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I was raised in the church and I haven't done a ton of investigation of other churches for reasons. The way my faith transition landed actually pushed me outside of organized religion in general. On some levels, it would be more harmful to my spouse if I shifted commitment to another church then jus...

Is the line a generational thing where the younger social media guru or staff writer for the leader is the "paid influencer" and the leader is just a leader with the name that motivates attendance and attention?

During an intense season in our marriage, I dragged my husband to a Marriage Encounter run by the Catholic church (highly recommend actually). It was interesting seeing marriage treated so sacredly - we sanctify our marriages by location (temple) and degree of unity between the spouses (not necessar...

Inclusiveness is not a normal mindset for an exclusionary theology and organizational structure. We have a theology that excludes the interests of minority groups in the population (women - even if there are actually more women then men in the pews, racial minorities, and "liberals" who ma...

My mileage and experiences are different. Spiritual experiences are meant to be questioned (and not acted on) when the consequences are harmful for others . A lot of "unrighteous dominion" is branded as "spiritual purity and improvement" and the spiritual experience is branded ab...

As a people, we don't like to talk about how we pay for our spirituality - in part because we don't want to deal with supply-side compensation and discrimination issues (especially how women are not treated equally at the system-wide level) :) In this case, there is a fair amount of accidental frict...

I think most members would be mildly/moderately uncomfortable with you saying that you had felt that God abandoned you in your hour of need ... and it was hard ... but then you got used to it. :cry: I have this conversation with my mother every few years. She feeds me the standard talking points th...

I wanted to be at church to learn things.

I remember looking forward to the temple prep classes so I could learn new things about the temple and the church - and then actually being present in the class and being bored because whatever that was introduced was not terribly new.

I would add that for some units, I am hearing that there is pressure on the YW to go on a mission as well (if there are enough YW already going) just like it used to be for the YM.

I have also heard about more meetings to invite couples on senior missions in greater numbers.

About 6 years or so ago, there became a policy emphasis on Primary teacher training. Whether it's a legal thing or just a way to protect children through training, I don't know. I think that it came out after the Sam Young stuff broke, and there had been a record level of abuse cases coming to light...