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Holy Cow wrote:
Wow! This sounds awesome. I’m in Las Vegas. I wish I had known about it. I definitely would have liked being there. That’s a great idea! I’m sure somebody could have a full-time job traveling around to different unorthodox ‘congregations’ like this.
They are going to do more of these. here is the contact details so you can get in the loop if you wishLas Vegas **SUPPORT GROUP** – Clay Bloxham = cblox7 AT gmail DOT com
email him and get in on the next go around
Ann wrote:DBMormon wrote:Went to Las Vegas this past Friday as I was invited by a LDS member who is putting together a group of members who are navigating questions.
Very cool! How did the group come together? Did the member do this solo? Leaders aware? How was it publicized? Etc. Thanks!
There is a family where several of the adults and teenagers listen to the podcast. They wanted to help others have validation and have support to make it work if they want. He called me and invited me to come to Vegas and meet their family and help promote a LDS support type group where they all could meet every 3 months or so. This was completely off the radar of the Church entity and was absolutely faith positive while validating issues.
[img]http://www.mormondiscussionpodcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Vegas.jpg [/img] I have not interviewed a GA though I welcome it. It would make a great chance for them to address important issues while knowing they wouldn’t be thrown under the bus while doing so. I would even give them all the questions in advance so they could prep. That said I have done several episodes where I include audio snippets from GA talks and have likely used Elder Christofferson before when defining Doctrine. Old-Timer wrote:Doubters are welcome; fighters and converters aren’t.
What if the fighter is only fighting for his space?LookingHard wrote:I am glad for this site where anybody not at the end of the spectrums is welcome. It is easy to find those on the ends.
Amen… and often those in the middle have the hardest time finding others.
mom3 wrote:Well written. Your personal hope shines through it. Time will tell if the church manifests the ideals you present. Hopefully in 20 or so years we can look back and see that road. Thanks for trying to continue to build bridges of hope.
your welcome!
Gerald wrote:I appreciated the post on W&T and was interested by many of the comments. For most of my adult life, I assumed that membership and participation in the Church was black and white. You’re in or you’re out. You’re active or you’re inactive. You’re a member or you’re a nonmember. These dichotomies (while ultimately inaccurate) made it easier and quicker to interact with those around us. In fact, it’s not unique to the LDS. All humans do it. We’re generally not interested in subtleties or gray areas. Who has the time to think about every person you meet or every interaction you have? So, it was comfortable. Over the past few years, I have come to realize that dedication to the Church and membership in the Church takes many different shapes. And that our convictions wax and wane with the passing of experiences. However, I doubt the rank and file active member looks at things this way (I could be underestimating). However, I don’t think that is the case with our leaders but our leaders have a difficult balance to walk between compassion and maintenance. To advocate broad tent Mormonism COULD be advocating accepting whatever (strange) doctrine an individual believes. Such acceptance could water down the average member’s convictions and their commitment. It’s the black and white aspect of church membership that makes many feel good about it. I don’t mean to sound cynical but I do believe that the LDS leaders will forfeit compassion for maintenance when push comes to shove. It just makes sense from an organizational standpoint.
Great post and I agree… or perhaps it is great because I agree… hmm I must think about this. lolI offered my HPGL to teach this lesson and offer an alternative view. He gave the go ahead. This to me is a great way to combat this. I will share multiple Leader quotes that counter this view and leave it up to each member to choose their own conclusion. I hear you and agree….. neither side wants to have an honest and open discussion about how how both could meet the other’s needs more and what it takes to support both. That said i feel like a walk a middle road pretty well and I no doubts about it, get more flack from the TBM side. Heber13 wrote:If it was a simple straight forward event, there would be more than 17million members.
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and more than a 35% activity rate!I try to be authentic. I feel i have enough capital to speak my mind, so I do. I haven given talks about seer stones, figurativeness of the gospel, leader fallibility, being a mormon doesn’t raise your chance of salvation, etc…. I am pretty bold and while a few from the older crowd are rubbed the wrong way a little, most of the younger crowd say how happy they are with what is said. In regards to these studies, they are misleading and here is why. 1.) 66% of church membership is always inactive due to “non historical reasons” The Church like every other faith in the world loses more than 50% of it membership because most people simply are not that committed. The uncommitted people are what we see statistically but that is not who we are talking about in regards to “leaving in droves” (personally I don’t think it is droves though 1-3 people per ward struggling is a big problem)
2.) many of those we want to statistically find can’t be discovered in statistics of those who leave because they haven’t left. We need to go among the active members if we truly want to find them in the statistics.
3.) we brush the problem aside by showing that the LDS church hangs onto members better than almost any other and perhaps even better than any other. But that side steps the problem. being the best at something doesn’t diminish the possible room for improvement.
I grant that 66% of total church membership is at any given time inactive. Many within mormonism brush off the “losing their faith in droves” by simply referring us back to the 66% and saying “look, they didn’t leave over history”. Of course most of them didn’t. Many of them simply leave for the reasons made note of in the article cited. What we need to do is separate out that group because they have always left their faith and have been doing so for 100 years.
I am not sure it is possible, but we need to find a way to get responses and information from the remaining 34%
Asking all active members
– have you lost faith over historical issues in your church?
– Do you have strong disagreements with your church on social issues to the point it is hurting your faith in said church?
– Do you believe your church is true in the same way you feel it claims to be?
– Have you considered leaving the Church over these kinds of issues?
There will always be 66% (give or take) who leave for non historical reasons in any decade and likely in any church. the question is in the present or next 10 years going forward where there be another 5-10% who either leave over doubt and feelings of betrayal or who stay but do so on their own terms and not the Church’s
My question is what % of the remaining 34% have lost faith, stay for reasons other than testimony, stay in but on their own terms rather than the Church’s, and who are at risk for severing ties with their membership to some extent
I would start with the essays. Then I would provide a faithful reasoning (FairMormon, MormonDiscussion, Jeff Lindsay, etc..) and a Critical Reasoning (mormonthink, ces letter, etc…) and let her make up her own mind. The essays validate the troublesome facts and the context can be decided by her. my thoughts only I wished I worded one answer better (serious flaws) and pushed back on one or two spots better (where they said critics have “proven” the book of Mormon as impossible. Otherwise I was happy with it. NewLight wrote:I’m in the same court with SD – Truth Restored was the history. That and a handful of other church approved books were the only ones I was allowed to study on my mission (and I faithfully followed the rules). I got loud and clear from leaders and teachers to keep away from the “anti-mormon” stuff (which was virtually anything that talked negatively about the church). And since our leaders will never lead us astray, I towed the line.
The sad part is that his post and others like it are the type that encourage people to get all riled up and defensive. I wish that would stop and we could just go forward and work through this. If the Church and its staunch defenders would just back off a bit on the “it’s true no matter what” approach and just focus on the truth and the goodness that we can do now, it would be quite refreshing.
BTW, Loved your explanation, Bill.
thanks
