Youth in the Adult Session
“Because young men and young women ages 12 through 18 are a vital part of hastening the work of salvation, please invite and encourage them to attend the Saturday evening sessions of the stake conferences in 2014.” Thus the First Presidency was quoted regarding the schedule for our upcoming stake conference in March.
A couple months ago when an employee of the Church’s Research Information Division asked me and others of my ward what the Church could do to help families prepare youth for mission, I said a more coherent message was desirable. Is the great value of 18-year-old missionaries that they are simple (19-year-olds not being simple enough), or is it that they are prepared despite their youth? If this is the answer, I like it.
I now have to come up with a babysitter, though. Maybe the neighbor gentile girl will be available. Thinking about it, maybe I will stay home with the younger Mansfields. My thoughts are conflicting. The adult evening session has always been the more insiderish part of stake conference, for people willing to go to church on a Saturday night. I want the youth to be part of that, but can it remain that with a bunch of teenagers dragged along by parents? In particular, I fear an overdose of focus on the youth of the noble birthright during the inauguration of this change that I wouldn’t mind missing.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Rew
January 28, 2014
This was the instruction for our Stake Conf here in SoCal a week and a half ago. While there was some noting that it was historic and important that the youth were there, the focus was entirely on Hastening the Work and missionary work. I remember some talk of how to prepare for missionary work which was directly applied to the youth, but the rest was how we (normal adult members) could find ways to share the Gospel.
As the Sunday session was a transmission from SLC (for multiple stakes), there was not much said in that meeting about the change (I don’t recall one mention).
Vader
January 28, 2014
The theme of our last Stake Conference, every session of it, was missionary work.
The theme of our last Stake Priesthood Meeting was missionary work.
The theme of the previous Stake Conference was missionary work, every session of it.
The theme of the previous Stake Priesthood Meeting was missionary work.
It’s been that way for at least three years.
This has left little time for discussion of how to strengthen our marriages, how to be better parents, how to be better citizens, and, to a surprising extent, how to prepare for the temple and take family names there.
It’s like there’s no tomorrow. And, when a church led by revelation from God starts acting like there’s no tomorrow, one worries it’s because there’s not going to be any tomorrow.
MC
January 28, 2014
It would make sense to have a disproportionate focus on missionary work during the time period when the pig-shaped lump of new younger missionaries is working its way through the python, so to speak. Making hay while the sun shines, etc. (Choose your own metaphor).