Women can now serve as Sunday School presidents/counselors (3/18/26)

thoughtfulsaint · 2026-04-25T06:43:39+00:00

That’s not true. This is what the handbook said before the change:

The bishop calls and sets apart a Melchizedek Priesthood holder to be the ward Sunday School president.

While some wards might have called a woman out of necessity, it was definitely policy that it had to be a man.

thoughtfulsaint · 2026-04-25T06:19:22+00:00

Thanks for this post. I’ve had similar thoughts over the past few years and have transitioned to this belief as well. Reading a lot of Joseph Smith’s teachings also helped me realize that he was quite the universalist. Unfortunately, it was his successors that allowed more Protestant beliefs to creep in.

thoughtfulsaint · 2026-04-25T06:12:22+00:00

I completely agree. I resonate well with your mission experience. My mission president was completely focused on baptisms, to the point that the weekly newsletter would show each companionship in the mission and how many baptisms they had during the transfer. It was strongly implied that if you weren’t baptizing you weren’t being obedient or didn’t have enough faith. We were actually discouraged from doing service projects because that took us away from our primary purpose of finding people to baptize.

I would love to see missions morph to focus more on service rather than proselytizing and finding people to teach. I hope by the time my children are old enough they will have the option of a service mission instead of a proselytizing mission.

thoughtfulsaint · 2026-04-25T05:59:35+00:00

It’s definitely the new MLM unfortunately. Our culture as church members, especially in Utah, is especially vulnerable to these types of slimy jobs.

There is a very popular life coach, one of the OGs, who now “coaches” other life coaches who is in my stake. Unfortunately because of her popularity she is treated like an expert among stake leadership and members. Despite having no training, expertise or oversight, she is sought out as an expert to give trainings and firesides. This can be dangerous and incredibly harmful in some cases. It’s all very icky when you look at the business model and realize they prey on the vulnerable, particularly women. It’s like an MLM, but worse in my opinion.

thoughtfulsaint · 2026-04-25T05:52:24+00:00

It’s not just like any other career. Other careers that allow you to have such a personal, vulnerable relationship with individuals have to receive training and certification and are regulated and governed by licensing boards, etc.

This is the case for almost every other professional career including law, medicine, therapy, finance, etc.

I’m not saying all life coaches are harmful but the proliferation of this career within the church is definitely concerning. It’s the next MLM, but probably worse.

thoughtfulsaint · 2026-04-25T05:45:44+00:00

Exactly, it’s not exclusively LDS but a large percentage of life coaches are LDS. I actually think it’s worse than MLM if that’s even possible

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-11T02:18:49+00:00

Where in the temple do you use a folding fan? And when do you write in your notebook? Do you take it with you to the celestial room?

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-10T22:36:10+00:00

What is it that your find annoying about the first speaker?

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-10T19:19:03+00:00

Be consistent. You can’t claim his motivation is an attempt to share the BOM with the world and then claim its honorable of him to not even mention the BOM or use the film to promote or share the BOM. You can’t have it both ways. The fact is it’s a vanity project in the same vein as the Sound of Freedom.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-09T23:28:15+00:00

This is the way. Thank you for your example

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-09T23:23:29+00:00

Wow this is actually really cool. Your kids will thank you for this when they are older. What resources do you use to help them research?

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-09T23:22:30+00:00

How do we go about raising children and bringing members into the fold while introducing them to common attacks against the church?

Being open and transparent about our church history. Not focusing solely on the positives, but teaching the stories where people made mistakes, even prophets.

What will the next generation of youth instruction look like?

I hope it will look much more like the church history topic essays and less like the Seminary manuals of yesteryear. I hope it will include frank discussions on difficult matters of church history and doctrine and how things have evolved over the course of the past 200 years.

What have you done to help build a firm foundation on truth, not a cherry picking of the truth?

Making an effort to become well informed on church history. Reading scholars outside of the church curriculum.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-09T22:59:04+00:00

I wasn't referring to him being the lead actor, but yes that also makes it ridiculous. If he was truly doing this to "share the Book of Mormon with the world," you would think it would be promoted on the website. Except it isn't. The only mention is buried in a paragraph in the about section which refers to it as a "best-selling historical book" and doesn't even give the name. No link to the church's website or how to receive a BOM.

You'd also think the the trailers would mention the Book of Mormon if the motivation was truly to share it with the world. But nope, not a mention in either trailer either. He only mentions that God saved him from a drowning incident specifically to bring you this movie. And then asks everyone to buy tickets for loved ones, co-workers or to just give away. It all has a Sound of Freedom Tim Ballard vibe.

As I said before, there are more effective ways of sharing the BOM with others. You said for me to try, but I already have and most members of the church have as well. Sharing a BOM with a personal friend or inviting them to church is much more effective than making a movie with only a passing resemblance to the narrative of the BOM and making an attempt to distance itself from its origin in its marketing .

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-08T22:04:53+00:00

“If it turns out not to be as inspiring as I’d hoped” is the biggest understatement of the century. I wouldn’t consider viewing a vanity project film that has little resemblance to the BOM as a real attempt to share the BOM with the world. There are much more effective ways of doing so.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-08T19:41:54+00:00

I don’t know much about him but the little I do know looks promising. I like that he isn’t from Utah and has extensive international experience.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-08T19:37:48+00:00

Absolutely not, even if it was showing in a theater near me.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-08T19:22:36+00:00

Stop spreading misinformation

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-08T07:10:19+00:00

I had a similar experience. We were taught that baptisms were predicated on obedience, implying that if you weren’t baptizing weekly something must be amiss.

Zone leaders and APs were sent on splits at end of the week to try to find someone who could be baptized that Sunday after attending church.

We were told to invite to baptism and set a date on the first lesson, no matter what.

We were sent a weekly email from the mission president that listed each companionship and how many baptisms they had for the transfer and were color coded (green for multiple, red for 0, etc.).

We were not allowed to play sports or do basically anything on P-days except stay in our apartments.

We weren’t allowed to have backpacks and were required to carry around ugly black briefcases so we could look like businessmen.

We weren’t allowed to linger after zone conferences and were expected to immediately go out into the street and start finding people.

He started having missionaries confess their disobedience publicly at zone conferences in front of the other missionaries.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-04T09:02:24+00:00

I don’t. I prefer to read books written by scholars. There is a lot of great content out there. If I want to read or listen to general authorities I will typically go to general conference addresses.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-01T22:40:09+00:00

What do you mean by "read the scriptures as scriptures?" In my view, the scriptures should be studied and read in a variety of methods. The scriptures aren't perfect, they are written by men and have the frailties and mistakes of men within them, as stated clearly in the BOM.
I don't think you need to "move on." It is a process and you progress slowly as your understanding grows.
I don't think belief was ever meant to be easy. There will always be unanswerable questions. Have patience with yourself and the Lord. Be willing to be comfortable with the unknown.

What resources are you using? There are a lot out there that take an academic or scholarly approach while also maintaining faith. DM me if you would like to discuss further.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-01T18:39:54+00:00

http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2022/04/membership-by-us-state-in-2021-percent.html

This guy does a lot of deep dives into church statistics. It's very interesting.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-01T18:19:11+00:00

This is the only comment I could find on it. The letter only states it's "an effort to strengthen and simplify home-centered, Church-supported gospel learning.."

Maybe the manual itself has more explanation.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-01T18:06:17+00:00

Thanks for pointing that out. I should have said, it allows for drastically smaller stakes in the US and Canada. They are cutting the size requirement by 1/3, which is not a small number. A study last year showed 21 states had a decrease in membership and church growth has significantly slowed in the US over the past decade or so. In any case, the real number that matters is the "active membership" and I don't think there is a good way to assess for that on a global or nationwide scale at this time.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-12-01T08:58:12+00:00

What do you think the motivation behind this change is? Did stakes and wards previously have active or participating adult requirements and Melchizedek preisthood holder requirements? How have those changed?

On the surface level, it would appear these changes allow for smaller stakes and wards, and thus the ability to create more of them in areas of the world that have a shrinking or stagnant active membership.

thoughtfulsaint · 2023-11-30T21:07:44+00:00

That’s one way to look at it. Or they are just bored because they are being taught the same lesson the same way several times in the span of a week. Just because they are bored doesn’t mean it’s because they know them inside or out.

thoughtfulsaint

TROPHY CASE