Admittedly, last week's posting was lame, but I was tired yet still wanted to keep my promise of a "post a week".
Tonight, here are some thoughts and such from an early morning training we had with Elder Kim Smith, our area authority 70.
1. To the older men in the audience who were bishops: Don't think you can't relate to the youth. Pres. Hinckley is 96 or so and can you think of anyone who relates better with the youth than he?
2. Did you know that the only time a President does NOT choose his councilors in the church are when it's a YM president? The new handbook confirms that. The Bishop calls the President of the YM AND the councilors as they oversee a specific group of boys within the AP.
3. We must all ensure the church is keeping true to the Church Handbook. As a councilor, it's OK to point out that something isn't according to handbook. The handbook represents safety, and we should all protect ourselves by doing whatever it takes to adhere to it.
4. YM need to learn how to SERVE, not just be entertained. After all, missions and EQ sure aren't about being entertained!
5. Bishops are too quick to write welfare checks. By doing so, they are preventing a unique teaching opportunity from occurring.
6. When someone seeks welfare assistance, a Bishop should ask how their extended family is helping them out as that's the first line of defense. He shared an example of a brother to whom he wasn't close that needed help. The Bishop told him to ask his family first, and he said he was embarrassed. But now he and that brother are very close. (So, to my family...anyone need help?!)
7. Elder Bednar had said at a training recently that the Devil has increased his intensity so if we are at just the same level of spirituality as in the past, we're actually losing ground. (It's like my company....if we make the same amount of money from year to year, we actually make less profit as salaries have gone up, rent has gone up, etc. and we have less left over as profit). If you are doing LESS than you have normally done, you're losing ground twice as fast. So we need to make an active effort at increasing our level of spirituality.
Mark
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4 comments:
Great post, Mark. The last one is very thought provoking.
very intersting Mark. Elder Smith was my brother's YM president years ago, great guy.
Isn't "counsilor" the word used for a government official? I know, picky, picky. We just had stake conference, the broadcast type, with Elder Holland and Pres Hinckley as the keynotes. The last comment rings very true. I have started reading Jesus the Christ as part of the New Testament study for the year. I've read it once when I was 16. I imagine I will absorb more this time around.
There's a great article in the Ensign that talks about getting young men more involved in spiritual things. Really, it should be a service group and less a social group. But there's a happy medium that needs to be struck.
My current occupation has made me cynical about people's intentions. I'd like to think I would be stingy if I were a bishop. Sometimes I wonder though if the Spirit inspires bishops to give welfare checks to someone who might have improper intentions just to give that person a chance to exercise their agency. Perhaps, when they have exercised their agency to improperly use the funds, the Spirit will then constrain the bishop from giving additional funds.
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