The Gospel According to Jeffrey

Rockin’ vest, Brother Jones. A few weeks ago, there was a post on Mormon Life Hacker regarding Needs-Based Home Teaching , so I thought I’d share my experience with doing just that. Hopefully it will help someone out there. In late 2011, I was serving as elders quorum secretary in the ward with the lowest activity rate in our stake. Because of our low activity rates, there were dozens of families—literally hundreds of people—who didn’t have home teachers assigned. In many cases, no one even knew who they were! I’m not sure if the directive came down from the stake president or if a suggestion was made at the ward level and approved by the stake, but we revamped our home teaching program completely, using the following counsel from the Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 2, §7.4.2: “Quorum and group leaders assign the most effective home teachers to members who need them most. When assigning home teachers, leaders give highest priority to new members, less-active members w

As many people know, there is currently a small but quite vocal movement that is trying to override the revelations received by prophets and Apostles, to change the doctrines and/or practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I won’t mention this group by name—their unique brand of apostasy certainly doesn’t need any more publicity—but in response to some of their recent actions, an online acquaintance of mine, Michael Davidson , recently posted the following on Facebook: “[T]he discussion point is whether there is a faithful example of an individual acting outside of the scope of their legitimate stewardship positively impacting Mormonism.” Long-time readers should know that I often post long responses to my blog, but in this case there’s another reason for responding here: it’s a really neat story, and I figured I’d like to share it with all my friends instead of just the members of the group in question. In short, I am an individual who once “act[ed] outside of

One of the greatest, but perhaps most controversial, doctrines of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that of man’s infinite potential: our ability to become like God. Early Christians called this concept “ apotheosis ” or “deification,” but most modern Christians are ignorant thereof. Of the few non–Latter-day Saints who have even heard of it, many actually view it as hubristic, that we believe we’re going to become equal to God or even surpass Him! Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. All this being said, I came up with an idea, many years ago, that explains my personal understanding of eternal progress (apotheosis, etc.). I don’t know if it will make sense to my readers, but it certainly makes sense to me. And before I begin, a warning: if you’re not a math geek like I, you may want to bail out now, before your head starts spinning. ;-) We begin with a somewhat familiar concept, that of a pyramid scheme. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a pyramid scheme

adapted from a discourse given in the Lafayette 3rd Ward, Lafayette Indiana Stake, 29 June 2014 A couple of nights ago, I was sitting on my couch, computer in my lap, preparing my talk for today, and I saw that I had a new email. Surprise! Like that’s a big deal, right? It probably happens hundreds of times during the average preparation for a talk, but for some reason, this one caught my eye. It was advertising a “smart” device. Now of course, pretty much all of us have smart devices. We have smart computers and smart phones and smart TVs and smart cars and smart thermostats; the list goes on and on. But again, this one really caught my eye, because I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth would be the purpose of a smart basketball . Seriously, I’m wondering, by a show of hands, does anyone own a smart basketball? Anyone? Even my bishop, who is CEO of the local YMCA, doesn’t own one of these! But you know, it’s only $250, which is only like ten times the price of a pretty

In my first area of the mission field, we had our elders quorum meeting first and sacrament meeting last. Since I arrived in early March, it was my first Church meeting out of the Provo MTC  when the quorum president made an amazing announcement: in approximately two weeks, contractors would be installing a satellite dish behind our rented meetinghouse so that our ward would be able to watch the upcoming, and all future,  General Conferences  live via satellite, instead of waiting for videotapes to be snail-mailed in a couple of weeks. The excitement in our little quorum was palpable, including among the missionaries who had thus far spent their entire missions without seeing General Conference at all—a significant sacrifice for those who had been serving for a while. As the initial commotion died down, the president continued with a second announcement: since we’d be viewing General Conference live on 2 April, Fast Sunday would be postponed until the next Sunday, 9 April. The

For the last few months, I’ve been having a very slow conversation on YouTube regarding the veracity of the Book of Abraham . (Longtime readers may remember I’ve dealt briefly with that topic  here , as well.) Recently, one of the participants in that conversation, Kevin Lunt , shared a lengthy post in which he shared the following: I remember when I was in the church hearing my teachers and church leaders say over and over “don’t believe it because we say so. Discover for yourself if these things are true.” Yet they then follow that by telling you to beware of anyone and anything that contradicts with the church and go on to explain why all other churches and beliefs are wrong and corrupt. All the while they are shoveling mormon literature into you. So it’s like they’re saying “Of course you should investigate other religions. They are all wicked and corrupt so I don’t know why you’d waste your time. But by all means, discover it for yourself.” Honestly I can't fathom how many

For those of you who aren’t regular readers (either here or on my Facebook page ), I’ve been self-employed and working from home, for most of the last 10 years. While I’ve absolutely loved almost everything about this arrangement, I suddenly lost my largest client in November, decimating my business and making short work of our family’s finances. Since my wife,  Anna ’s, parents and several siblings all live in the  Lafayette, Indiana , area, we’ve usually lived there or, when work took us elsewhere, at least within an hour’s drive, give or take 15 minutes. It’s all my children know; it’s about all that Anna knows! But now, out of sheer desperation, we’ve had to widen our net. The result: last month, I accepted a job in Birmingham, Alabama , over 500 miles away. We’ll be moving there in about five weeks. This past weekend, our family made the 1,000-plus–mile round trip to go house hunting. While there are certainly a lot of positives about the position and the area, one of the major

I’m going to say something that may not be popular, something which might even cause some people some hurt. I preface this by saying that I grew up in the New York City area, where people have the reputation for being rude and unfriendly, which I personally find insanely laughable. You want to find rude and unfriendly, go to the Midwest or to Utah; I’ve experienced quite a bit of each, in both places. Conversely, New Yorkers are very open and accepting; we just don’t beat around the bush. We tell it like it is and expect everyone to accept that, because in our world, everyone does. If you don’t want to hear me tell it like I see it, feel free to read something else. Yesterday afternoon, Elder Neil L. Andersen  (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles ) addressed the 184th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . In his discourse, he reiterated two of the Church’s consistent positions: 1) We should respect everyone and bully no one. 2) M

It’s time for yet another installment of Responding to Facebook , the show where I share stuff that’s really just way too long for microblogging. For the last few months, the Bloggernacle has been rife with stories about the Ordain Women Movement , a group that seeks to have The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints change its longstanding policy of only ordaining men to specific offices in the Priesthood. While the reasons behind this are far too complex to be treated in this post, the point is that this group wants this change to occur, and has been attempting to effectuate this change through a variety of methods—not the least of which is showing up at the Priesthood Session of the Church’s Annual and Semiannual General Conferences and requesting admission to the men’s meeting. (As an aside, the men’s meeting is always preceded by a General Women’s Meeting, the preceding Saturday. Of course, all women are invited to attend this meeting, and men requesting admission to

A few years ago, I was talking with a new friend who was investigating the Church. Her backstory was long and complicated, but it was obvious that she and her husband were faithful and progressing toward joining the Church. In the course of conversation, this friend told me how wonderful the Church was. She said that over the years, she’d been to many different churches, but that nowhere were the people as good and loving and friendly as in ours. I responded that I was flattered, that I was glad she felt that way; but I cautioned her that if she were planning to join the Church because of the people, she’d be better off not getting baptized at all. She seemed a bit shocked, but I continued: if and when she joined the Church, she’d better do it because she loved her Savior and wanted to follow Him. I promised her that someday—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday—one of those great people was going to really piss her off. It might be a bishop, it might the woman sitting n

As often happens, I’m involved in a discussion on Facebook and have a response that’s much too long for what amounts to an extended tweet. Long-time readers may remember my posts to Brian Dunning regarding the Book of Abraham. This will be much of the same, but since old questions die hard, I’ll be responding to it again. The rest of this post will therefore be directed to Facebook member Darren Ashby . First of all, Darren, you asked me a few questions. However, that was just before I headed to lunch and ran some errands, and when I returned, I found over 100 comments following them. So that being said, I’m going to ignore most of the comment thread and focus on you. Hope you don’t mind me jumping back over 100 some-odd comments and answering the questions you asked. :-) So without any further ado, let’s start at the beginning. You asked: “So you define translation as not direct translation? When I translate the words "mi nombre es Darren" from Spanish to English I