Our Oddest Church Meeting Yet?

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

This Sunday, here in Georgia, and in my Stake, the oddest meeting yet. We have not had a single Church meeting here in the Sunny South, in the last five or six months. I say “five or six”, because by now, none of us can really remember the date that all Church buildings and Temples were closed, so maybe someone could remind me. 
 

Anyway, our Stake President moved out West months ago, so in effect we don’t really have a Stake President, or we may have one and not know it. So this Sunday August 16, we will be getting a “new Stake President”, but this is not the odd part; yet?  This will be a, “Virtual Meeting”, and in addition, we all are being told to tune in, as our Stake, and many Wards are going to be realigned. This despite many families moving “in and out”, many due to financial hardships, some moving home to parents, others moving on to much smaller homes, in other communities, due to high unemployment. 
 

Although an “odd turn of events”, it seems at least it will not be boring. How are things going in your slice of heaven these days?

[Ahab]

Our ward bishopric was reorganized last week.  New bishop and counselors and ward clerk.  I know the new bishop's father but don't know that son very well.  I know another of his sons and he will be painting our house soon.  One of the new counselors is a close neighbor and I think he will do his job well.  The proceedings were televised on Zoom, without the sacrament part, which was a bit odd because this kind of thing usually happens in sacrament meetings and yet we didn't do the sacrament part of it.  My wife and I did that a little bit later.

[HappyJackWagon]

55 minutes ago, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

This Sunday, here in Georgia, and in my Stake, the oddest meeting yet. We have not had a single Church meeting here in the Sunny South, in the last five or six months. I say “five or six”, because by now, none of us can really remember the date that all Church buildings and Temples were closed, so maybe someone could remind me. 
 

Anyway, our Stake President moved out West months ago, so in effect we don’t really have a Stake President, or we may have one and not know it. So this Sunday August 16, we will be getting a “new Stake President”, but this is not the odd part; yet?  This will be a, “Virtual Meeting”, and in addition, we all are being told to tune in, as our Stake, and many Wards are going to be realigned. This despite many families moving “in and out”, many due to financial hardships, some moving home to parents, others moving on to much smaller homes, in other communities, due to high unemployment. 
 

Although an “odd turn of events”, it seems at least it will not be boring. How are things going in your slice of heaven these days?

Our Ward is split into 4 parts so I haven't actually had a meeting yet. 

Every blue moon we get an email from the stake saying "Jane Doe and John Smith have been called as ______________" but then they emphasize there isn't a sustaining vote. We'll "ratify" the calling later. In some cases it will be months after the person was called. It's really strange.

Hopefully with your Virtual Meeting they will have a mechanism for common consent. In this day and age with the technology we have available there's really no reason I can think of that we can't Sustain a person prior to them being set apart. Especially for a position like Stake President, "ratifying" that position later doesn't seem like a fantastic plan.

BTW- Masks are optional in my area so I'm not expecting to go anytime soon, even when it is my turn.

[HappyJackWagon]

Just now, Ahab said:

Our ward bishopric was reorganized last week.  New bishop and counselors and ward clerk.  I know the new bishop's father but don't know that son very well.  I know another of his sons and he will be painting our house soon.  One of the new counselors is a close neighbor and I think he will do his job well.  The proceedings were televised on Zoom, without the sacrament part, which was a bit odd because this kind of thing usually happens in sacrament meetings and yet we didn't do the sacrament part of it.  My wife and I did that a little bit later.

Was there a sustaining vote over zoom?

[Ahab]

5 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Was there a sustaining vote over zoom?

Yes.  Lots of people didn't have cameras or didn't have their cameras on, though.  But the presiding officer did look into the laptop screen to see whoever he could see anyway. As far as I could tell it went off without a hitch.

[Amulek]

1 hour ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Hopefully with your Virtual Meeting they will have a mechanism for common consent.

Sorry, Zoom only supports reactions for clapping hands and thumbs up by default.  

 

[Ahab]

Just now, Amulek said:

Sorry, Zoom only supports reactions for clapping hands and thumbs up by default.  

 

You can also wave into a camera on your end, if you have one connected and functioning properly, or instead of waving you can just hold up your right hand.  My wife and I tried that and saw that it worked.

[Bernard Gui]

Our bishopric was changed on Zoom. We raised our hands when asked for sustaining. Subsequent stake and ward callings (including a new Elders Quorum Presidency) have been announced  through messaging and emails with something like the following...

Quote

This email serves to ask you for your sustaining vote. If you are in favor of this action, you do not need to reply to this email. If you oppose any of these actions, please send an email stating the reason for your opposition to President XXX XXX at xxxxx.com by Monday, at noon. If no opposing emails are received by that time, the vote will be considered to be unanimous.

 

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Wow, via the way you guys are describing this, for a true dinosaur as myself...truly strange. 🦕

[Amulek]

35 minutes ago, Ahab said:

You can also wave into a camera on your end, if you have one connected and functioning properly, or instead of waving you can just hold up your right hand.  My wife and I tried that and saw that it worked.

Of course. I was just joking about the response features. I just remember noticing on my first meeting that there were only 'positive' responses available by default and thought that was kind of interesting.

We re-organized our young women classes yesterday via Zoom and simply asked everyone to simply raise their hands to sustain / object to the changes that were made. 

We'll deal with the ordination part later...

 

[Calm]

8 hours ago, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

none of us can really remember the date that all Church buildings and Temples were closed,

I think March 12. I was looking at some calendar a few days ago and the number pops up when you wrote this. Will now see if right....if no correction is edited in, I am. 
 

edited to add:  The letter was sent out March 11 officially shutting down large gatherings on the 16th.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/covid-19-impact-large-gatherings-latter-day-saints

We have been doing this for 5 months now. Both seems much less and much longer. 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Calm

[The Nehor]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

We have been doing this for 5 months now. Both seems much less and much longer. 

Recent events have seemed to follow a pattern I first noticed on my Mission.

A feeling that the days last forever but the weeks fly by.

[Hamba Tuhan]

13 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Was there a sustaining vote over zoom?

Until two weeks ago (when we resumed in-person services), we did all of our sustainings via email. The instruction was to reply (NOT reply all!) if one objected, with no response being assent.

[Amulek]

3 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Until two weeks ago (when we resumed in-person services), we did all of our sustainings via email. The instruction was to reply (NOT reply all!) if one objected, with no response being assent.

Since we are only partially in-person on any given Sunday now, we have started to receive emails from the stake clerk on the Sunday's where stake callings are being announced.

If anyone objects to any of the callings listed in the email, they are instructed to contact someone from the stake presidency directly (and their emails are included).

Seems to be working just fine so far.

 

[HappyJackWagon]

3 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Until two weeks ago (when we resumed in-person services), we did all of our sustainings via email. The instruction was to reply (NOT reply all!) if one objected, with no response being assent.

This makes sense. I've been surprised callings in my area have only been announced with no sustaining vote but with plans to one day "ratify" the callings. Seems a bit inappropriate to me.

Bernard also mentioned in his post that a sustaining vote is assumed if no response is given. That probably makes sense functionally but also seems to illustrate how common consent is mostly just a rubber stamp formality.

I'm also curious, for those wards split up into separate parts like mine, do they do the same sustainings and realeases every week until they've gone through the cycle of attendance?

[Amulek]

1 hour ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I'm also curious, for those wards split up into separate parts like mine, do they do the same sustainings and realeases every week until they've gone through the cycle of attendance?

We haven't had any ward business which really needs to be addressed, so we've just been holding off on all of that for the time being. 

However, we just lost a couple of people to the stake for seminary callings this week, so we may need to issue releases from their ward callings in the not too distant future.

We haven't discussed it as a bishopric, but we'll probably go the email route rather than duplicating announcements week-after-week. 

 

[Rain]

We have heard about one new member of our ward being called as an RS teacher from the RSP.  She taught a video lesson on Sunday.  

Other than that I think that's the only thing we have heard about callings.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

20 hours ago, Calm said:

I think March 12. I was looking at some calendar a few days ago and the number pops up when you wrote this. Will now see if right....if no correction is edited in, I am. 
 

edited to add:  The letter was sent out March 11 officially shutting down large gatherings on the 16th.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/covid-19-impact-large-gatherings-latter-day-saints

We have been doing this for 5 months now. Both seems much less and much longer. 

Wow, I was very sick for a couple of months, although I had made a New Years resolution to attend every Sunday. Sadly I have only attended two Sunday’s this entire year, so for me it seems like forever. I had lost 25lbs in just two months, had to have a recording device installed in my chest, for my heart, along with so many medical tests. Since Christmas, other than one or two visits to the grocery store with my wife, my only trips out of the house have been to many specialist, and hospitals. It has been a difficult year overall everyone, which makes my issues small. Having said this, not having the one steady comfort, and outing each Sunday for Church, has made it even harder. My wife overheard me talking to a friend on speakerphone not long ago, he asked how I was doing, I replied...”you know me Theron, just laying around, running out the clock”. Long story short, it would be nice to see, and to worship with my friends. 

[LoudmouthMormon]

My ward is probably half retired people exactly where they want to be, with the rest a combination of working families, with one low-income area.  There haven't been any callings or releases, although our 1 Sunday per month church, split into 2 sessions, is probably a third of our usually active folks.

This week my POA had it's yearly meeting, with about half attending live in the president's back yard, and half attending via Zoom.  A new board was elected.

[Hamba Tuhan]

13 hours ago, Amulek said:

However, we just lost a couple of people to the stake for seminary callings this week, so we may need to issue releases from their ward callings in the not too distant future.

You're missing out. Our stake presidency let us know that we're never going back to in-person seminary classes ever.

And there was much rejoicing ...

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

9 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

You're missing out. Our stake presidency let us know that we're never going back to in-person seminary classes ever.

And there was much rejoicing ...

I think my grandchildren will do it the same.