{"id":42798,"date":"2022-04-05T12:05:26","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T17:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=42798"},"modified":"2025-05-26T08:16:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T14:16:41","slug":"scattered-thoughts-on-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/04\/scattered-thoughts-on-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Scattered Thoughts on Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asking and seeking are clearly not the same as demanding. The former is Joseph Smith at 14, the latter is Martin Harris with the lost pages, and I think this distinction is evident to most people who watched the talk in good faith.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier I talked about how it seemed that many of the brethren came from inactive households<\/a>, now there are two more that I didn\u2019t know about until their conference talks: Elder Cook and President Ballard. Again, something to buoy up people who feel otherized because their family situation doesn’t match some ideal template. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I also see some chatter on why the brethren keep hitting the Proc. \u201cEverybody knows what the Church\u2019s position is, can\u2019t they move on?\u201d Yes, \u00a0I don\u2019t think anybody is unclear on the Church\u2019s position, but some are still promoting the \u201chold on and the Church will change\u201d perspective on Proc issues, which I think does more harm than good (I would believe this just as much if I was on the other side of the issue), whereas the more times the Church hits this the harder it is to walk back. In international relations this is called \u201ccostly signaling,\u201d and I suspect it\u2019s intentional. The sooner this point gets across the sooner people can stop halting between two opinions and make their life decisions accordingly.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It does look like growth rates are starting to rebound. As I\u2019ve mentioned before<\/a><\/span>, some of this growth is an artificial rebound from delayed child-blessings and the like that won\u2019t be captured in the next set of numbers. Ultimately, the test for the extent to which the pandemic simply delayed growth from \u201ctempo effects\u201d or actually reduced it will come with the first full set of pandemic-less numbers, so we\u2019ll be able to do a fuller pandemic post-mortem on Church growth next year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asking and seeking are clearly not the same as demanding. The former is Joseph Smith at 14, the latter is Martin Harris with the lost pages, and I think this distinction is evident to most people who watched the talk in good faith.\u00a0 Earlier I talked about how it seemed that many of the brethren came from inactive households, now there are two more that I didn\u2019t know about until their conference talks: Elder Cook and President Ballard. Again, something to buoy up people who feel otherized because their family situation doesn’t match some ideal template. \u00a0 I also see some chatter on why the brethren keep hitting the Proc. \u201cEverybody knows what the Church\u2019s position is, can\u2019t they move on?\u201d Yes, \u00a0I don\u2019t think anybody is unclear on the Church\u2019s position, but some are still promoting the \u201chold on and the Church will change\u201d perspective on Proc issues, which I think does more harm than good (I would believe this just as much if I was on the other side of the issue), whereas the more times the Church hits this the harder it is to walk back. In international relations this is called \u201ccostly signaling,\u201d and I suspect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3023],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-conference"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42798"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50107,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42798\/revisions\/50107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}