Two Down, One to Go
From a letter three weeks ago to a missionary son:
“More than most church responsibilities, everyone has an opinion what missionaries should be doing. ‘Every member a mission president.’ That’s not altogether without reason, as missionaries have a lot of authority. Though you will serve in the Melchizedek priesthood for the rest of your life, this is probably the only time who will bear the title ‘Elder.’ After that, the authority will be dormant, like the apostles in the quorum of the twelve who are all ordained and sustained as prophets, but only the church president exercises that ordination to the church and the world.”
In the Los Alamos Ward around 1992, a man whose face I remember, but not his name, was in our priesthood opening exercises for the first time, and when called upon, he introduced himself as a new move-in with his family. He was asked from the pulpit, “Elder or high priest?”, and hamming it up a bit, with self-pity he answered, “Neither, I’m a Seventy.” Brother Chamberlin, the ward’s last remaining refugee from the stake Seventies Quorum disbanded in ’86, turned and extended his arms in a gesture of embrace. “Welcome, brother.”
Another reminder of the past, from the 1986 instructions concerning discontinued stake Seventies quorums: “In the event that a stake seventies quorum operated a project or owned property, the stake presidency should, after prayerful consideration, submit its recommendation to the First Presidency concerning the disposition of such projects or properties.” A local quorum that operated a project or owned property? It was a different time, a different world.
Bookslinger
April 2, 2018
My understanding: The project/property that stake 70s quorums had was usually a “bookstore.” It was not a brick-and-mortar storefront, but usually a corner of someone’s garage, or a spare room. The “property” was merely books. This was more common in areas where there was not sufficient density of members to justify a real bookstore that catered to LDS. I understood that they mainly stocked stuff from the church Distribution Center intended for members and member missionary work. I assumed that the local 70’s stocked it via out-of-pocket individual donations, and sales of books and things merely went back to restocking whatever was sold, so it was actually the local quorum’s collective property, not Dist Center or Corp of the President.
G.
April 3, 2018
yes, the Church is becoming flatter. For good reasons, I’m sure, but I miss the old stuff too.
My father was (is) a local 70.