple prototype invitation form as a writable PDF that can be downloaded and used.

12. Potential Reach

Up to three members of each ward and branch would be inviting others to church two or three weeks out of the month.  Even if there are only 26 Sundays with speaking assignments, with 28,109 wards and branches, if each speaker invited only 1 person, that is potentially 730,000 people being invited to church every every year.  If each speaker invited just 3 people, that would be nearly 2 MILLION people invited every year.  Of course, as the church grows that number increases.  And contrasted with missionary cold-call door-knocking, street contacting, and English classes, these invitations are far more likely to be effective because they are personal.

Of course, the weakness of the proposal and the key difficulty is the follow up.

The speaker should make sure he or she thanks any visitors for coming.  The ward mission leader, the bishop, and the missionaries should be available immediately after the meeting for the speaker to introduce his or her visiting friends. Hopefully, as visitors become more of a focus for the sacrament meetings, members of the congregation would keep their eye out for visitors and introduce themselves and avoid monopolizing the time of the Bishop or Missionaries until later.  The leaders and members should be careful not to be pushy, these are after all people who came to church driven primary by their relationship with the speaker and not because they are necessarily interested in joining the church.  They should be invited to return the next week, and made aware that the missionaries are available to answer questions.  Of course, following the Spirit is the most important.

Perhaps those who come to hear their friends speak will never come back again, but they will have had a significant exposure to the church that will influence them and their perceptions of Mormons for the rest of the lives.  And more importantly, they will have had an opportunity to hear our testimonies and feel the Holy Spirit touching their hearts.

I really believe that this proposal has great potential to truly revolutionize the church.  I would like to get the feedback from a few people who try it, or Bishops who want to give it a try in their wards.  Let me know what you think.

Download LDS Sacrament Meeting Invitations:

Editable PDF: LDSSpeakingInvitationsForm.pdf

Static PDF: LDSSpeakingInvitations.pdf

Word Doc: LDSSpeakingInvitations.doc

OpenOffice: LDSSpeakingInvitations.odt

UPDATE:  Please be aware of the official church guidelines for how local units are to properly use and display the name of the church and the official church logo.  I have updated the invitation documents above to conform with the guidelines.  If you downloaded them previously please download the updated versions.

To set things up, let me share my personal experience with the economic crisis.

Depression

In January 2009 I found myself sitting in a conference room of the company I had worked for during the last four years listening to the chairman of the board of directors explain that the company was running out of money and that they were replacing the company founder and president with a new, hand-picked CEO.

Only six months earlier the company had been on top of the world: honored with prestigious awards and accolades and a three-year sales growth of 620 percent.

As if the mood wasn’t somber enough, the chairman then went on to explain that the economy was in a very bad way, and that it wasn’t just a cyclical recession, but it was going to be a depression.  He expected that many, many companies would fail but that those companies that survived the depression would be wildly successful afterward.

Now, from any board chairman this kind of talk would be alarming, but from our chairman, Mark H. Willes, it was downright horrifying.  You see, Willes had been president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1977 to 1980.  He had been President and CEO of of General Mills, Inc., President and CEO of The Times Mirror Company, director of Black and Decker, and a somewhat controversial publisher of the L.A. Times.

In other words, he was very, very well connected to insiders across a large number of industries. He had been involved with recessions from various angles for nearly four decades.  He said that neither he nor his associates had never seen anything like what was happening in the economy in their lives.

Within a month or two of our meeting, Mark was named as the new President and CEO of the Deseret Management Corporation by the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Deseret Management Corporation oversees all of the church’s for-profit commercial enterprises.

Within three months of the depressing company meeting with Willes, my award winning company had dwindled from layoffs and resignations.  I was fortunate to find employment with a more stable company.

Now, experts will certainly argue with Willes about whether the current economic crisis actually constitutes a depression.  In fact, a good number believe that the economy is already well on its way to recovery from a severe recession. Others disagree and are predicting that the supposed recovery is superficial and will not last.

I have no idea who is right.  Though, as I watch increasing numbers of friends lose their jobs, I am not very optimistic.  But regardless of whether this is an actual depression, everyone seems to agree that it is among the worst economic crises we’ve had in a very long time.

The Causes of the Economic Crisis

In order to draw my analogy, it is important to first look at how this economic crisis came about.  As usual, even experts disagree about some of the roots of the crisis, and like the Great Depression, I am sure that they will be arguing about them for decades to come.  However, most of the explanations I have seen point to the Housing Market Bubble , Subprime Mortgages and Mortgage Backed Securities as the crux of the crisis.

Perhaps the most layman-accessible explanation I have seen is an 12 minute video entitled “The Crisis of Credit Visualized” by Jonathan Jarvis.

I encourage you to watch the video.

Now, one thing that I should point out is that the video puts the blame for subprime mortgages squarely on the lenders and investors without mentioning that government programs intended to promote home ownership among lower income, minority families as a form of social engineering created artificial incentives for lenders to lend to subprime applicants.

It also neglects the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act passed by the Republican controlled 106th Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1999 which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which had prohibited individual institutions from acting as both an investment bank and commercial bank, or as both a bank and an insurer; prohibitions that had been enacted specifically to prevent the kind of circumstance they believed led to the Great Depression.

The key point here is that the the credit crisis was incubating for a long time before it actually hit.  Laws and policies enacted nearly a decade ago, if not more, did not bear fruit until this last year.

A decade ago  I was newly married and worried more about school, work, and family problems than obscure shifts in banking law and social initiatives being made by the Clinton administration and my Republican representatives in Congress.  I would have never believed that the bad subprime lending practices of lenders and the greed of investment bankers far away from my simple, honest attempt to make a living could damage my own job and threaten the value of my home.

And that is why the subprime credit crisis provides a good analogy for the potential dangers of redefining marriage.

An Analogy

Over and over again I hear supporters of same-sex marriage ask derisively how a same-sex marriage could possibly destroy anyone else’s marriage.  More recently they point to Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage has been legal since May 2004, and declare triumphantly that the societal meltdown prophesied by opponents has not materialized.

But as the subprime mortgage crisis demonstrates, in complex systems seemingly small policy changes, and millions of individual decisions, can over a longer time-scale cause disastrous results for even those who were not involved in the bad decisions, even if things look peachy in the interim.  Five years ago we might have asked derisivly “How can my neighbor’s subprime mortgage hurt my mortagage?”  And now we know how.

Redefining marriage to include same-sex couples is analogous to redefining lending guidelines to offer mortgages to applicants who under previous definitions would not qualify.  We are creating subprime marriages.

The motivation for changing the definition is also similar.  Home ownership is a stabilizing institution.  Government programs sought to lower the standards for mortgage qualifications in order to encourage the stabilizing influence of home ownership among lower-income families and minorities.  Plus everyone wants the benefits of home ownership, and the government and businesses wanted the increased revenue by lending and taxing people who were previously not eligible.

But by lowering the standards they set up a system that in the long term destabilized the entire housing market.

Likewise, marriage is a stabilizing institution.  Some same-sex marriage proponents argue that by allowing homosexuals to marry they will stabilize relationships that are at the present notoriously unstable.  They want the benefits of marriage. Who doesn’t?  But just like home ownership, but even more so, marriage is a long term investment.  It is an investment in the next generation of citizens consisting of the children raised by marriages, and by proxy an investment in society.  By redefining marriage, we potentially destabilize the entire system in the long term, even if things look peachy in the interim.

Of course, same-sex marriage is only one type of subprime marriage.  For decades now we have been investing in other forms of subprime marriages as we grow increasingly tollerant of pornography, infidelity, abuse, and divorce.  In many ways same-sex marriage is as much a result of these existing subprime marriages.

To look at five years of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and declare triumphantly that there are no deleterious consequences is like declaring in 2005, at the height of the housing bubble, that extending homeownership to people who were previously inelligibe and breaking down the barriers to banking, the whole country has benefitted across the board.  It’s short term thinking.

The possible effects of subprime marriage may not be felt for decades, or even two or three generations.

While I empathize a great deal with same-sex couples and their desire to redefine marriage and claim its benefits, like subprime mortgages, in the long run investing in subprime marriage is a bad investment with the potential to be amplified through the complexity of society with disasterous long-term results that affect everyone.

MP3 Audio

This post will be updated with the earliest available mp3 audio files I can find as soon as they become available. If necessary, the links will be replaced by links to the official MP3s at the church website as they are posted.

Saturday Morning Session MP3s

Saturday Morning Session 1st Hour

Saturday Morning Session 2nd Hour

Complete Saturday Morning Session

President Thomas S. Monson

Elder Robert D. Hales

Margaret S. Lifferth

Michael A. Neider

Elder Allan F. Packer

Elder D. Todd Christofferson

President Henry B. Eyring

Saturday Afternoon Session MP3s

Saturday Afternoon 1st Hour

Saturday Afternoon 2nd Hour

Complete Saturday Afternoon Session

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Presented by Robert W. Cantwell

Presented by Brook P. Hales

Elder M. Russell Ballard

Elder Quentin L. Cook

Elder Kevin W. Pearson

Elder Rafael E. Pino

Elder Richard G. Scott

Elder Russell M. Nelson

Sunday Morning Session MP3s

Sunday Morning Session 1st Hour

Sunday Morning Session 2nd Hour

Complete Sunday Morning Session

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Elder Neil L. Andersen

Elder Steven E. Snow

Barbara Thompson

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

President Thomas S. Monson

Sunday Afternoon Session MP3s

Sunday Afternoon Session 1st Hour

Sunday Afternoon Session 2nd Hour

Complete Sunday Afternoon Session

Elder Dallin H. Oaks

Elder David A. Bednar

Elder Gary E. Stevenson

Elder José A. Teixeira

Elder F. Michael Watson

Elder L. Tom Perry

President Thomas S. Monson

Streaming Video

Live streaming video of the conference, as well as archived recordings of completed sessions will be available on demand through the official church website as well as through BYU TV and KSL.  Our family has been watching the conference through the official website and through byu.tv for the last several years and it has been great.  You can even pause the conference to go to the bathroom and come back without missing a thing.

Official Streaming Video on lds.org:

General Conference Video in English

General Conference Video in Spanish

General Conference Video in Portugues

General Conference Video in American Sign Language

BYU.tv:

General Conference Video in English

General Conference Video in Spanish

General Conference Video in Portuguese

KSL:

KSL.com General Conference Video

Podcasts

For the last couple of years, the church has provided official audio and video podcasts of the conference sessions. You can subscribe to the podcasts to receive conference on your iPod or in a podcast enabled feed reader like Google Reader. In past years KSL has also provided a podcast.

In my experience, the KSL podcast sessions often become available shortly after each session ends, but they have been very unreliable.  The official audio podcast has sometimes been posted remarkably fast after the sessions, but it has also been a little inconsistent. Understandably, the video podcast posts a few days later during the following week.

Official LDS.org Audio Podcast (MP3s of Individual Talks)
Official LDS.org Video Podcast (MP4s of Individual Talks)
KSL Audio Podcast (One MP3 per Session)

Twitter #ldsconf

Over the last couple of years, twitter.com has emerged as a powerful online tool for live, real-time commentary.  An article on the church’s official tech website described trends in twitter commentary during the last General Conference. This year, the official twitter page of the @LDSNewsr0om will be twittering the conference as well.  If you are a twitter user, you can post your conference comments using the #ldsconf hashtag.

View #ldsconf comments on twitter

An archive of #ldsconf comments will be available @LDSConf.

Links to the mp3 audio and mp4 video podcast files will be automatically tweeted through NothingWavering.org through @ldsconference.

Video/Twitter Mashup

Bryce Haymond will have a mashup of the live streaming video of the conference side-by-side with the twitter #ldsconf comments at his Temple Study blog .

LDS Blogs

To find LDS blog commentary on the conference, you can check the LDS Blog Portal at NothiningWavering.org which aggregates blog posts by mainstream and orthodox LDS bloggers as well as content from official LDS websites.  You can also check out LDS blog posts specifically tagged with ‘conference’. Nothing Wavering also tweets links to LDS blog posts and official content on twitter @ldsblogs, @ldsbloggers, and @ldsofficial, in addtion to the @ldsconference twitter page mentioned above.

Let me know if you have links to any other great conference resources.

Enjoy!

Book-of-Mormon-Outline.pdf

I compiled the outline as a way to help me understand the Book of Mormon better by identifying some of the organizational boundaries, voices, and structure of the text.

The chapter boundaries of the original 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon were different than our modern version and it was not divided into verses.  Apostle Orson Pratt divided the book into new chapters and added the verse divisions in the 1838 Liverpool edition of the book. One objective of the outline was to easily see the different boundaries between the chapters both in the original translation and our modern version.

The Book of Mormon itself is translated from multiple different sets of records which create natural boundaries in the structure between source materials and authors. Some of these divisions and groups are identified by headings in the original text itself, which I have colored blue. The original translation did not identify the range of chapters over which the headings extended, but in the 1920 edition of the Book of Mormon, text was added to identify which chapters comprised each section identified by the headings.

In addition to the headings from the original record, based on my own reading I have added my own sections with their own headings and boundaries, colored green, whenever possible using words from the actual text.

Many of the boundaries I have made organize chapters of the text where the primary voice changes from the principal author or editor of the plates (Nephi, Mormon, Moroni) to one of their sources for an extensive section, or when the editors (Mormon for the Large Plates of Nephi and Moroni for the Plates of Ether) interrupt their narrative to offer extensive editorial commentary. Additionally, I have marked a few sections where the author makes a significant shift in focus extending for multiple chapters, notably Nephi when he recounts his dream.

The outline is not comprehensive, and there are a few places where making the original chapter boundaries match up with the 1920 chapter ranges doesn’t quite work out. Also there are numerous places where the
editors voice is so intermixed with the speakers, for instance in Alma chapters 9 through 13, that I have not tried to group them under individual headings other than the original heading from the text.

This effort has certainly helped me understand and appreciate the Book of Mormon far more than I did previous to this effort, and building the outline has strengthened my testimony that the Book is true and was translated by the gift and power of the Holy Spirit.

This is my first version so if you find any errors or typos please let me know and I will make corrected versions of the outline available.

Please feel free to copy and distribute it if you find it useful.

We don’t do traditional T.V. in our home.  We have a television, but it isn’t hooked up to cable.  It isn’t even connected with traditional broadcast television channels.  It doesn’t have any channels; not a single one.  And it has been that way for the entire ten years we’ve been married.

Instead, we have a DVD player and a VCR.  We own some DVDs and VHS tapes, but not a lot.  In the past, we have actively chosen what we will watch by renting it from the local library or blockbuster.  If friends recommended a certain television show, we would wait for it to come out on DVD and then rent it.

Increasingly, however, our video entrainment is coming through the internet through sites like Netflix.com and Hulu.com.

Last year I discovered that Hulu included the excellent LDS Film Saints and Soldiers among the feature films available to watch for free on their website.  A few months ago I noticed that it was listed among the most popular films for the day, and have been watching its popularity ever since.

Saints and Soldiers is currently the 2nd most popular feature film of all time on Hulu (behind the Jim Carey movie Liar Liar).  It is also the 4th most popular film this month,  the 7th most popular film this week,  and the 12th most popular film today.

It has been consistently on the  first page of the list most popular films on Hulu for months and has 512 reviews. It is also listed among the highest rated feature films on the site.

While there are quite a few LDS themed films that I would not recommend, I wonder if the producers of some of the better LDS movies have considered trying to get their movies on Hulu to be watched for free with advertsing?  It seems like a great way to make their works available to a wider audience, both LDS and Non-LDS.

In any case, if you haven’t seen Saints and Soldiers, I highly recommend it, with the warning that it is quite violent and rated PG-13 for content that some familes might find objectionable.  You can watch it for free on Hulu over a broadband internet connection:

Saints and Soldiers (1 hour 30 minutes)

“Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.”

…

“I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.”

…

“We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.”

“We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.”

This article is a distillation of a more thorough series of posts on the Evangelical Collapse on his blog, where he clarifies that:

“I clearly said that evangelicalism was going to suffer a collapse, not at all meaning it would die. I said that HALF of evangelicals would be something else within 2-3 generations/10-20 years.”

Spencer’s is careful to state that he is not a prophet and that his prognostications  may be wrong.  But if he is right, the shifting religious landscape may be a great opportunity for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

According to recent statistics about religion in America by the Pew Forum, 26% of Americans identify themselves as Evangelical.  If, as he predicts, 50% of evangelicals will be something else in the next 10 – 20 years, that’s approximately 39,000,000 people who will be something other than Evangelical over the next two decades.

Spencer believes that a number will go to Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox church.

We should make sure that they all have the opportunity to consider the Church of Jesus Christ during their religious flux.  The terrible calumnies about the church widely believed among evangelicals will still be hard to overcome, but while they are re-evaluating their own beliefs, they may be more open than in the past.

On the one had we have democracy which is the rule of the majority. The government derives its just powers from the people.  So a government has to be fundamentally democratic to wield any power justly.  A government that foists the desires of a minority over the majority would be an unjust oligarchy, and tyranny of the minority.

However, the founders were also very suspicious of pure democracy because more often than not it devolved into a tyranny of the majority, where the majority unjustly tramples the rights of the minority.

So while keeping the government fundamentally democratic, they structured the government with a series of checks and balances based on distributing democracy to competing scopes that would prevent the states with large populations from tyrannical rule over the states with small populations, while still allowing government action to be derived justly from the people.  They called this a Democratic Republic.

In the case of Prop 8 the majority has ruled to uphold traditional marriage norms through democratic vote.

Those who favor same-sex marriage lost at the ballot box and view this as an act of tyranny of the majority, so they have turned to the courts to try to overthrow it.

Those who favor traditional marriage view the court case as an act of oligarchy, a usurpation of the democracy from which the government derives its powers.

Now we come to the arguments made by the lawyers before the California Supreme Court.

The proponents of same-sex marriage appear to be making the tyranny of the majority argument– that their rights are trampled by the majority.  But they are fail to explain how the government can justly foist their view upon a majority who disagree.  Unless you have a norm for judging the justice or injustice of democratic action, how can you distinguish between just democracy and unjust democratic tyranny? It can’t simply be that any democratic action you disagree with is tyranny.  If arguments of the proponents of same-sex marriage were to win, then our government would soon lose its legitimacy because it’s powers could no longer be clearly derived from the people.

On the other hand, Ken Starr, representing the Proponents of traditional marriage, argues that rights are defined by the majority and the majority can revoke and bequeath all rights.  This is not an argument for just democracy but for democratic tyranny.  He argues that our rights are derived from the majority of the people.  If the argument by the proponents of traditional marriage were to win, our government would quickly devolve into an unjust tyranny where the rights of a minority could be revoked by the will of a strong majority.  Again, unless you have an external norm by which the justice of a democratic vote can be evaluated, you cannot assume that all democratic actions are just.  This would open the door to the revocation of rights from any unpopular minority by a motivated majority. (Which, while they may desire when it comes to same-sex marriage, they may no be so keen for when it comes to the redistribution of wealth.)

Heads we lose; tails we lose.  Either argument results in unjust government.

The correct argument for both sides lies in the recognition of the source from where both our rights, and the powers we delegate to government originate.  The founding document of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, explains it:

We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.  Among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The justice of our government must be measured against the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.

Laws and constitutional amendments may be enacted through proper means, and still be unjust when measured against the Natural Law.

My rights don’t come from the government and they don’t come from the democratic will of the people.  They come from God.  Unless there is a source, external to both government and man, to which we can turn to claim our rights in the face of tyranny and injustice, how can anyone justifiably fight  either?

Proponents of same-sex marriage declare that laws and amendments that allow only for traditional marriage are unjust.  But upon what grounds?  Rights? Can they rest on the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God or the rights with which we are endued by our Creator without undermining the very justness of their same-sex relationships?  Can they declare the actions of the voters of California an unjust abridgment of their rights while refusing to identify a consistent standard by which that injustice is measured? They need to give a clear standard by which we can all judge the justice of same-sex marriage and the justice of prohibiting simultaneously both polygamy and adult incest.

Even if they are justified in their complaint, are their methods justified?

If the only way to throw off the yolk of injustice is to overthrow the checks and balances of the Republic and remove government power from its just foundation on the will of the people, then isn’t it better to submit to and endure an unjust law until it can be changed through patient, proper, constitutional means than to expose us to the huge danger that such an overthrow would bring?

This was just the situation that the nation faced with the issue of slavery before the Civil War.  The fugitive slave laws were legal and judged constitutional.  But they were contrary to the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, and so they were unjust laws.

Many abolitionists took the view that such unjust laws could and should be defied.  In their minds, any law that contradicted the Natural Law was not a real law.

By the same standard, modern conservatives decry abortion laws.  It may be legal, but the law is unjust as measured by the Natural Law.

Abraham Lincoln spoke about those Abolitionists and their defiance of unjust law in his famous speech to at the Young Men’s Lyceum:

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made.–I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed….

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in neither case, is the interposition of mob law, either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.

Either same-sex marriage is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments.  The same can be said for Abortion.

That should be the argument being made.  Right in itself or wrong.

Laws contrary to right and wrong should be endured until they can be changed through normal, democratic-republican, constitutional means.

We should reject both the oligarchy of the same-sex marriage faction, and the rights come from the tyranny of the majority of the traditional marriage lawyers, and work to produce a just government, measured against the laws of Nature and Nature’s God and the self-evident rights with which every individual was endowed by the Creator.

My personal opinion is that while homosexuals do have a number of  just grievances that we should listen to and address in the most just way possible, the redefinition of marriage is wrong in itself and should be properly prohibited by law.

As is usual with the web, not all of the content is worth promoting, or even consistently worth promoting.

In addition to blogging, we’ve seen the beginnings of a couple of LDS-oriented comic strips.

The 9th Ward is posted most Fridays by father-son team Rick and Ryan Goldsberry, who live in California, and features humorous vignettes related to Mormon culture.

Zarahemla Times is also posted Fridays by Kevin Beckstrom.  It’s about a family living in the suburbs of Zarahemla in the time frame of about the end of Alma or Helaman in the Book of Mormon.  Interesting in that it employs modern LDS terminology, such as the Relief Society, anarchronistically to an ancient setting.

So with blogging, podcasts, and now comics, we arrive at the next step in web-based LDS Entertainment: The Book of Jer3miah.

The Book of Jer3miah is a web series produced by a group of BYU Students and Faculty with new episodes posted…you guessed it…every Friday.  The series is an interesting experiment in Web-based LDS Entertainment.  Each episode is between 3.5 and 5 minutes long, and tells the mysterious story of Jeremiah Whitney.  It starts on Jeremiah’s birthday with the gift of a video camera.  The appearance of a mysterious card in his locked car directs him to the Manti Library, where the mystery begins to unfold.

The story has a lot of LDS thematic elements as well as an LDS setting.  While some of writing and acting is pretty mediocre to poor, the story is interesting and takes an approach similar to popular Television shows Lost and Heroes.  Like those shows, The Book of Jer3miah seems to have some supernatural overtones and only reveals some of what is going on in each episode, leaving fans to speculate and come up with theories.

Watch The Book of Jer3miah Trailer

The Book of Jer3miah – Trailer

I’ve watched all six existing episodes, and I hope that while entertaining and interesting, they can manage to not trivialize the Gospel and the church.

The episodes are available in HD and at 5 minutes an episode, I’ll definitely be watching to see what happens next.

Let me know what you think.

In the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin gives his people a new name . Later, those Lamanites who listen to the teaching of Ammon and his brothers choose to rename themselves Anti-Nephi-Lehies to distinguish themselves from the others while still retaining their unique identity.

If you have read my blog for a while, you will know that I I have a great deal of compassion for those members of the church who struggle with same-sex attraction, and I admire the faithfulness of those who despite their weaknesses, choose to bridle their passions and remain true to the teachings of the prophets.  (see my previous posts here and here).

The names “gay” and “homosexual” are problematic because they describe such a range of behaviors and feelings.  It is impossible for someone who hears another describe himself as “gay” to distinguish whether they mean that they are are a practicing homosexual or simply struggle with same-sex attraction but purposefully abstains from homosexual practices in favor of traditional morality.

David Benkof, who was  formerly a practicing homosexual before returning to the religious practice of Judaism and becoming celibate,  recently published an article in the Jerusalem Post in which he proposes a new name for people with same-sex attraction but who choose to live according to tradition by remaining celibate or entering into traditional, hetero-sexual marriages.

DELTA stands for “Deliberately Living Traditionally” and is the name he proposes for those who choose to live traditionally to distinguish themselves from “gays.”

He says:

Instead of gay or ex-gay, those of us who have stopped thinking of ourselves primarily as same-sexers can emphasize the fact that, whether we’re celibate or in opposite-sex relationships, we’re ‘Deliberately Living Traditionally.’ The handy acronym Delta corresponds to a Greek letter representing change; it can be a rival to the use of the letter Lambda to represent all things gay. Delta can serve as a new identity and community for people who are making or have made that tough transition….

The ‘Delta’ idea correctly focuses on how people behave and organize their lives rather than what their sexuality bar codes are. Such an attitude, by the way, is consistent with Torah Judaism. By contrast, the ‘ex-gay’ approach accepts the gay community view that all of us have an innate sexual orientation, merely adding that those orientations can be changed through ‘reparative’ or other therapy.

By trumpeting that they’ve changed sexual orientations, ex-gays also open themselves to charges of deception and failure. For example, Jewish writer Wayne Besen’s 2003 book attacking the ex-gay movement, Anything But Straight, makes a big deal of ex-gay leaders who later return to the gay community, and of evidence that for many ex-gays, the transition is temporary at best.

But for many of us, the trend away from homosexuality is not the wholesale fraud Besen and other gay activists make it out to be. Whether part of an organized movement or not, a number of men and women, mostly quietly, have purposefully left same-sex lifestyles, without regret. Many still have same-sex attractions. But they remain, if you will, Deltas.

I think this is a name that Latter-day Saints, whether they have same-sex attraction or not, could adopt and promote.

My only concern is that Elder Oaks has said that “…if you are trying to live with and maintain ascendancy over same-gender attractions, the best way to do that is to have groups that define their members in terms other than same-gender attractions.”  Is using the new name LDS Delta inconsistent with that admonition?

Any thoughts?  Reactions?

In the future, if my blog goes down, you can check my twitter account for updates about what is happening.

While every hosting provider has occasional outages, this is the first time I have been down for such a long time.  At least it happened over a weekend when traffic is usually lower anyway.  Hopefully things will remain stable now.

People are likely to ascribe this fact to hypocricy and sexual repression among conservatives and religious people, especially Latter-day Saints.  But may I suggest that we look a little closer at the issue before jumping to that conclusion.  Are there other factors that could be contributing to this trend?

For instance, as a resident of Utah, my impression is that there are far fewer venues for pronographic material than I have seen simply driving around than I see in other places.  With fewer avenues for pornography, more people would turn to online sources.

Also remember that Utah is no longer mostly made up of members of the LDS Church.  There is a significant population that is not LDS, some of whose attitudes toward pornography may be more accepting than their religious neighbors.  But with fewer venues, these people would be forced to seek adult content in greater amounts from online sources than they would in more permissive states.

Again, Utah does not necessarily equal active, temple-worthy Latter-day Saints.  This study also doesn’t distinguish between active,  less active, and non members of the church. Until they can show that more members per 1000 active, temple recommend holding members of the church pay for online pornography than any other group, we should be careful about what conclusions we draw from this kind of study.

Any thoughts?

UPDATE: Also see the criticism of the study here.

UPDATE 2: According to an article in the Deseret News, Edelman has identified the “most porn-watching ZIP codes in Utah” as 84766 in Sevier County, 84112 in Salt Lake County, 84018 in Morgan County, 84006 in southwest Salt Lake County, and 84536 in San Juan County. (Here is a map of Utah Counties)

Just click the Facebook button in the comments section of any post and approve Sixteen Small Stones for use with your facebook account, and you will be able to leave a comment on any article whenever you are logged into Facebook.

First time comments will still be subject to moderation, but once your first comment has been approved, you should be able to comment at will.

Let me know what you think and if you have any trouble with it.

(This entry contains some original observations about the word Bishopric that I have not encountered elsewhere, so please read beyond the first few paragraphs even if you are familiar with LDS Bishops and Bishoprics)

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Bishop refers to the individual priesthood authority who directs the affairs of a single congregation.  In contrast, in the Catholic church a bishop oversees multiple congregations in a group called a diocese, similar to what latter-day saints call a Stake President.

A Bishop in the LDS Church is not paid for his service, but manages the affairs of his congregation in his spare time in addition to holding a normal full-time job to support himself and his own family.  Bishops are called from among the members of the congregation who hold the Melchizedek Priesthood to serve for a number of years, after which they are “released” to return to the congregation and replaced by another.  So in any congregation there is only one bishop, but there may be several former bishops among the congregation.

The word Bishop means literally “overseer” (see Etymology below).  The Bishop is both the presiding High Priest of the Melchizedek Priesthood and the President of the Priest’s Quorum of the Aaronic Priesthood for the congregation over which he has stewardship.

As President of the Priest’s Quorum, he directs the sacrament ceremony of the Lord’s Supper (see An LDS Lexicon:  Sacrament) each Sunday, and handles the temporal affairs of the ward including overseeing the collection of tithes and other donations made by the members of the congregation.  He also oversees the distribution of aide to the poor within the geographical limits of his congregation.

As the presiding High Priest, he also works together with the President of the Stake, which is comprised of multiple congregations, as a gatekeeper to the additional ordinances performed in the Temple, which differ from normal Sunday services in that they are restricted to only those who are living according to certain commandments and statutes of the Church (see An Lds Lexicon: Endue, Endow, Endowment).  The bishop conducts standardized interviews to judge the worthiness of those members who wish to participate in the temple ceremonies and issues a printed recommend with his own signature that, after an additional interview with the presidency of the stake, will permit the member to enter into the temple. ( Sunday services in the chapels of meetinghouses are open to the public.)

The Bishop is assisted in his duties by two counselors.  Latter-day Saints refer to the Bishop and his Counselors collectively as “the Bishopric.”  Most members of the church are unaware that using “bishopric” in this way is relatively meaningless outside of LDS culture. As far as I can tell, this meaning may be unique to the latter-day saints (please let me know if you have any examples outside of Mormonism).

The church also has a “Presiding Bishopric” which oversees the temporal affairs of the church worldwide including tithing and humanitarian aide.

Looking at etymological roots, the “-ric” suffix in “bishopric” means “realm” and is strongly related to the German concept of a “reich.” (See Etymology below) It is also more distantly related to the words “ruling,” “regulating,” and “reigning.” So “bishopric” literally means “the realm over which a bishop rules” and, in standard usage, bishopric is simply a synonym for diocese. In a more generic sense a bishopric is a bishop’s stewardship, which includes his responsibilities and authority, in addition to the physical realm over which that authority extends.

The word “bishop” occurs very infrequently in the King James version of the Bible, and only in the New Testament.  “Bishopric” occurs only once, spelled “bishoprick.”  Interestingly, it appears in a verse that itself quotes the Old Testament book of Psalms, which does not use the word “bishoprick” at all, but uses “office” instead (see Acts 1:20 citing Psalms 109: 8).  So this single biblical instance employs the more standard usage, with “bishopric” meaning “the stewardship of an overseer” and not “a priesthood presidency composed of a bishop and his counselors.”

It is instructive also to look at the usage of “bishopric” in the book of Doctrine and Covenants, where it us used seven times.  The first instance of “bishopric” in modern revelation is in Section 68, verses 16-18:

And if they be literal descendants of Aaron they have a legal right to the bishopric, if they are the firstborn among the sons of Aaron; For the firstborn holds the right of the presidency over this priesthood, and the keys or authority of the same.  No man has a legal right to this office, to hold the keys of this priesthood, except he be a literal descendant and the firstborn of Aaron.

This first usage matches the use in the Acts 1.  The bishopric here refers to the office of a bishop, the stewardship over which a bishop has authority.

Bishopric makes its next appearance in Section 82, verses 11-13:

Therefore, verily I say unto you, that it is expedient for my servants Edward Partridge and Newel K. Whitney, A. Sidney Gilbert and Sidney Rigdon, and my servant Joseph Smith, and John Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery, and W. W. Phelps and Martin Harris to be bound together by a bond and covenant that cannot be broken by transgression, except judgment shall immediately follow, in your several stewardships—To manage the affairs of the poor, and all things pertaining to the bishopric both in the land of Zion and in the land of Kirtland; For I have consecrated the land of Kirtland in mine own due time for the benefit of the saints of the Most High, and for a stake to Zion.  For Zion must increase in beauty, and in holiness; her borders must be enlarged; her stakes must be strengthened; yea, verily I say unto you, Zion must arise and put on her beautiful garments.

“Bishopric” here seems to refer to the physical realms over which they have been given stewardship (Missouri and Kirtland), and then, alluding to Isaiah  54,  Kirtland is specifically named a Stake to Zion.  This creates the most direct connection between a bishopric and a Stake in the scriptures, and matches not only the literal meaning of the word, but also the Catholic use of Bishopric as a synonym for Diocese.

We find the next instance of “bishopric” in the book of Doctrine and Covenants in Section 107, verses 13-18:

The second priesthood is called the Priesthood of Aaron, because it was conferred upon Aaron and his seed, throughout all their generations. Why it is called the lesser priesthood is because it is an appendage to the greater, or the Melchizedek Priesthood, and has power in administering outward ordinances. The bishopric is the presidency of this priesthood, and holds the keys or authority of the same. No man has a legal right to this office, to hold the keys of this priesthood, except he be a literal descendant of Aaron.  But as a high priest of the Melchizedek Priesthood has authority to officiate in all the lesser offices, he may officiate in the office of bishop when no literal descendant of Aaron can be found, provided he is called and set apart and ordained unto this power by the hands of the Presidency of the Melchizedek Priesthood. The power and authority of the higher, or Melchizedek Priesthood, is to hold the keys of all the spiritual blessings of the church

This, I believe, may be the source of our modern LDS usage of “bishopric” as a collective name for the bishop and his two counselors.  Verse 15 says that “The bishopric is the presidency of this priesthood.”  It is easy to see how a reader could take that to mean that the presidency of the Aaronic priesthood, comprised of the bishop and counselors, is called “the bishopric.”  However, I believe that this is a misreading.  Taken in context, and consistent with the use of bishopric in previous sections, I submit that verse 15 is actually saying that the presidency of the priesthood of outer ordinances is the “realm of authority” that belongs to Aaron’s seed, contrasted to the stewardship over spiritual blessings belonging to the higher priesthood.

Looking at the final three occurrences of the word in modern scripture, one in section 114 verse 2, and the final three in section 124, verses 21 and 141, we see that the continued use of “bishopric” agrees with the dictionary and etymological meaning of the word.

For verily thus saith the Lord, that inasmuch as there are those among you who deny my name, others shall be planted in their stead and receive their bishopric. Amen.

I therefore say unto you, I seal upon his head the office of a bishopric, like unto my servant Edward Partridge, that he may receive the consecrations of mine house, that he may administer blessings upon the heads of the poor of my people, saith the Lord. Let no man despise my servant George, for he shall honor me.
…
And again, I say unto you, I give unto you Vinson Knight, Samuel H. Smith, and Shadrach Roundy, if he will receive it, to preside over the bishopric; a knowledge of said bishopric is given unto you in the book of Doctrine and Covenants.

I think that reading these final instances interchangeably with “bishop’s stewardship,” and “the realm over which a bishop has authority” makes a great deal more sense than the modern LDS meaning.

Recognizing that the book of Doctrine and Covenants uses the word “bishopric” with its original meaning, different from the modern, idiosyncratic use by latter-day saints, improves our ability to understand the scriptures.

Translated in KJV from Old Testament Hebrew Words

The words “bishop” and “bishopric” do not occur in the King James version of the Old Testament

Translated in KJV from New Testament Greek Words

επισκοπον (ep-is’-kop-os) “an overseer, curator, guardian, or superintendent”
Total occurrences: 7 in 7 verses
Translated as: bishop(6), overseer(1)

επισκοπην (ep-is-kop-ay’) 1. “investigation, inspection, visitation; oversight” 2. “overseership, office, charge, the overseer or presiding officers”
Total occurrences: 4 in 4 verses
Translated as: visitation (2), bishoprick (1), office of a bishop

Usage in Latter-day Scripture

The words “bishop” and “bishopric” do not occur in the Book of Mormon or the Pearl of Great Price.

The word “bishop” occurs in the book of Doctrine and Covenants 70 times and the word “bishopric” occurs 7 times.

Etymology & Etymologically Related Words

Additional Resources

Bishop in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism Online

NOTE: This is an entry in an ongoing, periodic series I call “An LDS Lexicon.” Each entry in my LDS Lexicon series contains etymology, etymologically related words, some information about the Hebrew and Greek terms from which the word is translated in the Bible (if applicable), and some personal insights about the word.

The views expressed here and in other entries in this series are my own and should not be construed to represent the official doctrine of the LDS Church. They are subject to change and amendment.

You may view all entries in this series: An LDS Lexicon

We are also members of the Puppetry Arts Guild of Utah which hosts an annual puppetry workshop in April where you can learn all about puppets, puppet making, puppet performance, and see performances by puppeteers from all over Utah.

The Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe, based at the University of Missouri, will be performing at the Pardoe Theatre at Brigham Young University in Provo, on January 16th and 17th.

Bunraku is an amazing form of traditional Japanese Puppetry, more properly called ningyō jōruri.

Martin Holman, is the coordinator of the Japanese studies program at University of Missouri and the director of the troupe.  He studied Japanese at BYU, and is the first non-Japanese to ever be trained in and perform ningyō jōruri in Japan.

Holman contacted us through our Utah Puppetry website. ” We are, to my knowledge, the only troupe outside Japan that performs traditional Japanese puppetry,” he said.  He wanted to clarify that he was slightly misquoted in the BYU press release.

The release stated:

“Though this performance will be family friendly, Bunraku is intended for adults. Some thematic elements could frighten young children, Holman said.

Holman clarified to us:

“I am not quite quoted accurately at one point. Kids from kindergarten up will probably be okay with the show, but it could be boring for younger kids (because they will be seated in a large theater, which doesn’t always work for little kids) or just a bit scary for early elementary age if they skittish. (We have been known to take some puppets out into the audience.)”

The performance will also be entirely in Japanese, with English supertitles, which could also be a factor for parents to consider for their individual children.  But families, including children, are encouraged to come.

Holman also indicated that if ticket sales warrant it, BYU may add a matinee on Saturday.  Tickets are $11, or $6 with a BYU or student ID, and are available online at www.byuarts.com, by phone at (801) 422-4322 or in person at the Harris Fine Arts Center Ticket Office.

Don’t miss this chance to expereince this beautiful cultural experience with your family.