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 ...

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...

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 ...