Peace… and Something for Everyone

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 371st  week, and we’re covering the Sunday morning session of the October 1999 General Conference.

The theme that stuck out to me from the session was peace. As Sister Pinegar taught, 

The world is not a safe place. It is not a place where children will feel peace, hope, and direction unless they are taught to love and follow the Savior. 

This knowledge comes from a place of personal tragedy as she made clear in her talk:

The difficult experience of my son’s death helped me identify and rejoice in the blessings of peace, hope, and direction—blessings that all who truly accept and live the gospel of Jesus Christ may enjoy. I can bear witness to the words of Elder Richard G. Scott: “Please learn that as you wrestle with a challenge and feel sadness because of it, you can simultaneously have peace and rejoicing”

President Faust spoke on peace as well, saying that “Peace in this life is based upon faith and testimony.” So did Elder Ballard, adding “Our safety, our peace, lies in working as hard as we can to live as the Father and Son would have us live, in fleeing from false prophets and false teachers, and in being anxiously engaged in good causes.”

So there are the things that I learned from these talks on peace.

Continue reading “Peace… and Something for Everyone”

The Big Picture

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 370th week, and we’re covering the priesthood session of the October 1999 General Conference.

If there is one thing that I have taken from the General Conference Odyssey so far, it is what a tremendous wealth of understanding is available for those who take the time to read General Conference talks. 

Continue reading “The Big Picture”

This is the Gospel

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 369th week, and we’re covering the Saturday afternoon session of the October 1999 General Conference.

The older I get, the less I feel that I know. But, as I grow more and more uncertain about a wide range of things–my assessment of people, my politics, even my tastes in movies and books, everything changes!–there are a few, isolated things that I grow more confident in, and that–in part because they are so few–seem more important with every passing year. 

Continue reading “This is the Gospel”

Earrings, Scrupulosity, and Love

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 368th week, and we’re covering the Saturday morning session of the October 1999 General Conference.

It’s been a long time since I started this General Conference Odyssey way back in 2015. I stuck with it really well through about 2019 and had another good chunk in 2020, but I missed pretty much all of 2021 and 2022. One of my goals is to stick with it again throughout 2023. Eventually I’ll go back and fill in all the gaps, but I don’t know when that will be.

Continue reading “Earrings, Scrupulosity, and Love”

Church Spending

Church finances are often a point of criticism. But should they be?

In thinking about church finances, it’s helpful to have a basic grasp of tools large organizations use to make complex decisions around investments and spending. In this presentation we look at one of those tools, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, and think about how organizations bring maturity to their decision making processes.

The important question to consider is, what methodologies are the church’s critics employing? And are those superior to frameworks like AHP?

Continue reading “Church Spending”