The Gospel According to Jeffrey

The following is adapted from a talk I gave in the Gardendale Ward (Birmingham, Alabama Stake) on 10 May 2015. Enjoy! Brothers and Sisters, aloha and happy Mother’s Day! When I was first asked to speak today, I was told I could pick any topic I wanted. But of course, since it’s Mother’s Day, I’d certainly be remiss if I didn’t choose something to do with moms. And you know what? That’s actually pretty cool, because even though there are a lot of people here that have a lot more experience than I do, being a mom, I do know a few things about moms because I’ve spent most of my life living with one. And one thing I’ve learned is moms are like the greatest thing ever, and you frankly don’t get half the recognition you deserve. As a dad, I’d love to think I’m just as good as a mom, but let’s face it: there’s really no comparison. Yes, dads are important, and the world would be a really sad place if all the dads disappeared. But when you come right down to it, a mom is so much more ...

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...

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 admissio...

In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about “gender equality” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While so-called “Mormon feminists” have been around since at least the 1970s, the current renewed focus seems to have started with a Facebook group encouraging women to wear pants to Church on Sunday, 16 December 2012, in contrast to the prevailing culture which encourages them to wear skirts or dresses. (The Church, for its part, does not have any position on pants vs. skirts. As Church spokesman Scott Trotter stated in response to the proposed action, “Generally church members are encouraged to wear their best clothing as a sign of respect for the Savior, but we don’t counsel people beyond that.”) As for my ward of the Church, my perception was that “Pants Sunday” was an utter failure. As far as I could tell, most people had no idea it was even happening. My wife and I saw a grand total of two women that seemed to be participating, but one of them alway...

In the midst of my constant blogging about interesting things in my life and giving other people suggestions, I’ve got a bit of a switch-up, tonight: I could really use some help, here. About two months ago, my five-year-old son, David, suddenly became terrified of the dark, of going upstairs by himself, and of going to bed by himself. (He’s our only living son, so he’s been going to bed by himself since he was an infant.) At first, he was afraid of zombies; these days, he’s just plain afraid, ostensibly without the ability to articulate just what it is that scares him. Either way, the problem is the same: we have a lot of trouble getting him to go to bed. We’ve tried talking to him, assuring him that zombies aren’t real ( CDC page notwithstanding). We’ve helped him look out the window, to let him see that there’s nothing out there. We leave his lights on all night, so he’s not afraid of the darkness. We bought him a dream catcher, to help “keep the nightmares away.” I taught...

A few months back, I happened across a video on YouTube, from the HBO show Big Love . The clip depicts one of the show’s characters, a fictional plural wife, appearing before an equally fictitious Church disciplinary council. Suffice to say: while people are people and even Church leaders are extremely human, the depiction is very unflattering and completely at odds with the way such disciplinary councils should be carried out ( i.e. with Christian love for the accused). I commented on this, at the time, saying that if any real Priesthood leader were to act the way these fictional ones did, said Priesthood leader would probably also be called up for a disciplinary council. Since that time, I have not returned to the video nor its thread. A few days ago, woman named Anne replied to my posted with an honest question: out of curiosity, what is a priesthood leader and what is censure? Not a mormon just curious. Are any of these guys priesthood holders or can any mormon man be one...

It’s time, once again, for everybody’s favorite column, Slam the Press! Honestly, this isn’t going to be so much of a slam as a series of corrections that is much, much too long for the comments, so I figured I’d post them here. The article in question is from the Humboldt County, California,  Journal article The Mormon Moment , by Scottie Lee Myers. Overall, it’s a pretty good article, and it left me feeling very good about both the missionaries and the reporter himself. However, there are a few significant errors throughout the peace, along with a several more minor ones that could also stand a fix. So as usual, let’s take them one at a time. “In 1827 [future Church President Joseph] Smith was a 25-year-old New Yorker who made a living using psychic powers to find treasure.” First of all, a minor historical point: Smith was born in December 1805, so in September 1827, he would have been 21. This is actually quite significant, because when he was 25, he was serving as Presi...

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe in the authority and power of the Priesthood. However, unlike many religious traditions, we do not understand the Priesthood to be an organization or even a group of religious leaders, but rather a power. A page on Mormon.org entitled What Is the Priesthood?  repeats the definition most often heard in Church meetings and lesson manuals: “The Priesthood,” it writes, “is the authority to act in God’s name.” Whereas some religions view priesthood like an electric company, we view it as the actual electricity; it exists independently of its holders, ready to be called upon by all those who are authorized to do so. So my question is: who, pray tell, is so authorized? It’s an interesting question, to say the least, and one that I don’t think has been particularly explored among Latter-day Saints. I know, for example, that I am authorized to perform certain ordinances because I am an elder in the Church. I can ...

A few days late, I realize, but I’ve just discovered that Liam Hoare (sorry I misspelled your name, by the way; I’ve fixed it in the original) has responded to my earlier post,  I Believe… . As my regular readers know, brevity is not my strong suit, but I will attempt to deal with his complaints succinctly. Liam’s response deals with the Church’s position on race—an issue which I asserted, and continue to assert—has been a non-issue from the start (see previous post). I will thus deal with his arguments in turn. 1. “Jeff makes the assertion in his reply that Joseph Smith was some kind of Lincoln before there was a Lincoln.” I actually didn’t say that, but it’s a good point. Joseph Smith, Jr., actually did run for President of the United States on an anti-slavery platform, in 1844. His position was that the United States government should outlaw any new slavery, then sell all federal lands and use the money to purchase the freedom of all existing slaves—which, by the way, wou...

If you missed my last post, check it out . Otherwise, here’s Part II. :-) I’m now going to conclude my thoughts by pointing out something I’ve spoken of, many times before: the issue of how men are treated in the Church. I don’t claim to know how things were done in the 1980s or the 1880s or whatever other era, but I can certainly say that in the almost 20 years I’ve been a member of the Church, men have been treated like crap. This past Sunday would be a perfect example. Last Sunday, Anna and I attended the  Auburn Hills Ward  in the Wichita, Kansas Stake. Following the youth speaker, the second speaker was a single mother in her mid-30s, whose topic was womanhood. The crux of her talk—which point she kept revisiting—was, “I don’t claim to know what’s it’s like to be a man, but being a woman is really hard.” The implication, of course, was that women’s roles are so difficult to balance that merely filling them at all is enough to warrant praise. Following her rema...

Warning: this is a long post, and it actually kind of devolves into a rant, for a while. If you’re a first-time reader, don’t worry; I’m usually not this bad. ;-) So I saw an interesting post, this morning, on a Latter-day Saint blog called  Times and Seasons . The post, entitled Women and Meetings , cited a recent professional conference the author attended, in which speaker  Dr. Bruce D. Perry  stated that “The IQ of group decision-making goes up in direct proportion to the number of women participating in the group.” The blogger’s question, therefore, was what the reader thinks of this claim, and specifically its implications for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Recent changes making the Ward Council (with three women) rather than the PEC (with zero women) the primary group decision-making body at the LDS congregational level improves the quality of decisions made at the local level. The absence of women in the senior councils of the LDS Church at ...