As my wife and I are preparing our exit, I decided to the the fast and testimony meeting yesterday to put in an appearance so I don't get bothered. (For now anyway). This member of the high council related to the congregation on how the 12 and First Presidency diligently schedule the Steak (I know it's Stake) Conference for each stake. They have noticed a disturbing trend that the conferences in January 2014 it went down by 10 percent in 2014 and last summer was 15 percent. They said 20 percent this past January. They are saying they are concerned that it will be more next month and are expecting it so because of Summer vacations. They had to gall to tell people they should reschedule if they have vacations planned that week because they needed to be at Stake Conference. They also told everyone they needed to read their scriptures before each session. Everyone also needs to pray before, during and after each session. Just wow.

Smells like the steak is burning.

Nope. Rotting because there aren't enough butts in seats to heat it.

Smells like they are selling rotten meat.

Let us know how that works out. I've tempted my family to miss on a regular basis.

I won't be there. I will actually be at Disneyland and Newport Beach. It will also be the first time in 21 years of marriage we will be taking the garments of the Lord off....for good



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2015 01:37PM by shodanrob.

Sounds like a perfect plan to reinforce brainwashing.

These guys must have read a book about brainwashing, they are using all the moves form it.

Even active members may purposely aim vacations for Stake Conference, since they don't have their normal Sunday duties, like Sunday School teachers and such. I always try to aim my own vacations on days that people won't have to cover for me much at work.

The solution is simple: have a real steak meeting. Supersized tbm families would never pass up a "free"* meal.

*free for 10% of all your income.

Well, duh, their stats disturbing and they will use any method, including guilt to try to persuade the members to attend their Stake/steak meetings!
Maybe if they had a big steak BBQ the attendance would go up! :-)

"A spirit of god like a fire grilled steak is burning . . . ."

Amen and pass the ketchup.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, the huge basilica "Mother Church" was packed, with large overflow facilities required. Hotels were booked full a year in advance for the yearly pilgrimage.

Now only a handful come to the "Annual Meeting" in June. No more throngs of Christian Scientists swarming Boston's Back Bay. They telecast it on the web, so those few Christian Scientists who still "hold to the Truth" can watch it at home or maybe in one of the ever-declining "branch churches."

By the way, like tscc, they don't release financial figures, just read a statement that the books were duly audited.

I recall having read several years ago that someone determined that most of Mary Baker Eddy's "Science and Health" had been borrowed (plagiarized) from other sources without indication.

Could this have been one of the causes of the decline much like the "real" Joseph Smith that Mormons are just now coming to know?

That's not surprising. Besides people leaving, I know many TBMs that consider stake conference and general conference a week off. The meetings are usually so boring that TBMs can't even stand them.

That reminds me of a rather humorous situation during my mission.

We invited an investigator and his wife to join us at the stake house. They were very excited when we picked them up (we had cars then) and drove there. When we parked the car, they appeared rather confused. It turned out that they thought we were taking them to dinner at a "Steak House"!

After that, I made sure to always call it a "stake center" and fully explain what it was.

If I start a church, we'll meet at Sizzler. Temples will be modeled after Black Angus.
And the highest level of heaven is Ruth's Chris.

Whose with me!?

i cannot remember the last time i heard anything in stake conference worth hearing. for me it's a sunday off.

laughing in provo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> i cannot remember the last time i heard anything
> in stake conference worth hearing. for me it's a
> sunday off.

But that is true for every other Sunday in the year. Nothing worth hearing.

I live in the Midwest and we have stake conference EVERY year on opening weekend for the annual deer hunt. It's ridiculously bad timing and drives active TBM hunters mad.

Stake conference = hours of meetings (on Sat and Sunday) and even more if in leadership....and people attend that instead of opening hunting weekend (which is a nearly religious experience here in the Midwest).

I'm sure the leadership times it this way on purpose just to be jack-hats.

On a good note though, the Steak Houses are usually freed up due to half the city being at all those meetings

Yeah sure people are going to reschedule their much needed vacation to attend 2 boring hours on Saturday night and another 2 long boring hours Sunday morning/afternoon??! Doesn't the morg know that people often have to schedule their work vacations months in advance!!???

It's not like that the morg ever says anything earth shattering at boring Stake Conference anyway!! They just say the same old stuff over and over again..like they do every Sunday!!

I live in a Stake full of fanatics here in Utah County. Most people will show up. And when I say fanatics...close to Jihadists. Looking forward to when we make it official and the non stop calls and visits come. The visitors will be told to make an appointment or to simply eff off.

Ours is end of May. I try to avoid it as best I can with DW pushing to attend. This time SHE suggested a quick weekend trip to Yellowstone. Done deal!!

More evidence that TSCC is crumbling around the edges. You have evisceration of the core of the church (the loss of longtime members that paid the freight and fulfilled the callings).

Then you have things like this...I'll call it the "Ain't nobody got time for that" effect. Members who aren't yet ready to chuck the whole steaming pile of horse shit, but who will defect and pull back from activity whenever they can do so without much backlash.

The only thing holding the house of cards together is family/social pressure. The more people that leave, the more people who will feel comfortable leaving.

Of course you will always have the fanatics.

They'd get better attendance if they actually served steak. Oh wait, they don't serve meat - only milk.

You get meat afterwards

Really, barbecued milk just doesn't cut it.

Ah, but you could be the one to stand up in the middle of the GA's talk and, while walking out, say, "I gave up my vacation for THIS???"

I will be enjoying the vacation. It is best to stay off the radar where I am. Otherwise my kids will be treated like pariahs and not have rides to school due to our evil leanings.

TSCC always needs mormon members to do more ... and more. Therefore, mormons should never take vacations. /sarcasm

If they are still doing the televised stake conferences as they did them just before I left, I cannot think of anything less enticing. They took what was at least guilt inducing, since the GA's usually came from far away, and made it totally pointless. It has become a nonevent. Since anything worth learning can be passed on by word-of-mouth, there just isn't a single reason to attend these most boring televised meetings ever invented. Why not just watch it on your smart phone if it must be seen at all?

I wonder if the cult will ever learn? Gee, I would have soooo
loved to have been told that I need to cancel vacation plans if they interfered with church, and that I needed to read the scriptures before attending Stake Meeting, which by the way I attended about four times total in my whole church going fiasco.
I tell you what, the cult giving these commands to me would have really made me mad and I would never been interested in doing what they wanted.

I hated stake meeting even more than I detested sacrament meeting. If possible, it was more boring and went on fooooorevvvvver. Would they ever stop mumbling is what I kept thinking, plus I thought they must like to hear themselves talk because I felt like very few of the people present were listening.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2015 04:12PM by presleynfactsrock.

Oops! Shuda not told the sheep those numbers! Shuda not announced a trend. Even a slow person can put together that equation.

Shrinking attendance? A trend? Maybe that rumor members are jumping ship is true? I wonder why?

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