Videos of the Q12 leaked
 

Do they sound like gods?

I've watched a little of the videotapes, not very much.

My takeaways:

1. All men that I have seen so far. Where are the women?
2. Seems like all the discussion comes from politically conservative standpoint. But we have to consider that the "curator" of this collection may have selected these clips purely on that basis.
3. Gerrit Gong seems to be a go-to guy. Kind of funny. He's a family acquaintance (I don't personally know him at all). State department guy, and then he does all these presentations, and then he becomes a Seventy. He was and is in the circle of trust.
4. Church meetings are boring at every level of the church.
5. One wonders how the presenters and speakers get selected. Imagine how much influence that is, to determine who is making presentations and what they will present.
6. I hope we get to learn more about what sort of diversity there is in viewpoints that are presented to the church leaders.

In other words, these videos are about as exactly as one would expect.

I'm halfway through this video, but I read that Julie Beck was included in this meeting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBH045ooaY0

It does confirm what we have known and suspected. That inactivity rates among young adults are very high.

Also Renlund presents in this vid. and of course we know that he was later announced as an apostle.

a little disappointed that they didn't point to the thing I have observed. That kids who are not on track academically are much less likely to stay active in the church and go on missions.

We spend all these resources on scouting and YW activities, but very little on academic guidance. I look at all the boys that I had a role in mentoring when I was in YM. Very few of them are college graduates. The ones who are still active are the ones who went to college. Two of the RMs that struggled academically, one is inactive and the other is dead.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with parenting. The kids that you would expect to go on missions because of their families, they are the ones that typically go on missions.

One boy defied expectations. Went on a mission, graduated from BYU, married in the temple. Very much overcame "the odds". He's the best success story.

This AP article is now on Drudge.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e3836...-mormon-church

Seems like a boring video.

A little bit about the circumstances of the leak:

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4428322-1...-leaked-videos

what is interesting is when there is actually disagreement in the quorum. There is no insight into this in these videos.

In the young single adult video above, it's kinda like Packer is trying to tell the Seventies to go back and redo everything but this time focus on the "family." I really didn't understand what he was saying. This was politely deflected.

One wonders what it would be like to be a junior apostle and disagree with Packer.

I also wonder how insular their world is. Like a corporate culture that only promotes from within. There is some value in only calling those whom you know well, that have proven themselves in lesser callings. But the risk is that you never get any new ideas, and you end up "promoting" only the most obsequious.

We have a lot of dynamic Mormons in the world. I wonder how much influence some of these people have compared to ones that are merely entrenched in the local scene.

Gerrit Gong was a Rhodes scholar and fairly well placed in the State Dept, I believe. He's no dummy.

Interesting how bycommonconsent punted on these videos. Merely called them "boring".

Potentially these videos do hurt future Mormon candidates for national office due to former Senator Smith, who made it clear that he made decisions impacting the welfare of our men and women in the military based on considerations of the LDS church.

The video on singles not getting married is very short. It consists almost entirely of Gerrit Gong speaking. One notable aspect of it is how he spends most of his time attacking media bias. It almost feels like he thinks that this world view of mainstream media bias is what best resonates with his audience. He could have picked a million different angles to approach the subject. He chose bias.

Another aspect about these videos is that you see how these discussions influenced future decisions. For example, it's likely that the decision to reduce ages for missions was influenced by the desire to 1) retain young male members, by getting rid of the "lost year" between high school graduation and 19, and 2) solve the conundrum that young women felt that they had to choose either a mission or marriage, or that a mission might delay marriage. And I don't think these are just recently revealed explanations, they may have been presented as such at the time the policies were introduced.

Also it seems that the organization of young single wards was likely changed related to activity of young adults and marriage. I'm less familiar with how that works.

Elder Gong is in my ward. I've sat next to him a couple of times in our High Priest Group. He is a very approachable and down to earth man. I've not noticed anyone ask him about the leak, but why would they? Our Group Leader, Rick Turley, would be the one to approach.

My question is what was the motive in releasing these videos? They merely show what the brethren have said all along: that they are very involved in understanding world affairs and seeking direction from The Lord. I actually find it comforting that there was not anything on the contrary.

Can't imagine how boring it would be to sit through meeting after meeting day after day. Or maybe not. Maybe it would feel empowering. Who knows.

I can say that it is my personality to not always agree with everyone else.

Mormons have meetings to plan meetings. Enough already.

Serious question that I'm curious about. Has Elder Gong ever heard of the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? I assume he has. But I suppose there are some people in the country who are such nerds that they don't know anything about sports teams.

I wonder how he feels about sports names like the Red Raiders. Or the Raiders. Or the Vikings.

I wonder if I could ever get to the point where the Pittsburgh Pirates bother me. Does it bother him?