General Conference

This is a condensed version of  a sacrament meeting talk given few weeks ago. I was asked to use President Uchtdorf’s address at the the recent General YW Meeting. Back when I was a youth in the church, I often felt frustrated by the prescribed roles we seemed to be taught in YW, and in [...]

I decided to do an experiment: if you ran through all the explanations for why the structure of Mormonism isn’t sexist back to back, how long would it take before you completely contradicted yourself? Turns out about 30 seconds. For all we try and magnify the positive and downplay the negative, the fact of the [...]

Pending the birth of Princess Kate’s baby, Lady Cosima Rose Alexandra Windsor is currently 24th in line for the British throne. Lady Cosima is the nearly three-year-old great granddaughter of a grandfather of the current queen. I didn’t know that, and I really wouldn’t care, but I did easily look it up, and I could do [...]

Peggy Fletcher Stack of the Salt Lake Tribune said “that LDS women are scheduled, as of now [Mar 18, 2013], to offer invocations or benedictions at next month’s General Conference”.  Which session will it be?  Will it be an invocation, or benediction.  My bet is a benediction for the last session, so there won’t be [...]

Salt Lake City sees General Conference every six months. In the CofChrist, “World” Conference occurs every three years, and 2013 is the lucky year. A Community of Christ World Conference is far more of a legislative exercise than its Utah LDS analogue. It features worship, of course, and normally will have approval to changes and [...]

There are many on the internet publishing information about our faith, often not very flattering.  Some of that information is faith-shaking.  But where does it cross the line into being “anti-Mormon”?  Some would say that anyone who says anything that is not uplifting or faith promoting is anti-Mormon, but that seems like a pretty low [...]

Daniel faced a serious problem.  Darius the king had been tricked by his princes into outlawing prayer.  But Daniel felt beholden to pray to his God.  The society in which he lived restricted his personal freedoms more than his religious society did.  In fact, his religious community went underground due to the persecutions and restrictions of the [...]

Quite some time ago I read Kevin Barney’s excellent article he wrote for Dialogue:  “How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven Without Getting Excommunicated.”  One of his references was a book by archaeologist, William Dever, called “Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel” which I just finished reading.  The gist of the [...]

All Enlisted is at it again!  The latest movement is to petition church leadership to have females give prayers in General Conference.  After the pantstastic success of the Wear Pants to Church Sunday, they are motivated to tackle this next.  The church’s official response? “Decisions on speakers and prayers at General Conference were made several [...]

When I was a pre-teen, I remember overhearing a conversation between adults about the ERA, the political push for women to have equal rights in society and in the workplace.  I was proud to think that while others of my friends belonged to churches that led by fallible men, we had God at the helm, [...]

The past General Conference marks the 34th anniversary of the ratification of Official Declaration 2, removing any restrictions on priesthood with regards to race.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been reading the Lengthen Your Stride: Working Draft.  Chapter 22 provides more information than is available in Lengthen Your Stride by Edward Kimball. [...]

As a follow up to the article I wrote on preparing for receiving revelation during General Conference, I thought it would be great to hear stories from peoples’ experience with spiritual guidance they received during General Conference.  I understand that some promptings are too personal to share, so I’ll highlight some of the guidance and [...]

“Many laws permit or even promote abortion, but to us this is a great evil,” Elder Oaks said in Saturday afternoon’s session of General Conference.  Oaks is just one of many religious leaders that call abortion evil, but are there more effective ways to curb abortions than to simply stand on a soapbox?  A recent [...]

There has been a lot of bloggernacle discussion over the years about how to make women feel more equal in the male-dominated General Conference. What other ideas do you have? Discuss.

Well, if you tuned in late to General Conference, you missed the announcement that men can now serve at age 18 if they have completed high school, and women can now serve at age 19.  Why do you think the Church made this change?  How do you think it will change missionary work?  What else [...]

I watched my father, who died at age 68, make abysmal health choices and despite having an incredibly strong constitution, he was almost unable to move by the time a massive stroke took his life. It would have been nice to have enjoyed my Dad a bit longer, but as I chew on Elder Scott’s quote, I realize that I didn’t need longer, I needed better: improvements in both the quality of his life and his well-being.

Share your thoughts about practical principles, especially health-related, that improve your quality of life, sense of well-being, and receipt of inspiration.

“Surely the thing God enjoys most about being God is the thrill of being merciful.” One of the most powerful talks this past General Conference was, for me, Elder Holland’s talk on the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. How simply he unwound the seeming unfairness of the Lord’s treatment of the workers at [...]

14,433,880.  That is my prediction for the number of members that will be announced in General Conference next week for year-end 2011.  In case you missed last year, I made similar predictions then had a follow-up analyzing how close the estimates were in a post entitled Good vs Great: Iomega and General Conference Statistics.  I [...]

There have been many “types” of Mormons discussed online and in other places.  Sometimes these “types”  have to do with one’s “faithfulness”.  Other times they may have to do with someone’s level of participation on Sundays.  Perhaps it is based on whether someone is primarily “spirit of the law” or “letter of the law”.  Today, [...]