Halleluhah and there was much rejoicing

[John_Pack_Lambert]

On 5/9/2018 at 2:50 PM, Rob Osborn said:

I saw it at last year at scout camp that a measure of the spirit had already left the BSA and honestly felt my youth were more at risk for immoral behavior by staying in and continuing the program. I told the camp exec, when it was time to settle the money and roll-over for reserving a spot for next year, before I left that the scout camp that no longer was their program a benefit to my youth and we wouldnt be back and would do something different the next year. This year and next we are doing a stake young mens camp that will do a better job at preserving the path for our youth to learn to become men.

When I was at camp in 1995 the people running it complained at one of our leaders for giving a prayer closed in the name of Jesus. Their claim this would offend Jews just showed cowardice. I would not be offended if someone closed their prayer in the name of Allah or even Vishnu. I respect everyone's right to pray over the food in their own fashion.

[John_Pack_Lambert]

On 5/10/2018 at 3:55 PM, anatess2 said:

The Church did that?  Or your ward did that?  Because... our ward didn't do that.

Considering that all Eagle projects must be approved by the council, some of the claims you were responding to are just plain false.

 

My only involvement with boy scouts as an adult has been as a merit badge counselor. Of all the merit badges I signed up for, cooking was the only one I ever worked with anyone on. I was always hoping someone would come to me for one of the citizenship in the merit badges. Those were the ones I felt most qualified to be a counselor for.

[John_Pack_Lambert]

I take back my last statement. I once went as an adult leader to one day of cub day camp. 

[John_Pack_Lambert]

On 5/11/2018 at 12:03 PM, NightSG said:

Uh, yes, they do.  I was an 11 year old Scout in a regular troop.  I had my Arrow of Light, so I could have joined just before 11, but my birthday was two weeks after 5th grade completion anyway and we traveled out of state for most of that time.

What regular troops don't do is split out age groups for any reason; having the full 11-17 range in the troop together with no age restrictions on positions of responsibility allows them to start taking on leadership roles as soon as they're ready, as well as ensuring that, right from the start, those 11 year olds are seeing (sometimes not much) older Scouts being effective in leadership roles.

But putting the 11-year-olds in with the other scouts could not work for the LDS program. That is not doable, we have to have the 11-year-olds seperate. You can gripe all you want, but it is one of the many reasons why scouting does not work structurally for the LDS Church. So stop acting like the LDS Church is flawed because of this. It is a non-conforming reason, and a key one for the Church to have left scouting.

[JohnsonJones]

On ‎5‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 2:31 PM, Traveler said:

 

There is a lot of history between the LDS church and the BSA.  Some of the history is good and some – not so good.  The big problem I have had is that we LDS do not really operate scout troops.   This is in part because of the vast differences in interests between the ages of 12 and 18 experience in our modern youth.  I will outline just some of the problems I experienced:

#1. The LDS Church wanted to make the scouts an extension of Aaronic priesthood quorums.  The problem is that Aaronic Priesthood quorum presidencies do not operate the same as patrol leaders (in number, operation or organizational purpose) – the organization types are completely incompatible.   Plus, it is difficult (impossible) to implement a patrol method troop in a ward with 5 or fewer deacons.  As a rule, scouts are community focused in their service and deacons are ward focused in their service.  Unfortunately, few LDS priesthood leaders understand the depth of the difference.

#2. Fund raising – In a number of states the Church is under continual scrutiny by distractors that want to remove the tax-exempt status of the Church and tax the Church as a profit-making entity.  In the State of Washington (when I was working with the scouts there) we were not allowed to hold any fundraising on Church property.  This and other problems limited fundraising to operations inside the ward boundary and almost exclusively with members.

In addition, there are ill feelings when the young men have many more $$$$ in funds than the young women.  This became a big problem when I was a scout master and we had activities (paid for through our very successful fundraising) like snowmobiling through Yellowstone Park in winter and horseback wilderness expeditions in summer.

#3 Legal Lability issues between the Church and the BSA.  This is a personal pet peeve of mine.  The BSA forces all LDS members associated with the scouts to sign a legal waver which prevents anyone sewing any BSA official for misconduct – but there is not agree that the BSA will not seek $$$ settlements with serving LDS members for anything the BCS wishes.  I discovered this because I personally do not sign any contracts without an approval from my lawyer.  Our society is far to litigious.

As much as I realize the problems – I am sure communities will be impacted by the Church withdrawing from the BSA.  I feel this is a strategic loss to the “Dark Side” elements gaining positions in our society.

 

The Traveler

#1 - I do not see the disconnect.  In fact, some of the best leadership I've seen are from the 12 year old deacons and their troop activities along with their quorum activities.  Having both a Deacon's quorum presidency that can practice and exhibit leadership and a Patrol leader and others showing leadership has been a great complement to each other in my experience. 

#2 - Fund raising was more limited in the units I've seen.  They are only allowed so much fund raising and typically the LDS church pays the rest.  For example, with Scout Camp this year we are paying around $100 for the boys and the rest comes out of their fundraising. 

I agree, there have been some ill feelings at times with the differences in funds spent on the scouts vs. that of the Young Women.

#3 - No comment.

LDS.org scouting purposes with primary

I see many reasons people give for rejoicing about leaving scouts rather sad.  To me, I wonder how much of a testimony they have in regards to the inspiration our leaders have and the programs they put out.  Scouting has long been an inspired program supported by our Church Leadership.  The reasons for leaving scouts most of the time have nothing to do with the reasons people rejoice about the Church Leaving Scouts.

I personally felt that the church would leave scouts soon after the BSA announced allowing Transgendered individuals for no real reason (no lawsuits really that threatened them, or anything else), but I still supported (and will continue to support the program until the last day of 2019) the Scouting program as directed by our leaders because the program itself currently has some good principles that we can utilize to teach our young Men how to be better young men.  Things like the Current Scout Oath and Scout law teach support for our Church and gospel, patriotism, and concepts such as trustworthiness and Reverence.

However, as the membership has become more populated around the world, programs that extend universally to the church rather than the small segment found in the US has become necessary.  This focus does not just affect Scouting, but Personal Progress for Young Women, Activity Day girls, Faith in God, Duty to God and the entire Youth Program.  In 2020 we will have a new program made for ALL Saints in the world over.  I'm excited by it and look forward to see what is coming out.

[Traveler]

On ‎5‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 3:11 PM, NightSG said:

Considering that LDS Scouting seems to consider the Church to be the only "community" worthy of service in the vast majority of cases, (as evidenced by the number of Eagle service projects that only benefited the ward or stake) I'm not sure there really is a distinction to be made for that purpose.

Still, other churches have found a very simple way to have both an active Scout troop and an active youth program, simply by keeping them separate and making sure they were held on different evenings.

We did relatively little fundraising, since the Smith family has a couple hundred acres about 15 miles away, and at least one of the ASMs also had land where we could camp, as well as some of the other parents.  It made for something of a fundraising crunch when major gear needed to be replaced, but the local churches and Lions' Club could always be counted on to provide food for campouts and smaller cash contributions for things like upkeep on the Scout hut.

Why is that?  Are the YWs discouraged from fundraising, or is their leadership just not willing to set similar goals and work toward them? 

I am not sure you understood the organizational difficulties and differences between scouts and the Aaronic Priesthood.

 

As for fundraising.  Fundraising is an integral part of scouting and community service.  I see fundraising as a very different objective than begging or coming up with money and stuff by donations so scouts can have fun.  Rather it is a profitable enterprise that teaches boys to work and contribute needful goods and service to a community, and run a budget for what they intend to do – in essence to learn self-sustaining operations.    I am against appropriations of money (friends of scouting) and other such entitlements – I am not a fan of putting up flags for money.  I believe earning and providing is a skill set needed as much in boys as tying knots or building fires – even more so in our current society.  I also have discovered that boys and people in general enjoy doing stuff that is lucrative and profitable (wanted) rather than thinking of themselves as a needy organization dependent on charity.

I cannot speak for the YW in general – I personally know enterprising ladies that understand working, achieving and creating profits.  But it seems that in general the YW are more worried about “stretching” their available funds over working out what is needed then determining how to achieve it.

 

The Traveler

[anatess2]

12 hours ago, Traveler said:

I am not sure you understood the organizational difficulties and differences between scouts and the Aaronic Priesthood.

 

As for fundraising.  Fundraising is an integral part of scouting and community service.  I see fundraising as a very different objective than begging or coming up with money and stuff by donations so scouts can have fun.  Rather it is a profitable enterprise that teaches boys to work and contribute needful goods and service to a community, and run a budget for what they intend to do – in essence to learn self-sustaining operations.    I am against appropriations of money (friends of scouting) and other such entitlements – I am not a fan of putting up flags for money.  I believe earning and providing is a skill set needed as much in boys as tying knots or building fires – even more so in our current society.  I also have discovered that boys and people in general enjoy doing stuff that is lucrative and profitable (wanted) rather than thinking of themselves as a needy organization dependent on charity.

I cannot speak for the YW in general – I personally know enterprising ladies that understand working, achieving and creating profits.  But it seems that in general the YW are more worried about “stretching” their available funds over working out what is needed then determining how to achieve it.

 

The Traveler

Our YM and YW fundraise together.  They do everything you mentioned here - come up with the $ goal, come up with an activity that is designed to raise the necessary funds to meet the goal, and then they execute it.  Last year they did a Karaoke Night with spaghetti dinner and dessert auction.  It was a big production with the boys assigned to procure sound equipment and build a stage while the girls made the dinner and desserts and decorated the hall.  They made good money.  The proceeds they divided among each YM/YW - the YM for scout camp, the YW for girls camp.  Last year, the Teachers and Deacons were able to attend the week-long scout camp in North Carolina while the Priests went to the Keys.  The girls always go to this one camp somewhere in Orlando where they get mattresses and AC.  I don't know how much we paid out of pocket.

 

[Traveler]

4 hours ago, anatess2 said:

Our YM and YW fundraise together.  They do everything you mentioned here - come up with the $ goal, come up with an activity that is designed to raise the necessary funds to meet the goal, and then they execute it.  Last year they did a Karaoke Night with spaghetti dinner and dessert auction.  It was a big production with the boys assigned to procure sound equipment and build a stage while the girls made the dinner and desserts and decorated the hall.  They made good money.  The proceeds they divided among each YM/YW - the YM for scout camp, the YW for girls camp.  Last year, the Teachers and Deacons were able to attend the week-long scout camp in North Carolina while the Priests went to the Keys.  The girls always go to this one camp somewhere in Orlando where they get mattresses and AC.  I don't know how much we paid out of pocket.

 

 

I am not against such things but in some states – like Washington – using church property for fundraising (activities generating profit) can lead to legal efforts to remove the Church’s tax-exempt status from aggressive anti-Mormon organizations.  In other states, serving food for pay requires a state food handling permit.

Because part of the time I have served in the Church’s scouting program; member donations included ward budget, building fund and other expenses – so I would focus fundraising that would collect funds outside the ward membership – easing membership financial burdens.  This is because I discovered that many lower income families with strong testimonies would budget more for the children of wealthy families than their own and there were often times the wealthy families would donate much less (sometimes 0) than the poorer families.

At the time I discovered two very profitable enterprises that were labor intensive – residential fire wood and what I called chicken-pickin.  There were a couple of poultry farms nearby that needed chickens to be caught by hand and crated for shipment to slaughter (very messy and harder than you would think – but needing numbers to be successful – thus ideal because using youth for temporary labor was cheaper than permanent workers.   I insisted that youth be compensated for their time spent as credit.  Once a youth had met their share they could work to help others.  Those that did not donate enough time would have to compensate with cash or by extra work from volunteers.   Since there were fewer volunteers for lazy rich kids – it thought this to be a great life lesson opportunity.

Under more recent guidelines – the old ward budget methods are no longer approved.  Also wards in more affluent neighborhoods (mostly a Utah thing) should not have more funds than wards in less affluent areas – for which I very much agree.  But back in the day when there was such need and more opportunities to raise funds – I loved putting youth to work and once we had as much as $3,000+ per boy for our activities – both recreational and service – we did amazing stuff.  But – for reasons I have never understood – the YW were mostly interested in the $$$$$ and not the messy or hard labor.  BTW – I would use incentives and rewards to generate competition with the YM.   I am also of the nature to lead by example and let others (YW) determine their own course.   Often my scouts would donate funds to the YM but it seems much has changed in our current social climate.

 

The Traveler