Stargazer Posted June 7, 2015 Posted June 7, 2015 Yeah this whole story is just weird. I can tell you that if I was a Bishop and one of my counselors was undermining my decisions before the members I would release him. A counselor is supposed to advise, disagree, and counsel in meetings but when the presiding leader makes a final decision you go along with it even if you disagree with it and you do it without complaining about said decision. If you cannot do that you should avoid church leadership positions. I'm still baffled by the whole story and find it hard to believe. I just don't know. Just because things like this don't happen in your ward or stake doesn't mean that it can't happen in other units. I was assigned as a full-time missionary to a German ward which I will not name because I sure hope things are better after forty years, but it was a virtual hotbed of politics, personality conflicts, and backbiting. In other wards and branches I tracted out inactive members occasionally, but this was the only one where I ran into ones who stopped coming because of cliques, politics and so on. The one member my companion and I taught and baptized quit coming for these reasons. It was so bad that when the then-current bishopric was sustained, no fewer than six men opposed the calling of the second counselor (he was a bit of a jerk, so it might have been understandable -- the stake president later straightened out the six to understand that it was worthiness not personality, and they then sustained him). One man who was baptized during my time in the city was initially ordained a Deacon rather than a Priest, because he was a high executive in a national insurance company, and the bishop was worried that members of certain ward cliques would resent him being immediately ordained a Priest. I kid you not! This man was called to be the bishop a few years later, so I imagine that things got even more interesting. Actually, St Bookmark's circumstances remind me of what happened to my brother in his Texas ward. The bishop apparently got resentful that my brother had a really great rapport with the Young Men than he had, possibly because he took his position as Priests Quorum President a little too seriously, and the other problem was that my brother was the bishop's boss at work! After the bishop publicly dressed my brother down for how he thought he wasn't doing his job as YM President in a Ward Council meeting, my brother felt he could no longer continue in the calling. So he met with the bishop and resigned. Fine, so far, you might say, but unfortunately he stopped attending church, too.
strappinglad Posted June 7, 2015 Posted June 7, 2015 And you really don't want to hear the interesting stories from some of the African missions. Talk about the duck -like performance of appearing calm and serene on the surface but paddling like crazy below deck .
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