Over the last few months, I have put a lot of time and effort into finding and then buying a new car. The process taught me a lot about dealing with dealerships, which has never been easy but is now tougher than ever. Which made me reflect on middlemen and intermediaries in the production and distribution chain: sometimes they add value and sometimes they add nothing except extra cost and hassle. Which made me reflect on middlemen in the LDS Church: bishops, stake presidents, and the recently added layer of area presidencies. Sometimes they add value. Other times they add nothing except hassle and frustration. Let’s commiserate a bit about buying cars, then get to the Mo app.
Buying a Car in 2022
Here’s the initial problem. In the immediate wake of the first wave of Covid in 2020, buyers stopped buying and, predictably, auto manufacturers cut back on production and laid off workers. After a few months, federal checks went out to help people hit hard financially by the crisis, so people suddenly had money to spend. Other people just needed to buy a car to replace an older vehicle, Covid or no Covid, so lots of buyers soon came back to car lots to buy, but inventory was now low and the stream of new cars coming to dealers was down. Result: surging demand meets depleted inventory and reduced production. Prices went up, for both new and used cars.
If you’re a car dealer, that’s not necessarily bad news. No more discounts, and in some places a “market adjustment” of up to several thousand dollars was (and still is) added to the MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price). Recall that before Covid, it wasn’t very hard to find a fair or even a sizeable discount below MSRP on a new car. But that’s just not happening in 2022. But that’s not even the real problem.
Most buyers aren’t happy about paying a substantial premium over MSRP. Most buyers think that if the manufacturer suggests a retail price for the car or truck they built, that somehow the buyer ought to be able to actually *buy* that vehicle at or maybe below that suggested retail price. That is how the car market has worked for decades. We all know that the MSRP was set artificially high. To get around this problem (the dealer problem of buyers being unhappy about suddenly being asked to pay more than MSRP), many dealers will hold the ostensible price at MSRP but quietly add thousands of dollars for “dealer add-ons” that don’t appear on the window sticker and that you may not even find out about until you are going through the paperwork to finalize your purchase. Nitrogen, not air, in your tires ($200); a GPS tracker, described as an anti-theft device that will get you lower insurance rates (add $500 to $2000); fabric protection ($300). And so forth. But it gets even worse.
It’s not just the money. If you are persistent, you can get those add-on charges reduced or even eliminated. The deeper problem is they won’t remove the mechanical or electronic gadget or device or worthless whatever that they have added or attached to the vehicle. These aren’t just overpriced items that add a little value. Sometimes they are overpriced items that actually destroy value! These aren’t “add-ons,” they are “stuck withs.” I had a dealer in Minnesota want to charge $400 for a brake flashing unit they had spliced into the rear brake wiring, so when you press the brake pedal the center rear brake light flashes or blinks 5 times before settling into the usual fixed brake light you see on every other car. Is there a switch I can turn this off with? Nope, hardwired. Will you remove it? Well, no. Okay, so long Charley. Thanks for screwing up the perfectly adequate brake light system and compromising the wiring on that Jeep I might have bought from you. I don’t care if you adjusted the price of this “add on” to $1.
And don’t expect anyone at the dealership to actually be able to describe the add-ons. That GPS tracker that supposedly helps you find your vehicle if it is later stolen? Or maybe lowers your insurance rates? Go check out the companies that manufacture these trackers and how they market them to dealers. They market them to dealers (not buyers) so that (1) dealers can track their inventory better, and (2) if the dealer finances the car with a low-credit buyer who later stops paying, the dealer can track down and repo the vehicle more easily. In other words, it’s a dealer security system that the dealer wants *you* to pay for (as well as being a non-transparent way to add a thousand or two to the price of the car without having to disclose it on the sticker). And don’t expect them to remove the $49 tracker if you pay cash. You’ll have pay some mechanic to do that yourself — which might disable your engine, because that’s what some of the devices do if removed improperly. The sales people you talk to can’t even explain the crap the dealer adds on. A California sales guy I talked to was fairly sure their add-on GPS tracker was just a software thing, no device at all, he said. So they can’t even explain the worthless things they are adding to compromise an otherwise fully functional vehicle.
This is all good to know if you’re headed out to buy a car. And yes, if you look real hard, maybe you can find a dealer or an alternative buying service that avoids some of these problems for the particular make and model and trim you are looking for. But here is the larger point of this whole discussion: Dealers now make it almost impossible to, for example, buy a Jeep as manufactured by Jeep. They install a bunch of worthless or even harmful crap on every vehicle, new or used, before you even see it, then want to charge you thousands of dollars for the stuff. More generally, intermediaries in the distribution chain may add value, or they may do very little, or they may use their protected position in the distribution chain to extract money from end consumers while providing little or no value to the end buyer — and perhaps even reducing the value of the product or service. But sooner or later, worthless or deleterious intermediaries get eliminated from the market.
Going to Church in 2022
First point: Just as a car dealer is a middleman between you and the manufacturer, the bishop (and the stake president and the area president) is a middleman between you and the Church. You might think of yourself as a generic Mormon, but if you’re an active, church-attending Mormon, you don’t get a straight-from-the-COB version of church membership. You get a membership with some local add-ons that, just like with the ones at the car dealership, you have a very hard time removing. If your ward meets at 2 pm, you’re kind of stuck with it. If the bishop thinks your agnostic view of Book of Mormon historicity makes you some sort of apostate, there’s not much you can do about it (and just keep your mouth shut next time). If the bishop won’t give you a temple recommend if you pay on net instead of gross, you don’t have many options (maybe just put your tithing into your savings account for a few years, then start from scratch in three years when a new bishop is called).
Second point: As a middleman, does your bishop add value, add nothing, or maybe destroy value? This may sound like just a variation on the “bishop roulette” issue that comes up regularly, but I think this lets us dig a little deeper. There are some (many?) fine bishops out there who make their ward better than the average ward, who build up individual members, who do their best to counsel those with troubles, who might actually be able to help a doubting member understand a tough issue or look at it differently, and so forth. There are some bishops who are less involved and don’t really do much, sort of like a waiter who tries to be as unobtrusive as possible when delivering food or removing dishes. And then there are bishops who push their own personal doctrines (probably not realizing these aren’t really LDS doctrines), who require unusual variations on LDS practices, who cross a few too many boundaries when doing counseling or interviews, and so forth. The opposite of an add-value bishop. What is this or that bishop (or SP or Area guy) doing to the LDS product? How are they modifying “generic Mormonism” for you in your ward or stake or area? Which leads us to:
Third point: Discretion. Sometimes it’s nice when local leaders have some discretion in applying the guidance or directives they receive from Salt Lake. Other times you wish they didn’t have that discretion or that they would decline to exercise it. I’m sure senior LDS leaders wrestle over how much discretion to grant local leaders on many items. It’s a tricky issue with no easy solution.
Fourth point: Let’s say you want to avoid all the bishop add-ons and just live “generic Mormonism” the same way I want to buy a Jeep without any dealer add-ons, just a Jeep-as-manufactured-and-delivered-by-Jeep. Can you do that? Not as an active/practicing/attending Mormon, as far as I can tell. Just like manufacturers and (usually) state law requires you to buy a new car from a dealer, not direct from Jeep or Ford or Toyota, in like manner does the LDS system require you to be a member of this or that particular ward with an assigned bishop. That bishop is, in a sense, a mandatory gateway for participation in the Church, but also with the power and discretion to modify “generic Mormonism” as directed by his immediate superiors (SP and Area Guy) and as directed by his own personal sense of doctrine and practice. There is no generic Mormonism that you can practice, just ten thousand variations, one of which you’re stuck with, at least until you move across town or out of state, when you get stuck with a new variation.
Does This Matter?
Maybe, maybe not. If a middleman or intermediary stops adding value and enough people figure it out, big changes can happen. Just ask Amazon, which has made countless billions of dollars exploiting inefficiencies in the retailing system and giving you, the consumer, a better experience and more variety at a better price. Before Amazon, Walmart did the same thing with a less revolutionary approach. When Amazon or Costco or Walmart figures out how to sell cars direct, they might just put most car dealerships out of business and make another few billion dollars doing it. Plenty of small outfits are experimenting with alternative car sales and delivery systems for used cars, and Tesla is taking a different approach for new cars. It’s just a matter of time until one of the big players takes the plunge. I’ll bet some of you will be first in line to test drive an Apple Car or a Google Car. I’ll bet the Apple car will come securely packaged in an attractive white box.
With Covid, many of us have had the experience of online church or at-home church or just I’ll-go-have-some-fun-on-Sunday church. It’s sort of like an experiment eliminating the LDS middleman for a few months or a couple of years. It was enlightening, wasn’t it? Maybe personality has something to do with it. Introverts are quite happy to stay home and read a couple of chapters of Isaiah or a good commentary rather than sit in Sunday School while a teacher and other adult attendees try to understand those chapters but often end up repeating folk doctrine they heard in seminary or just making stuff up. Extroverts, on the other hand, might feel deprived if they don’t get to shake hands and chat with friends on Sunday.
But from what I can tell, most people missed church a lot less than they expected. That goes more to the Church as an intermediary between you and God than the bishop as an intermediary between you and the Church, but it has the same sort of dynamic. Maybe they are adding value to the God product, maybe they’re not. I ought to note that personally I’ve had fine bishops along the way. This isn’t a personal issue, just a relevant issue that seems worth discussing. Maybe the Church needs to start thinking about ways that individual members can be (in some ways if not all ways) active and participating members without being tied to a specific ward and without being required to go spend two hours in meetings inside a building every Sunday. The same way that Amazon lets you shop for and buy almost any product without driving over and spending an hour inside a big box store. There should be a “remote attendee” category or an “active but not attending a specific ward” category to supplement the usual “active” and “inactive” categories.
So here are a few things you might address in the comments.
- Does seeing your local leaders as middlemen, as intermediaries, provide any insight for you? What if bishops saw themselves this way and regularly asked themselves, “What can I do in this ward to add value to the church activity of my ward members? How can I make Mormonism better for them?”
- Have you had a truly add-value bishop, and what did he do to improve the LDS product or experience?
- Have you had the opposite, a value destroying bishop, who made attendance or activity in that particular ward a chore rather than a pleasant experience? How did he muck up the LDS product or experience?
- Some aspects of the LDS experience don’t need a middleman. You can hold family home evening or read your Bible just fine at home with no role for a bishop or other middleman. Other stuff, not so easy. Any LDS hacks you have found to get around an LDS middleman?
- Do you see any Amazon-like changes on the horizon? The Church is a remarkably conservative institution — conservative in the sense that nothing changes unless senior leadership is absolutely forced to by circumstance or by law. The Church is so conservative that the smallest changes, even obvious and long-overdue changes, are celebrated as revolutionary or revelatory. Think of the relaxed dress code for missionaries or the move to two-hour church. The danger in being too conservative is the market might just pass you by. When was the last time you “went shopping” at a mall or even a big-box store?
Wheat & Tares 
Dave B.
I am puzzled that you chose Amazon as a positive model for the LDS church to emulate.
•Jeff Bezos has created a monopolistic retail system.
•He pays less than 1% in true personal income tax.
•His labor practices are mixed at best. (Amazon provides good benefits, but has cruel labor policies.) Have you spoken with anyone who worked for them? There is a reason many employees are unionizing.
•Etc.
In the past, I was sometimes lulled into buying from them, but as more information has emerged, I avoid Amazon. They are so dominating that it is hard to accomplish. I try to buy directly from the manufacturer, or from locally owned small businesses. For example, in Utah, both Winco and Fresh Market are employee owned, so buying groceries there stimulates my local economy at all levels.
The choice is not amazon or big box – there are many, many higher quality options.
I’ve had Bishops with varying levels of competence, all have had strengths and weaknesses. I have never had a Bishop I would entrust to give counsel to me. I don’t ask them for advice or spiritual guidance because I’ve never had the impression they would have some special insight or connection to God above what I have. I would never consider going to a bishop with doctrinal questions or concerns about church policies, what good could come of that, really, in our system? And I’ve never been in a situation where I needed help but had no other resources so had to go to the Bishop. So that protects me somewhat from the potential risks inherent in “Bishop roulette”. But the way the church tries to force youth into what I consider to be risky relationships with bishops has caused me to feel I have to protect my teens from the bishop at times. Not because they aren’t good and sincere people but because they are not competent to do what they try to do with youth and they can do some serious damage.
It was fairly difficult finding negative information about amazon. I needed to use specific phrases from articles I read to find the above articles.
I wonder how big their search engine optimization department is.
Links:
ProPublica: The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen …
Forbes: A Hard-Hitting Investigative Report Into Amazon Shows That Workers’ Needs Were Neglected In Favor Of Getting Goods Delivered Quickly
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/10/25/a-hard-hitting-investigative-report-into-amazon-shows-that-workers-needs-were-neglected-in-favor-of-getting-goods-delivered-quickly/
CNBC: Senators urge investigation into Amazon over alleged discrimination against pregnant warehouse workers
https://www.cnbc.com › 2021/09/10Senators urge investigation into Amazon over alleged …
Vice: Amazon Denied a Worker Pregnancy Accommodations. Then She Miscarried.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5g8eq/amazon-denied-a-worker-pregnancy-accommodations-then-she-miscarried
New York Magazine: Would You Work in an Amazon Warehouse Just to Get Pregnant? Women are pulling graveyard shifts in backbreaking jobs to pay for IVF.
Amazon Fertility Benefits Have A Dark Side For IVF Patients
April 2022
CNBC: Amazon’s first U.S. union faces an uphill battle after historic win at Staten Island warehouse
http://www.cnbc.comHow Chris Smalls formed Amazon’s first U.S. union …
June 2022
NPR: Amazon seeks to overturn historic Staten Island union victory at labor hearing
Hearing challenging Amazon Labor Union’s win on Staten Island begins : NPR
The Atlantic: The Amazon Union Exposes the Emptiness of ‘Woke Capital’
The Triumph of the Amazon Labor Union – The Atlantic
I’ve had a similar experience to E.
I like the individual member thought experiment. Girl Scouts is very troop-based, and very subject to local volunteer roulette, but they maintain an option for individually registered girls. Those girls do the program on their own, call themselves Girl Scouts because they are, and sometimes join in on larger council (regional) activities. They can even sell cookies! I like the idea of doing that for church, but there remains the roulette of someone signing temple recommends.
I’ve wondered for a long time if the LDS church was similar to Southwest Airlines. Really good at some things and crappy at others. Looks good at first but once you want to fly to Europe or Asia you’re out of luck or if you want any real choice about your flying experience like first class seating. Obviously not a perfect example because SWA is relatively inexpensive but the church is decidedly not.
A middleman adds value when consumers and producers benefit from the middleman’s services. In theory they match the supply and demand in the market, and give feedback to producers. I don’t see bishops and SPs doing this.
I’ve vented about my bishop enough times in this forum that I won’t rehash the details here, except to say that he adds nothing, bordering on being a value-destroyer, despite having good intentions. I’m hesitant to place him fully in the latter category, at least on an individual basis, because I refuse to give him that much authority over my life. But I’m watching my ward circle the drain and descend into mediocrity, and I’m often wondering whether a different leader could get different results with the same people and circumstances. Thinking about this also makes me wonder about the stake presidency, and what their “performance failure” threshold is for deciding to replace a bishop. Continuing this thought process further up the chain, at what point does an area authority decide that a stake president is performing poorly enough to either be replaced, collapse the stake, or both? At what point am I, as an individual member, obligated to speak up and formally withdraw my sustaining vote of a local leader who is doing a terrible job, whether intentionally or not?
In large organizations like the Church, layers of middlemen are necessary because it is simply not possible for 15 elderly men based in Utah to have their hand in every aspect of keeping things running all around the world, and all the way down to the individual rank and file members. This is why (contrary to BKP) a good bishop/SP needs to face both ways: he has a duty to represent the individual members and advocate for their needs to higher authorities, while at the same time he needs to be brave enough to shield his members from the occasional BS and abuse that comes down from the senior leadership, and push back against policies that are harmful or nonsensical.
There’s a common understanding that the Church is perfect, but the members are not. My experience is the opposite. I find Church members, including bishops, to be sincere and caring and trying their best. It’s Church HQ that has the problem. Honestly, I’ve never had a bad bishop…I realize I’m lucky and the exception.
I trust the average bishop more than the average Q15 member. I don’t really find local leaders trying to be the middle man between me and the Lord. They are just fulfilling their assignments. RMN, on the other hand, definitely wants us to go through him. No thanks.
I attend church each Sun and pretty much completely forget about it the rest of the week. That’s just too much exhausting baggage to tote around. This does NOT mean I’m having business lunch at the strip club.
My experience is similar to E. I’ve simply never given anyone at church any authority over me so it’s not been an issue. However, I can understand where others have not been so lucky.
And I agree with josh h that most people are just trying to fulfill a voluntold position as best as they can. But I have overheard a few Bishops talk about being “judges in Israel” which reinforces why I don’t give them authority over me.
But I will say that things have been a bit different now that Bishops are also YM presidents. Previously my experience is that YM presidents were generally happy for advice and help in running the program from interested parents. So I tried the same approach when that role switched to Bishop, and gave to our Bishop some unsolicited feedback that things weren’t working for my son, why they weren’t working, and what could be done to fix it. Nothing ever changed. Finally we starting sending our son to a different ward YM. Boy did that get his attention. I felt like I was being called to the principal’s office. It’s been a bit harder to navigate this new Bishop/YM President extravaganza unfortunately. For now, we simply vote with our feet which programs and projects and lessons are worth our families’ time.
My experience is similar to E’s and Chadwick’s. I’ve liked some of my bishops, but even when I was young, single, and brand new to the church, it never occurred to me that they were people to whom I would go to confess anything or get “counsel” about any problems. One bishop happened to be a good friend of mine, so we had the usual conversations with each other about our lives, etc., but we were both always careful to state that we were just talking as friends, not as ward member/bishop.
It’s easy and tempting to complain about any bishop’s shortfalls, and my current bishop is the least sincere one I’ve ever had, but I also do have a great deal of sympathy for most of them. The majority of bishops (not including the ones who think of the church as a corporation and are trying to climb the ladder to get “promoted”) seem generally well-intentioned people (which is not to say they can’t do great harm) who have no sense of how deeply flawed and poisonous that the church’s patriarchal order is and who have had, as far as I can tell, almost zero training about how to really connect with, nurture, empathize with, and truly counsel people. And many of the ones I’ve known have been the sole breadwinner, have had multiple young children and who were already frazzled before the calling was even extended. So I try too cut most of them some slack.
As far as hacks go, simply going in with eyes wide open and making certain never to trust your bishop to actually give you good advice is the best hack. Unless you really feel compelled by conscience to confess something pretty egregious, I’d simply avoid the bishop altogether. I haven’t had an interview with any bishop in my ward for about seven years now and it’s worked just fine. And it helps, I think, that my current bishop knows that I wouldn’t come in for an interview even if he asked. We just pass each other occasionally in the hallway at church and nod politely to one another. And that’s just how I like it.
That’s a really good metaphor.
I was different from E, Chadwick and Brother Sky in that I accepted bishop’s counsel as guidance directly from heaven. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but I really did believe that bishops received revelation specific to their congregations and we should listen and obey. For the most part, I’ve had good bishops. There was one bishop at BYU who would give us “middleman” commandments – like all the sisters in the ward were to wear skirts longer than knee-length, and none of us were to go see a popular movie with One Bad Part. I enthusiastically obeyed it all, then felt condescending towards others who didn’t obey.
Your observation that the Church changes so seldom that even minor changes are hailed as huge is accurate. I remember the kerfluffle when the mission age dropped from 19 to 18 and much ecstatic squealing about how inspired President Monson was. RMN’s many changes received this treatment as well.
The Q15 are middlemen between us and Heavenly Father, and they’ve certainly piled on the add-ins. It’s been a long time since I thought an apostolic add-on benefitted anyone, except for the excited rule-follower type that I used to be anyway.
Growing up, when I would get upset or annoyed with my parents my dad would always tell me “Your mom and I are just unpaid amateur volunteers. If you want better parents, you’ll have to hire professionals.”
I’ve tried to adopt this same attitude towards everyone who is serving at church. That being said, I agree with the OP that some of these unpaid amateur volunteer bishops add value and some take value away from the church experience.
Currently, I really like my branch president. He takes the approach of a waiter who mostly stays out of the way. I have been struggling with the district presidency. I have numerous examples of changes they’ve implemented that make life more difficult for members, and then given us pep talks of “sacrifice brings blessings”. I don’t really buy into the “blessings” in the way they seem to explain them, and I would just prefer that the church do things to make life easier for members. From my perspective, many of the changes have had the effect of benefitting the leaders’ families, but making it more difficult for struggling members to access spiritual nourishment. (I’ve definitely voiced my opinion about some of the changes. And interestingly, other members of the district have asked my wife and me if we would voice our opinions on their behalf, because of their positions they didn’t want to ruffle feathers or be seen in a certain way. Their underlying assumption was, “You don’t have anything to lose. Can you try to make the district presidency see that this sucks/is making life harder for us/is stopping people from attending?”) Value not added.
I tend to think of the Q15 as the unnecessary middle men between me and God. Local people are my friends and colleagues. We do things together. What does the Q15;or Q70 add to the product of Christianity?
I joined the Church at age 22, and am now 70. In a fairly transient life, I have had 31 local church leaders that were “over” me (Branch Presidents, Bishops, and two General Authorities). 14 of these men, with very different personalities, tried to actively help people in their Wards and Branches. They were down-to-earth, flexible, and humble. Some were quiet, and a few had a good sense of humor. They used the General Handbook of Instructions as a guide, but from time deviated from its instructions, to deal humanely with people’s problems. The GHI actually gives local leaders considerable latitude:
The remainder were a combination of Church ladder-climbers; rigid and constipated personalities; people with whom I simply did not connect; or people who felt that they could not turn down the call to a leadership position, but let everyone know that they did not want to be Bishop. One was genuinely awful. He could not accept counsel from our experienced Stake President that he would make mistakes, and that was okay; things would turn out well if he simply loved Ward members. But in his mind, he thought that because he had been given “keys” as a Bishop, that he would not make mistakes—and when he did make mistakes, he didn’t know what to do. He actually complained to me that he did not like the GHI’s flexibility. He wanted to be told exactly what to do in each situation. He was paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes.
As you can see by my details, the memory of one awful Bishop lingers in the mind a lot more than the memory of many good ones.
In my opinion, the bureaucratization of the church bureaucracy at the general level is our biggest problem. So many local leaders feel that they no longer have any wiggle room to maneuver.
I long for a President of the church with a free and open spirit.
This is a great analogy. The thing that comes to mind is a comment from Phil McLemore on Radio Free Mormon (episode 203) where he said that if allowed to, Mormonism will substitute itself AND it’s leaders for a direct relationship with God. Once a member recognizes, or gives themselves permission to accept, that the bishop or other intermediaries have no special power and typically add no value, it’s really easy to excise Mormonism from that part in the relationship. Even if they stay an active member. It’s like Chadwick said, they haven’t/don’t give any leaders authority in their lives. Or like P said, where you go to church and then forget about it the rest of the week.
It sounds as though you already bought your jeep, which model and why a jeep? I believe quality is best and I would buy a 3 year old german car with 20,000 miles over an american or asian car. I presently drive a 2017 mercedes gle 350 diesel which has keyless entry radar cruise and and all the toys the new jeep grand cherokee has, but has 200 kw, and 620nm and does 35mpg and is just coming up on 40,000k. It also has massage seats with heating and cooling.
As far as church leaders. I am in my mid 70s. Usually by 1.00pm I have stopped working. I expect the senior apostles would be good for maybe 3 hours a day. I can not understand why they don’t bring in a retirement age of 72, scripture?
I have had some good bishops. One took a university course in ancient hebrew so he understood the context of the bible, and was a good person too.
I have had only one reasonable bishop in the last 30 years. One tried to ex me for not agreeing with his extreme right (republican) politics. Anothers wife was gospel doctrine teacher, and made every lesson about obedience, and regularly he would speak in sacrament meeting about “obedience is the first law of heaven”. I pointed out that Christ said Love was and was refused a TR.
To be completely fair to RMN, DHO, and HBE, I am not sure the national and international leadership of any church adds value to the product of Christianity except the rare exception like Pope Francis. In the local UMC church I attend now, I love the sermons of our local pastor, but I don’t really have any affinity for the larger church leadership, and especially the international UMC leadership that clings to homophobia. The great difference in the UMC tradition vs the LDS tradition is that local congregations are highly independent, so the local congregation is free to be openly embracing of LGBTQ rights and gay marriage. And its perfectly okay to pick which one of the many UMC congregations in the city I wish to attend based on the style and traditions of the various UMC congregations. I attended (virtually) the one just a few blocks from my house and didn’t really like it. And while the one next to the university i work at was a better fit it still wasn’t not quite right. But the one half way between has been great.
In that way, the local spin on the product is very much appreciated by me. Christianity does not need to come in only one flavor dictated by some old men. It is a living flame that needs to have flexibility. If the local LDS ward had the same ability to adapt, I would probably still attend with my many friends there. Its the institutional LDS church that wants to get in the way of God.
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/t-Used-Mercedes-Benz-GLE-Class-GLE-550e-4MATIC-t59764#listing=329024547/NONE
If I were buying a car in America it would be something like this. Luxury, quiet, smooth. 0 to 60 5.3 seconds, in most of the world 70mpg, but for some reason this add says 21mpg.
Like many others on here, my bishops, SPs and area dudes have been a mixed bag of middlemen. I’ve served in a variety of ward and stake leadership callings and found it quite easy to avoid dealing with any of them outside of whatever calling I’ve had.
I learned long ago they’re not good therapists, counselors etc. and have blind spots and weaknesses like all of us. That was also by proxy watching them try to solve other people’s problems or enforce some aspect of the GHI. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
I find it interesting though how the Q15 will throw their bishops and SP under the bus at a moment’s notice. Witness the 2 bishops from AZ. (I think they should have reported the abuse.). From what I’ve read they followed Church advice to the, literal, letter of the law. Now that the *hit has hit the fan, the Church (Q15) has left them and their families to twist in the wind. I have not seen any defense of the Bishops from the Church they so dutifully served. The Church is mute when it comes to defending their foot soldiers (middlemen). That is shameful conduct from an institution that demands loyalty from its members and especially leaders. Unless I’m mistaken (possible) those two Bishops did exactly as they were told by the Chiurch but the Church has decided not to say anything in their defense. I doubt the Q15 would be as silent if this involved one of them, but bishops, SPs and their families are just cannon fodder or collateral damage to protect the. Church.
@Josh H – “RMN, on the other hand, definitely wants us to go through him. No thanks.”
I think God wants us to “go through” his prophet. Not for everything, but He definitely set up the leaders of His church as a conduit for general information from Him to the members of His church. It’s still acceptable and encouraged to receive personal information from God directly without a middle-man. RMN has encouraged us to NOT go through him many times. He has spoken about personal revelation, the whole “Hear Him” thing, living such that we have the constant guiding influence of the Holy Ghost, etc. All these things bypass the prophet (no middle-man).
Regarding bishops, I can’t recall a time that I’ve been struggling with a decision about something and thought, “I need to go ask my bishop for his counsel”. I’ve had good bishops my whole life, but never really considered asking them for life advice. I liked the styles of some over others, but overall I share similar feelings as many here that they did the best they could and genuinely wanted to serve well and help the members of their ward.
I’ve seen righteous bishops who serve- add value by organizing welfare and service, who impart wisdom and generously uplift the flock and individuals through gentle ways beyond their mere efforts- but uplifted through the mantle of their calling.
And sadly, lately I’ve seen a power-hungry, abusive bishop enact the most ungodly, most unchristlike pettiness over some in the ward- actions that will leave generational and irreparable scars. I don’t think this is the forum to hash out the details, but I can only say- the cruelest pain was dolled out with enjoyment. Pure wickedness.
What would I do if my bishop, or someone in the bishopric was embroiled in international scandal for writing torture memos? (True story- it happened to a ward back east in 2014.) Absolutely abhorrent. How does one follow such a minister/pastor? I don’t think I could handle that ward or those leaders and question why ultimately SL (through it’s hierarchy) imposed such problems on the people down here at the bottom. (I don’t think it was intentional, but it didn’t change when the scandal broke, and what has been done to curtail similar problems in the future? Nothing. ) . I tend to think sometimes callings are given to those with power and money, those who display worldly social capital, rather than those whose spiritual preparedness would better align with the work.
Mormons act like the flowers in “Alice in Wonderland” when one among us is identified as an apostate, and hastily expel the accused. But, seeing the kangaroo courts (led by bishops and SPs) involved in Kate Kelly and Natasha Helfer’s expulsions, I wonder if even the “flower”-like saints don’t see the unfairness, the retribution, and the lack of compassion and pastoral love in such cases. Maybe they just rejoice that ultimate power swiftly “protected” them, but doesn’t anyone lament the way in which it was done or the lack of any attempt to love and serve before such dire consequences? It makes me question the pastoral nature of such bishops, as the “golden rule” has been completely broken.
I don’t know. I’ve heard we have a local leadership crisis in the church, and a few years ago, there was a concerted effort to “train” local leaders. I don’t know if that is still happening, but being a pastor or bishop requires more than simple saturday trainings. There’s a disposition of love and humility needed, which sadly- is woefully lacking in the powerful elite that keep getting the jobs. Are we turning pharisaical? No. We are already there. Inevitable with our size.
My disillusionment started with two bishops in a row (2008-10) who made editorial right-wing comments during Ward Council. One bishop (2013) helped us pay a few therapy bills for a child but when we moved wards (in Utah within the stake) he showed up at our doorstep literally the day our records transferred with some bills he would no longer pay.
Our ward has had a few transgender kids and I’m sure the current new bishop who is also a church employee realizes he’s not living a Homefront TV commercial anymore.
I’m guessing most bishops dream of their release date when they can take their sweetheart on a BOM archeology tour in Mexico or Peru. My middleman would be any author like John Turner, Prince, Jana Riess.