The Gospel According to Jeffrey

Just over a year ago, in late 2011, I was called to meet with the first counselor in our ward bishopric and extended a call to serve as a Primary worker. My assignment was to be one of two instructors for the 10-12–year-old boys, a class with about half a dozen active members. The first counselor, Brother Gardner, informed me that the bishopric tried to call Primary workers for about a year, which I immediately assumed was wishful thinking. My wife, Anna, had previously been called into Nursery “for about a year” and wound up serving from before our son David started Nursery (age 18 months) until well after his fourth birthday. Nevertheless, I accepted the calling and was sustained on 1 January 2012. Yesterday morning, I arrived at the ward building at 9:30 a.m. for our annual “Meet Your Teacher” breakfast. I dropped my daughter Leah off at her CTR 7 table and was about to drop off David at the CTR 5, when the new first counselor in the bishopric, Brother Asay, told me he needed to ...

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...