Amulek

In our building, there's one person from each ward who has been called to check the building at night to ensure it's locked up. They swing by around 10pm, make sure everything looks good, and then call it a night. If they see anything suspicious, they are not supposed to engage - just report the incident and leave it for the police to investigate. There are four units in the building, so it's only once every four months (not too bad).

My dad’s time in the bishopric was a little later than your dad’s experience (i.e., late ’80s and throughout the ’90s), so that may account for some of the difference. I don't really agree with the characterization that the Church has been “dishonest” about its history, but that may partly be a consequence of our different experiences as well. I grew up LDS in the Bible Belt, so I was exposed to anti-Mormon literature and arguments against the Church from a fairly young age. That caused me to seek out information about Church history and controversial issues more than the average member did at the time. As a result, a lot of the things that people today describe as shocking discoveries simply weren't discoveries for me. That's not to say I think the Church has always done a particularly good job of making all of that information accessible to the average member. It clearly hasn't. I think the Church has improved considerably in that regard over the years, particularly with things like the Joseph Smith Papers, the Gospel Topics Essays, Saints, and the amount of historical material now available through the Church's own websites. So I'm perfectly comfortable with the criticism that the Church used to present some parts of its history in a simplified, correlated, or less-than-comprehensive way, and that it could have done a better job making some of the messier parts more accessible. I just don't think that is synonymous with being “dishonest” about its history. Perhaps because I encountered many of these issues earlier than most, I don't experience the Church's increased transparency today as an admission that the previous story was a lie. I just see it more as the Church becoming much better at making the fuller and more complicated history readily available to ordinary members.

My father also served in the bishopric throughout my entire childhood. He never sat with us in the pews on Sundays, but he was at the building on Wednesday nights (along with my mother, who was the YW President); he was present at stake dances, took me to Priesthood sessions of conference (and ice cream afterwards), home teaching assignments, service projects, and more. Outside of church, he taught me how to fight, handle money, work hard, drive a car, etc., all while still managing to take me fishing and shooting with some degree of regularity (read: much more than most anyone else I have ever met). He would come to all of my band performances - even though he kind of hated football games and would sometimes leave after halftime - and, by and large, be a constant part of my life. When I was first called to serve in a bishopric myself, my Stake President made it clear to me - like, in no uncertain terms clear - that my family was my number one priority. Based on my experience growing up, I had never assumed otherwise. But I have heard from others who, like yourself, weren't as fortunate. I'm not sure how much of that was a Church / cultural thing and not the individual person, but to the extent that it may have been the former, my sense is that it's something the Church has moved away from over the years.

Are you rage-baiting me? I'm sorry, but Circles is what happens when you build a messaging app and treat reliable message delivery as an optional enhancement. Perhaps all the bugs are intentional, and it's really supposed to function less like a messaging app and more like an interactive lesson on faith, patience, and enduring to the end. Or maybe the Church designed it to work like the Liahona, where it's functionality is tied to the faith of the user - so maybe I'm the problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No idea. Our ward hasn't sent out emails in forever. Everything we do gets posted on our ward website, which has since been taken offline and now merely redirects to our "official" ward website (which every ward now has). Our Elder's quorum has switched all our announcements over to a WhatsApp channel; youth groups are all using GroupMe; and I can't remember what the RS does - maybe they're still on Facebook? Point being, were you in my ward, the only way you would be getting almost anything is if you were participating in Church and got plugged into one of those communication channels, or if you were to actively go seeking information out on the ward website. Times they are a changing...

I think there are some pragmatic reasons for keeping it separate. Temple recommends are good for two years and can be renewed at any point in the year, so they don't provide a consistent annual declaration. Tithing also differs from WoW or chastity in that there's an annual financial record associated with it. The Church has to prepare annual contribution statements anyway, so having an annual declaration gives everyone a regular opportunity to make sure those records are correct. I agree that online access makes the record-review part less important than it used to be, but I can still see why the Church would have one annual process for everyone rather than tying it to the recommend cycle.

You can change the visibility settings under your profile. ChatGPT can give you instructions. If you really want to ensure nobody emails you anymore, then just change your email to be invalid. I keep a separate account to use on anything that requires an email as part of a signup; helps manage where all of those spam messages end up going (thanks Hotmail). Or maybe he has an AI agent linked to his email that is also linked to a shared calendar. Seriously, there are a million ways to do this kind of stuff now that these kinds of integrations are more widely available. But yes, it's certainly possible that they sent you a personal email to attend Tithing Declaration...you know, because it's that time of year. Yes. It does figure. And it will figure next year...and the year after that...and the year after that. So long as you remain on the rolls of the Church, you should expect to be invited to attend Tithing Declaration. Some years you might get a personal invite; some years you might not. If you don't want to attend, simply reply back to the email you received and tell them you aren't interested in attending, and then just report your status in the same email. Or don't. You're free to do whatever you want. It's your life after all.

Or you (or your wife) unsubscribed, or changed the privacy settings in your LDS Account, or simply stopped falling within whatever recipient groups people were using to send those messages. LCR doesn't require every ward email to be sent to "all members." You can select various groups of recipients, including groups based on organizations and callings. So if the emails you used to receive were Relief Society emails, quorum emails, activity announcements sent to particular groups, etc., it's entirely possible for your pattern of receiving ward email to change without somebody making a "calculated decision" to stop communicating with you. I don't have any first-hand knowledge of what actually happened in your case, obviously. Maybe someone really did deliberately exclude you. But you're treating your inference as an established fact when there are much more mundane possibilities. And Tithing Declaration is different from ordinary communications because the Church says all members are invited to meet with the bishop to declare their status. As such, I don't find it particularly suspicious that someone who hasn't been receiving other generic emails would nevertheless receive an invitation to Tithing Declaration. You're conflating "people can make donations while they are there" with "that's what the meeting is for." Tithing Declaration goes from 9/1 - 12/15 now, so what ledger do you suppose people are supposed to be settling up in September, October, or November? The Handbook states that the purpose of the meeting is to (1) declare your own status, and (2) make sure your contribution records are accurate. You are free to declare yourself as a full, partial, or non-tithe payer. In all the times I've served as a Ward Clerk, I've never once had the Bishop walk out of a Tithing Declaration (previously, Tithing Settlement meeting) and ask me to prepare an invoice for the family. You can believe the meeting exerts social or religious pressure to pay tithing - I think there's an element of that involved as well - but that's quite different from claiming its purpose is to get people in the room so the Church can collect money from them. I already did: because it's Tithing Declaration, and Bishops are instructed to invite all members to attend. I'm not surprised that you received an invitation to attend an annual, Church-wide process that you are supposed to be invited to - even if you didn't personally receive an invitation last year. Maybe the Bishop / Executive Secretary has gotten better at sending out invites; maybe he felt inspired to reach out to everyone this year individually, rather than just announcing it over the pulpit during Sacrament Meetings; maybe he's following direction from the Stake President who emphasized it in their most recent leadership training meetings. It could literally be any number of things other than "they want money." Look, I'm sorry if you feel your Ward has ignored you for the last 2.5 years, and it's sad that the first personal contact you've received recently has been an administrative invitation to Tithing Declaration. If that were your only complaint, I would be fine with that. But you don't leave it there - instead, you keep changing it into 'after 2.5 years they finally contacted me because they want money,' and I just don't think that's what's going on.

I'm an executive secretary myself, and a software developer by trade. I wouldn't put much weight on personalization as evidence of that anymore. Producing individualized emails from a membership list is trivially easy, particularly with the AI tools (freely) available today. Maybe your bishop really did single the two of you out for a personal invitation - I have no idea. But I don't think the fact that the email looked individually composed establishes that.

Or maybe you just didn't receive / see the email last year. These emails are typically sent out through LCR which doesn't always play nice with all email providers. And, even when it does go through, it will sometimes get flagged as spam. Everything that gets sent out via LCR goes directly to my junk folder. I gave up on caring about fixing it some time ago. Then you ought to know better, which is why I think it's in bad form to characterize the invitation as them contacting you because they "want money." If you've been a member for nearly sixty years, then you know perfectly well that Tithing Declaration isn't the bishop calling people in to collect a payment. Fair enough. I'm not sure it changes the underlying point though. Your bishop has a reason, independent of your donation history, to invite the members of his ward to Tithing Declaration. The fact that he or his secretary personally contacted you about it doesn't establish that the purpose was to solicit money from you.

This is because the Church treats "paying tithing" as part of a member's covenant / religious obligations, rather than simply meaning "someone giving 10% of their income to the Church." So, while nonmembers are free to make contributions to the Church - even contributions that they feel religiously motivated to make, say, to the exact sum of 10% of their income - the Church, administratively, does not call that donation tithing. Advising you to categorize your contributions as Fast Offerings seems like good counsel, since it allows those funds to address the kinds of needs you likely intended them to serve - such as helping members of the local congregation who are in need.

I’m not sure I’d read that invitation as “the only time they want to talk is when they want money.” Tithing Declaration is opening in September this year, so wards are presumably starting to get appointments organized now. And the purpose of Tithing Declaration is pretty literal: members are invited to declare their tithing status. You don’t have to pay anything at the meeting, and being invited doesn’t mean anyone is specifically asking you for money. When you say this “broke the silence,” was this actually a personal visit from the bishop, or was it just an email/text from the executive secretary asking people to sign up? I mean, was it even specific to you, or was it basically a generic invitation being sent to everyone?

Same. I have always loved that scene where you see Clark thinking about revealing himself to Lois and how, in just a matter of moments, you see him visibly transform from character to character right before your eyes. No CGI. No cut shots. Just one camera, capturing a genuine actor practicing his craft. 😚👌

Spider-Man: Brand New Day I've got a teenage boy, so yeah, I've seen the latest spider-man flick. There were things I liked about it - things I didn't. Pros: While I personally prefer installments where we get more of Spidey's sarcastic humor, a core part of Spider-Man also tends to run more on the emo (borderline depressed) side of things, so I liked that they were willing to experiment with leaning into that a bit here in this film. It wasn't all just action sequence to action sequence. Also, we got more screen time for Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle / The Punisher; love that for him. Cons: Meaningful pacing / plot issues. Lots of clunky cameos - whether that be Florence Pugh's Black Widow, Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner / Hulk, or Sadie Sink's "mystery" character that the press were all sworn to secrecy over prior to release - they tended to add little to the story and served more as a reminder that, hey, remember that there are more movies coming up soon! Yes, the setup syndrome was strong with this film. And I really didn't like the fact that we basically got an entire movie without the core friend-group being around to do their thing. It just wasn't the vibe (as the kids are wont to say). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie; it's just not the best version in the series.

Thank you for conceding that. I think we're mostly in agreement here. I'm not arguing that I should be writing the NCAA rulebook for swimming, wrestling, etc. But "the governing body should make the rules" and "outsiders shouldn't have an opinion about those rules" are different claims. I can accept the former without accepting the latter. I disagree that "sports are inherently unfair." I think there is a meaningful difference between inequality and unfairness. Someone like Michael Phelps having unusually advantageous proportions for swimming may very well make competitors unequal, but that isn't normally considered unfair. Unfairness enters into the equation when the advantage violates the conditions of the competition. A heavyweight fighting a lightweight isn't unfair simply because he's bigger. It's because he's competing outside the category that was established to account for that difference. The same would be true of an adult entering a children's division, or an athlete using prohibited PEDs. Sports inevitably involve inequalities. But that doesn't mean every advantage is therefore fair within every competitive category. I think you're misunderstanding why I brought up Franklin's height and wingspan. I wasn't suggesting that her proportions gave her an unfair advantage or that swimmers should be separated by wingspan. The point was to show the level of difference which persists even when obvious physical variables are roughly held equal. Despite being almost identically sized, one of the greatest female backstrokers in history wouldn't be able to come remotely close to competing against a similarly situated male swimmer. Yes, sports tolerate tons of natural advantages, but that doesn't mean all physical advantages are therefore interchangeable. If it did, I'm not sure what rationale would remain for having a female category at all. We could simply tell women who can't qualify for the open team what you've suggested here: "do the best you can, or choose a different sport." We don't do that. We created a female category expressly because the performance effects associated with sex are sufficiently large and systematic that without the category, women would have dramatically fewer opportunities to compete at elite level. And that would be a net negative, IMO.