Bill Reel’s Conference Predictions

[rongo]

8 hours ago, Meerkat said:

We can still share the "really good stories and analogies of yesteryear."  The advantage of the new programs is they help us role play thinking on our feet and expressing what we believe.  That way, when the opportunity presents itself to share the Restored Gospel, we don't freeze.  We can follow the Spirit and testify.  That's the advantage I have seen in my own life.  Our discussions in Gospel Doctrine and with family members and others are wonderful.  

Another thing: role-playing is the big fad with Come Follow Me, along with "kids teach each other!" Role-playing is good, as far as it goes, but it's one tool in the toolbox, and many adult teachers use it to the exclusion of the other tools. Most youth role-plays are superficial, and with all they get in SS, YM/YW, and seminary, they have learned to do "just enough." 

A concern I have is that our youth have a very poor store of gospel knowledge, and are exposed to many less-than-stellar lessons --- in spades when they are having role plays and "kids teach each other!" every class, every week. Most haven't had the amount of good adult-taught lessons that we grew up with, and they are going to be adults knowing only the role play/kids teach each other! experience. 

Another part of this slide is the shift in seminary from scripture mastery to doctrinal mastery. They no longer learn where key, vital scriptures are. 

I think the big picture with all of these linked changes is a path of least resistance response to shrinking attention spans. Instead of trying to help them increase their attention span capacity, the approach is to lessen the content demands and keep them "engaged" with shorter, activity based lessons. I think this shows in missionary lessons, and it's going to show when the youth are in their 30s. 

[rockpond]

30 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

You guys might be too young to know this but there were no announcements or anything about the major Temple changes in 1990, at least not that I was aware of.

I heard it from my friends first. Then I went to the temple and got the shock.

It was then that I learned about the difference between the endowment and the presentation of the endowment.

Big difference.

 

The only reason I think that a significant shortening of the endowment session would be announced by a letter to be read over the pulpit (in wards, not gen con) is because it would likely mean a change to temple schedules. 

Aside from that, I agree that temple changes generally aren’t announced at all.  They just happen and you learn about it when you go. 

 

[rongo]

Just now, HappyJackWagon said:

I've heard a number of claims that leaders have said things like "If you think last conference was momentous, hold on to your hats for October"

Part of me wants this to be a boring, nothing new Conference. It wouldn't hurt people who have been losing their minds speculating about massive changes to . . . not get massive changes.  

We'll miss Saturday session, because we'll be with our son for Family Weekend at his university. They have some really fun free things, and they take all day and all night on Saturday. So, we'll find out about things late that night. 

[ksfisher]

1 minute ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I've heard a number of claims that leaders have said things like "If you think last conference was momentous, hold on to your hats for October"

You're right.  Those kind of statements hadn't really been in the forefront of my mind.

I don't think they're trying to use that to any advantage so much as just trying to get people to pay attention.  Last conference there were several people in my ward (including a couple of people in leadership positions) who had no idea what anyone was talking about when ministering or the changes with the high priests were brought up.

[rockpond]

5 minutes ago, rongo said:

Another thing: role-playing is the big fad with Come Follow Me, along with "kids teach each other!" Role-playing is good, as far as it goes, but it's one tool in the toolbox, and many adult teachers use it to the exclusion of the other tools. Most youth role-plays are superficial, and with all they get in SS, YM/YW, and seminary, they have learned to do "just enough." 

A concern I have is that our youth have a very poor store of gospel knowledge, and are exposed to many less-than-stellar lessons --- in spades when they are having role plays and "kids teach each other!" every class, every week. Most haven't had the amount of good adult-taught lessons that we grew up with, and they are going to be adults knowing only the role play/kids teach each other! experience. 

Another part of this slide is the shift in seminary from scripture mastery to doctrinal mastery. They no longer learn where key, vital scriptures are. 

I think the big picture with all of these linked changes is a path of least resistance response to shrinking attention spans. Instead of trying to help them increase their attention span capacity, the approach is to lessen the content demands and keep them "engaged" with shorter, activity based lessons. I think this shows in missionary lessons, and it's going to show when the youth are in their 30s. 

I never do role plays.  Not a fan. 

Some members seem to think that the idea behind the Come Follow Me manuals in Aaronic Priesthood quorums is that the young men are supposed to teach. Every lesson.  I haven’t seen that anywhere.  The handbook just says that leaders are to “teach regularly”. 

We have established a pattern where the leaders and young men alternate each week.  And even when the YM teach, the leaders are jumping in to keep the lessons strong. 

But with that weekly alternating between leaders and YM, I still had a parent complain to me that he felt the YM weren’t teaching enough. Kinda surprised me. 

[rockpond]

8 minutes ago, rongo said:

Part of me wants this to be a boring, nothing new Conference. It wouldn't hurt people who have been losing their minds speculating about massive changes to . . . not get massive changes.  

We'll miss Saturday session, because we'll be with our son for Family Weekend at his university. They have some really fun free things, and they take all day and all night on Saturday. So, we'll find out about things late that night. 

Nothing new in the conference would be a shocker considering the multiple snowflake/blizzard type statements combined with the accounts about how President Nelson keeps getting woken up at night with inspiration.  I realize there are always rumors but this conference, the heavier than normal speculation has been fueled by what our leaders have been saying. 

[Judd]

I feel my source’s predictions are a bit more realistic:

1. Instead of shortening the endowment, there will be fast-passes, similar to Disney, where one can proceed directly to the veil. As the shortening of the endowment would often just facilitate people becoming more casual, the availability of fast passes will give local leaders more leeway in stewardship in making these available in response to faithful acts and efforts of saints. 

2. Instead of changing mission ages, the age limit itself will be abolished. This will help the church return to its roots where any individual can be called on a mission, and for variable lengths of time. However, in an age where we have moved closer to gender equality, mothers may now also be called to leave their families for a time build up the kingdom. The leaders hope this will instill in the saints a greater solidarity and better understanding the principle of sacrifice.

3. The three hour block is no more. In place of it, 2 hours of church will be held with the expectation that families and individuals will prepare themselves intellectually and spiritually with the home curriculum for Sunday school. There will then be a weekly fireside held Sunday evenings where local leaders will have discretion on the topics, but will generally serve to reinforce topics and subjects from home study, adapted to the needs of the ward. 

4. In conjunction with #3, the temple recommend interview questions will change to ask if you are faithful in attending your weekly firesides.

5. The seminary program will be revamped. The brethren are very concerned about the increasing influence of secular education. The seminary program will expand to be the general education arm of the church. It will be 4-5 hours in length for a school day, which will free up the youth to engage in service or personal gospel study. The name seminary will also be rebranded to School of the Prophets.

6. Due to the shortage of worthy patriarchs, and the increasing demands placed on those currentlynin this office, the church has been working with a software firm and running different algorithms that can generate personalized blessings based on a 150 item survey submitted by the recipient. The emphasis is that this is not simply a computer giving this, but they have taken different characteristics  that will trigger specific blessings based in response to specific needs identified in the survey. The actual parts of those blessings has been carefully prayed over by the 12 in conjunction with a sample of experienced patriarchs, with the hope that now blessings can be more streamlined and even more specific to the individual, as they may feel more inclined to answer anonymous questions honestly rather than an uncomfortable interview with an older male. (I did hear this wasnin part a response to Sam Young and they felt it was really a large spur to this revelation).

7. The church has been concerned about the burden placed on the membership to seek out their dead relatives. They will be going public to reshape what Malachi’s prophecy of turning the hearts of children to fathers (and mothers) really meant. No longer will people have to painstakingly seek direction of the spirit to find names of deceased anscestors, but it will instead be sufficient if in weekly prayers they “sent good vibes” to those who have come before.

My source is a family member who works on the COB. They wanted to get this out there ahead of conference to break the news and prepare hearts, but they felt uncomfortable supporting Mormon Leaks or NNN, so they’ve asked me to put this out there.

[Scott Lloyd]

35 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think they are using it to get excitement and interest around General Conference, and just church leadership in general.  Add to this the frequent use of the terms revelation and inspiration from President Nelson, and it seems to have everyone at a heightened level of excitement and anticipation from what I see.  This might get people to be more committed and devoted in the short term.  I'm not sure what the longer term implications are for this strategy though.  

So the idea they are using "speculation to their advantage" is really just speculation on your part, then.

 

[rongo]

2 minutes ago, Judd said:

I feel my source’s predictions are a bit more realistic:

1. Instead of shortening the endowment, there will be fast-passes, similar to Disney, where one can proceed directly to the veil. As the shortening of the endowment would often just facilitate people becoming more casual, the availability of fast passes will give local leaders more leeway in stewardship in making these available in response to faithful acts and efforts of saints. 

2. Instead of changing mission ages, the age limit itself will be abolished. This will help the church return to its roots where any individual can be called on a mission, and for variable lengths of time. However, in an age where we have moved closer to gender equality, mothers may now also be called to leave their families for a time build up the kingdom. The leaders hope this will instill in the saints a greater solidarity and better understanding the principle of sacrifice.

3. The three hour block is no more. In place of it, 2 hours of church will be held with the expectation that families and individuals will prepare themselves intellectually and spiritually with the home curriculum for Sunday school. There will then be a weekly fireside held Sunday evenings where local leaders will have discretion on the topics, but will generally serve to reinforce topics and subjects from home study, adapted to the needs of the ward. 

4. In conjunction with #3, the temple recommend interview questions will change to ask if you are faithful in attending your weekly firesides.

5. The seminary program will be revamped. The brethren are very concerned about the increasing influence of secular education. The seminary program will expand to be the general education arm of the church. It will be 4-5 hours in length for a school day, which will free up the youth to engage in service or personal gospel study. The name seminary will also be rebranded to School of the Prophets.

6. Due to the shortage of worthy patriarchs, and the increasing demands placed on those currentlynin this office, the church has been working with a software firm and running different algorithms that can generate personalized blessings based on a 150 item survey submitted by the recipient. The emphasis is that this is not simply a computer giving this, but they have taken different characteristics  that will trigger specific blessings based in response to specific needs identified in the survey. The actual parts of those blessings has been carefully prayed over by the 12 in conjunction with a sample of experienced patriarchs, with the hope that now blessings can be more streamlined and even more specific to the individual, as they may feel more inclined to answer anonymous questions honestly rather than an uncomfortable interview with an older male. (I did hear this wasnin part a response to Sam Young and they felt it was really a large spur to this revelation).

7. The church has been concerned about the burden placed on the membership to seek out their dead relatives. They will be going public to reshape what Malachi’s prophecy of turning the hearts of children to fathers (and mothers) really meant. No longer will people have to painstakingly seek direction of the spirit to find names of deceased anscestors, but it will instead be sufficient if in weekly prayers they “sent good vibes” to those who have come before.

My source is a family member who works on the COB. They wanted to get this out there ahead of conference to break the news and prepare hearts, but they felt uncomfortable supporting Mormon Leaks or NNN, so they’ve asked me to put this out there.

Appearing breathlessly in Meridian Magazine in 3, 2, 1  . . .  

[hope_for_things]

1 minute ago, Scott Lloyd said:

37 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think they are using it to get excitement and interest around General Conference, and just church leadership in general.  Add to this the frequent use of the terms revelation and inspiration from President Nelson, and it seems to have everyone at a heightened level of excitement and anticipation from what I see.  This might get people to be more committed and devoted in the short term.  I'm not sure what the longer term implications are for this strategy though.  

So the idea they are using "speculation to their advantage" is really just speculation on your part, then.

Its different than the messaging in the past, that's my only point.  Whether its good, bad or ugly, is speculation.  

[Scott Lloyd]

7 hours ago, rockpond said:

I never do role plays.  Not a fan. 

Some members seem to think that the idea behind the Come Follow Me manuals in Aaronic Priesthood quorums is that the young men are supposed to teach. Every lesson.  I haven’t seen that anywhere.  The handbook just says that leaders are to “teach regularly”. 

We have established a pattern where the leaders and young men alternate each week.  And even when the YM teach, the leaders are jumping in to keep the lessons strong. 

But with that weekly alternating between leaders and YM, I still had a parent complain to me that he felt the YM weren’t teaching enough. Kinda surprised me. 

While I in large measure disagree with Rongo's negativity on the curriculum, I do share your and his antipathy regarding role playing. I also hate it when the instructor says, "Take five minutes and turn to your neighbor and discuss this or that doctrinal point, then summarize your discussion for the class." I feel uncomfortable and put on the spot when this happens, so much so that on occasion I have quietly slipped out of the room when I see something like this coming.

I'm probably to blame for my own social anxiety, but I don't like being obliged to cope with it when I've come to class to be spiritually fed.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Scott Lloyd

[bluebell]

14 minutes ago, rockpond said:

I never do role plays.  Not a fan. 

Some members seem to think that the idea behind the Come Follow Me manuals in Aaronic Priesthood quorums is that the young men are supposed to teach. Every lesson.  I haven’t seen that anywhere.  The handbook just says that leaders are to “teach regularly”. 

We have established a pattern where the leaders and young men alternate each week.  And even when the YM teach, the leaders are jumping in to keep the lessons strong. 

But with that weekly alternating between leaders and YM, I still had a parent complain to me that he felt the YM weren’t teaching enough. Kinda surprised me. 

We were trained in my stake (in YW) that no youth is to ever teach an entire lesson but that they should regularly be asked to teach a part here or there.  The reasoning behind this is that we are called and set a part to be a teacher of youth (among other things) while the youth are not and so it should never be their entire responsibility to teach a lesson.

[rongo]

3 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

While I in large measure disagree with Rongo's negativity on the curriculum, I do share your and his antipathy regarding role playing. I also hate it when the instructor says, "Take five minutes and turn to your neighbor and discuss this or that doctrinal point, then summarize your discussion for the class." I feel uncomfortable and put on the spot when this happens, so much so that on occasion I have quietly slipped out of the room when I see something like this coming.

I'm probably to blame for my own social anxiety, but I don't like having to cope with it when I've come to class to be spiritually fed.

It's cringey. And I don't think it has to do with social anxiety. We are rapidly losing our ability to sit, listen, think, and respond in traditional lesson/lecture formats. Which is also an important ability, and the trend is to treat it like a pariah. 

One of our two teachers does group activities and present every time in gospel doctrine. People ditch her Sunday. I'm a volunteer perma-sub in primary to round out single men whose partner is absent. Ends up being every Sunday.  

[Bernard Gui]

10 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

 

The problem is that very often we don't see cultural practices as merely cultural practices until someone points the fact out to us.

Such as.....

[Bernard Gui]

10 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Jello salad with vegetables in it.

Haven’t had that since the early 60s.

[rockpond]

6 minutes ago, bluebell said:

We were trained in my stake (in YW) that no youth is to ever teach an entire lesson but that they should regularly be asked to teach a part here or there.  The reasoning behind this is that we are called and set a part to be a teacher of youth (among other things) while the youth are not and so it should never be their entire responsibility to teach a lesson.

I very much agree with that.  I wish they’d do the same in our stake. 

[Avatar4321]

I predict none of those things will happen this weekend. I’m also skeptical that he has any inside source with the 12.

I think it’s more likely that we will get more scripture or that we are going to start building temples in every stake than those predictions.

the only one I could see happening is number 1 but I doubt that because of the recent change in age

[Bernard Gui]

19 minutes ago, Judd said:

My source is a family member who works on the COB. They wanted to get this out there ahead of conference to break the news and prepare hearts, but they felt uncomfortable supporting Mormon Leaks or NNN, so they’ve asked me to put this out there.

I won’t give any credence to this information unless you can prove he/she overheard it in conversations between senior General Authorities on a COB elevator. That is the only reliable source of Church rumors.

[HappyJackWagon]

29 minutes ago, rockpond said:

Nothing new in the conference would be a shocker considering the multiple snowflake/blizzard type statements combined with the accounts about how President Nelson keeps getting woken up at night with inspiration.  I realize there are always rumors but this conference, the heavier than normal speculation has been fueled by what our leaders have been saying. 

There's certainly a risk to raising expectations. 1- either the expectations aren't met  2- expectations for this conference are met which then also raises the expectation for future conferences

 

[rongo]

Just now, HappyJackWagon said:

There's certainly a risk to raising expectations. 1- either the expectations aren't met  2- expectations for this conference are met which then also raises the expectation for future conferences

I think that's what's happening. With last conference, and the intervening GAs telling stakes "just wait until Conference! You're not going to believe it!" I think members developed the expectation overnight to have massive changes every conference. And they project their pet projects onto the speculation. 

[Rain]

45 minutes ago, rockpond said:

The only reason I think that a significant shortening of the endowment session would be announced by a letter to be read over the pulpit (in wards, not gen con) is because it would likely mean a change to temple schedules. 

Aside from that, I agree that temple changes generally aren’t announced at all.  They just happen and you learn about it when you go. 

 

This could be solved by letting patrons know that it will be changing "in 2 weeks" or so and change it on the website for those that don't go regularly.  I know it won't get everyone, but it should get most who either attend regularly or don't. 

[revelstoked]

45 minutes ago, rockpond said:

Some members seem to think that the idea behind the Come Follow Me manuals in Aaronic Priesthood quorums is that the young men are supposed to teach. Every lesson.  I haven’t seen that anywhere.  The handbook just says that leaders are to “teach regularly”. 

We have established a pattern where the leaders and young men alternate each week.  And even when the YM teach, the leaders are jumping in to keep the lessons strong. 

We almost do that in my ward.  Because of the size of the Aaronic Priesthood we combine them all on the first Sunday and rotate around the adult quorum leadership and have them teach the "Duty to God" lesson.  All other weaks I have my deacons teach.  We just went with an age based rotation so it's consistent. 

What usually ends up happening is the assigned Deacon leads a group discussion and the leaders tend to re-direct, but the Deacons have taken ownership.  Once the quorum president thought we should have a chastity lesson and he taught a lesson on pornography, all on his initiative.  It was "out of cycle" but I allowed it.  One of our Deacons regularly puts a slideshow together when it is his turn and even finds church memes to finish off his lesson. 

It was rough the first couple of weeks but the Deacons got into the groove after a while.  A friday/saturday reminder text to parents has been essential.

Edited October 3, 2018 by revelstoked

[rockpond]

4 minutes ago, Rain said:

This could be solved by letting patrons know that it will be changing "in 2 weeks" or so and change it on the website for those that don't go regularly.  I know it won't get everyone, but it should get most who either attend regularly or don't. 

True.  But in my temple district, temple schedule changes have always been announced over the pulpit. Even minor ones. 

ETA:  Now that I think about it... it could be a stake thing.  

Edited October 3, 2018 by rockpond

[mfbukowski]

48 minutes ago, rockpond said:

The only reason I think that a significant shortening of the endowment session would be announced by a letter to be read over the pulpit (in wards, not gen con) is because it would likely mean a change to temple schedules. 

Aside from that, I agree that temple changes generally aren’t announced at all.  They just happen and you learn about it when you go. 

 

I have never heard an announcement about temple schedules, which change in some cases, annually or more commonly every 3 years when Temple presidencies change.

It's small temples like for example our Newport Beach temple you actually have to call in for an appointment and make a reservation.

[rongo]

5 minutes ago, revelstoked said:

What usually ends up happening is the assigned Deacon leads a group discussion and the leaders tend to re-direct, but they've taken ownership. 

I think the larger issue is that we've switched to largely a "discussion" model even for adults, at the expense of "lessons." 

I think people whose only experience is "discussions" and less and less ever "lessons" is vastly different than people who have had "lessons." Yes, there can be brutally boring lessons, but I think church's ability to teach people doctrines, principles, stories, background, etc. is vastly different under a "discussion" model than it is under a "lesson" model. 

Edited October 3, 2018 by rongo