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 ...

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,...

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, on...