When you drive a boat, you are always in drift. You are attached to nothing. Stuff happens in the water beneath you that does not make any intuitive sense. Sometimes your stern (your tail) moves faster than your bow (your nose), and in a different direction. Sometimes both stern and bow are moving in the same direction at the same speed, but it’s not the direction the bow is pointed. On a boat, you don’t always go where you’re pointed.
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One thing I found surprising when I was young and a stake executive secretary was that calling bishops had two key features I was completely unaware of.
First, did they actually have the time to serve?
Second, how did their foibles correct for the drift of the last bishop?
Wards never seemed pointed in the direction that they were intended to go. Instead they were always in a process of drifting back and forth across that line (so to speak).
Callings being considered expressly acknowledged that process of drift. Much like sailing a ship acknowledges the effect of the wind.
It was only after that process (availability and drift correction) that things like ward boundaries and similar issues came up. I still remember when an exemplary guy, Steve Gray, was almost called as a bishop for a ward he didn’t live in.
The point is that with a ship there are many types of drift that result in ships being pointed in a direction other than their destination.
There are great circle routes (the shortest path is an arc, not a line—the key to air travel). Winds. Currents. Other ships. Consideration of intermediate locations (and upcoming weather) and issues.
With a flotilla of ships (think of a collection of wards and stakes) there are always ships on either edge of the main group. With any heading, one that is right for a group, it will be wrong for some.
The same is true in life. Any guidance or approach will have exceptions and those it doesn’t work for (not to mention excesses and misapplications). Which is why Dallin H. Oaks is famous for his comment that general authorities are general, not specific authorities.
I’ve found this a useful concept in looking at the church and at church history.
What do you get out of the approach of looking at the church like a boat or a flotilla of boats?
Wheat & Tares 
I’ve seen some of what you describe when calling bishops. But my experience looks more like bumbling forward than steering and correcting. I haven’t seen callings issued with enough information about the past or the present to feel like fine adjustments at a rudder.
Of course I am not a “manifest destiny” believer about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. .
More to the point, the LDS Church as a flotilla of Ward size or Stake size boats has some resonance, but I don’t get much out of it. However, the Christian world as a flotilla of religion or sect -size boats does turn out to be a useful metaphor for my thinking.
Thank you for this essay..
My stake president reorganized ward boundaries and did actually call a bishop outside of the ward boundaries. He decided on the spot to adjust the boundaries to include that person instead of calling a different bishop, obviously w/o SLC approval.
I guess I think of the church as a bunch of increasingly smaller boats following an enormous boat the size of an cruise ship. The little boats are always trying to leave the flotilla to do little excursions and you have other little shepherd ships (bishops and SP) trying to keep the little boats somewhat close to the flotilla. Also flotillas can still drift off course.
The problem with DHO statement is that I don’t really think GAs believe it. Personal revelation is all fine and good until it doesn’t agree with the handbook.
We must all agree that wards get off course. But it is rarely the fault of the bishop at the helm. It is almost always the fault of the younger members of the congregation.
There was a time when ward members were willing to heed the bishop’s call to serve their fellow ward members. Unfortunately, the younger generation is not so willing. Indeed, they prefer sitting around in sweatpants and crocs watching hot dog eating contests on television to getting out and serving.
Sadly, this means that changing the bishop will have little effect. The young members will continue to exchange their birthright for a mess of pottage, except in the modern age it is likely to be a plate of Irish nachos.
John Charity Spring: Wow, first of all, you live in some bizarre alternate universe where “young people” are watching hot dog eating contests in sweatpants and crocs. I feel like somewhere in there, you’ve conflated “young people” with middle-aged homebodies and/or Japanese people (the hot dog eating contests are not really mainstream entertainment for any US demographic I can think of and I know exactly zero people under the age of 40 who would be caught dead in crocs.) I honestly don’t even know what Irish nachos are. Irish? Nachos?
As to your observation about young people bugging out of service opportunities, my experience has been mostly the reverse. Before they merged High Priests and Elders Quorum, nobody could get the codgers to show up for ANYTHING. They were retired. They were tired. They had done their time in the trenches. Instead, it was consistently the men aged 25-45 doing every service project and move, cleaning the church, and holding down the big callings, taking the boys on high adventure, and running the haunted house for the Trunk or Treat. The old guys were the ones turning down callings claiming they were too old to be bothered. Somewhere during their advancing years, they learned boundaries.
I will give you this, though. Your comments are amusing, and you have a flair for language.
“how did their foibles correct for the drift of the last bishop?”
I had never heard anything like this. It is very interesting to hear your perspectives. Thanks for sharing.
I hear the metaphor of ship and I commonly think of how the metaphor is often invoked to portray the church as a big ship saving us from the threats of this mighty, unpredictable ocean surrounding us. I think the ship is actually on dry land. And if you get off, as many do, you’re free to walk on the land and explore new ideas and communities. You’re not going to metaphorically drown just because you leave the church.
John Charity Spring, by your logic, that the younger generation is making the wards bad to the extent that bishops can do nothing, there is no point in leadership, at least when it comes to helping guide and orient the youth. Sounds like a very defeatist attitude.
@John Charity Spring, this is the first and last time I’ll address your comments because they are trollish and seem to be made in bad faith. But hear me out.
The sweatpants and crocs line is getting so old. Time for new material. You use that line in basically every comment in which you describe those who are different from you (and therefore lazy, inferior and – I guess – fashionless?)
How about joggers and AllBirds? Probably fits your target better TBH. Although you’ll still be wrong and the opposite of charitable.
@John W the ship may be on dry land or – as Elder Renlund himself described it – at best a leaky dinghy. No wonder many are taking their chances.
That metaphor (as used by GA’s, not this post, which is a different angle) is bad on so many levels. Apart from being totally fear-based, it’s so easily inverted against the Church.
Stephen, I had never heard about the SP selecting Bishop s to change course. I was called out of mostly desperation and was not the first choice. But after I let the ward drift slightly to the left, the next bishop was very TBM and not only brought the ward back on course but let it drift to the right.
Apostle Neal A. Maxwell commented that, “the church is like an aircraft carrier, and it takes a while to get it turned. If you turn too sharply, all the members fall off.” My rejoinder is: The Church is moving so slowly that the member are jumping off the ship.
Right. Because when ships run aground, it is always the fault of the yeoman of the powder room, not the guy on the bridge. That ship still stuck in the Suez is there because the Philippino cook tried to salvage some sweaty shrimp. And you damn kids in sweat pants and crocs get off my lawn.
I once got to be skipper of a 38-foot sailboat on San Francisco Bay. We were traveling under engine power. My number one job, the owner told me, was to watch out for BSTs – Big Steel Things. Those monster size ships that can’t stop or turn fast enough to avoid hitting you so you have to be watchful and change course as needed to avoid taking a swim.
Perhaps the metaphor is the Corporate Church as the BST. The local units are just bobbing around in its wake and trying to avoid being bowled over.
My bishop (captain) still thinks Vaughn Featherstone predicted the Second Coming and preaches accordingly. TBH glad he will be released this summer.
Late and FWIW, being curious about BY’s “old ship Zion” metaphor revived by Elder Ballard, I found it not at all original to BY, though it may be that his applying it exclusively to the COJCOLDS was original. [Some (Ammon, Orson Whitney, others) seem to think the kingdom of God is a bit broader than the COJCOLDS. 😊]
BY said, “I sail in the old ship Zion, and it bears me safely above the raging elements. I have my sphere of action and duties to perform on board of that ship; to faithfully perform them should be my constant and unceasing endeavor. If every bishop, every president, every person holding any portion of the holy priesthood, every person who holds a membership in this church and kingdom would take this course the kingdom would roll without our help.” From The Kingdom of God on Earth is a Living, Moving, Effective Institution: We Do not Carry It, But It Carries Us,
June 17, 1866, Journal of Discourses vol. 11, pp. 249-256
The Old Ship Church is a Puritan church built in 1681 in Hingham, Massachusetts. Within the church, the Hammerbeam roof construction is said to look like the inverted frame of a ship. Until 1799, Connecticut – established as a Puritan colony – claimed political control of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, founded 1769. In typical New England fashion, a town church, called Old Ship Zion, was built ca. 1805-1815 on Public Square for use by adherents of Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyterian traditions.
Elijah Shaw wrote of his conversion experience and baptism in the Second Baptist Church, Rochester, NY, that “in 1843 [he] entered on board the ‘Old Ship Zion,’ under a New Commander, being in the 73d year of his age.” Short Sketch of…, published 1843.
“G.H.G.” wrote in 1848, “I find that there is nothing like religion. I would not give up the peace that I enjoy for the whole world. It is something happy that fires the soul, and gives us good feelings toward our fellow men. I bless God that I ever signed articles on board the good old ship Zion. I have signed for life, and am determined never to leave the wheel till I am landed safe in the port of glory… We are now standing on the right tack that leads to celestial glory; and may we ever keep on this tack, till we weather the headland of death, and drop our anchor on the banks of everlasting happiness.”
And there are the old Ozark folksong and African-American spirituals:
The Old Ship of Zion
‘Tis that old Ship of Zion, [repeated]
Get on board, get on board.
She have landed many a thousand, [repeated]
Get on board, get on board.
Jesus, Jesus is the captain, [repeated]
Get on board, get on board.
etc.
The Ship of Zion
What is this ship you’re going on board, oh, glory hallelujah (x2)?
Tis the Old Ship Zion, hallelujah (x4)
What colors does she hoist in time of war? oh, glory hallelujah (x2)?
‘Tis the bloody robe of Jesus, hallelujah (x4)
And the Old Ship African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a historic African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church established in 1852 in Montgomery, Alabama.
I think I may prefer thinking, “God is mindful of every people” Ammon (Alma 26:37), and “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. The Latter-day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.” Orson F. Whitney (Conference Report, April 1928, p. 59), quoted by ETB in Ensign, July 1972, 59. If so, then instead of a singular ship, there would seem to be an entire fleet.