Beefster wrote: ↑08 Apr 2018, 08:40The new ministering program is a step in the right direction. So were the Joseph Smith Papers and the gospel topics essays. The problem with these is that it is doing too little too late. It might help to inoculate from future disaffection, but only in small part.
I believe that the church is trying to find the right balance between making no changes/admissions and a disorienting and jarring for many "so sorry, we were wrong". Some of the older generation that the church is trying to keep are the current crop of bishops and SP's. That is the core and workhorse of the church right now.I think that for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true; it can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that’s what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.
I imagine in 20 or 30 years the church will point to the essays and say - "This information was not hidden, we put it all out there decades ago."
As a side note, the essays have no author or revision date. Therefore new information could be added today (or 20 years from now) with the perception that the information was there all along.