Yesterday...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

was kinda not hoopy.

anyway, I felt woozy all day. That's what comes of taking muscle relaxants for your bad back. But that also doesn't make it any more fun.  Plus it was rainy. NOrmally that just makes for a bad day, but it was just getting started.

We were planning on going to the temple last night. But in the afternoon wifey calls saying she's sick and probably won't go. I don't really want to go by myself, but I needed to, so I determined to go anyway.

It rained more on my way home. I got wet getting inside. By this time woozy has turned into sore throat and headache. I still determine to go.

things look up slightly when wifey announces she feels better and will be coming.

Things slide back quite a bit when we can't find my recommend. extensive searching turns up nothing. I knew for a fact that my recommend was in my shirt pocket on Sunday, and since the little plastic thing didn't turn up in the laundry or the dryer, we are convinced it still exists.

This theory is shot all to heck when my wife cleans the lint screen and discovers a tiny piece of paper with what is clearly part of the temple pictured on it. The plastic thingy turns up when I look in the dryer again. I am official recommendless.

We cancel gramma (the babysitter) and think about things. It is recommended that I talk to the Stake President (who doubles as my father-in-law) and ask him to make a call for me. After about ten minutes, he calls me back to tell me I can go and they will have someone escort me (this, oddly, is the same thing that happened on my wedding day... i'm "absent minded").

a hasty call is made to gramma, who arrives some 15-20 minutes later. We are now officially "pushing it" to make the last session.

Off we race in the mini-van, arriving at Beech drive in Kensington (for those of you who aren't familiar with the DC temple and environs, ie, most of you, Beech drive is the most direct route to the temple from Connecticut Ave and I-495, and the only route I know for certain how to use) to find it is closed, as it runs along side a stream, and, as I pointed out, it's still raining pretty dang hard. someone apparently panicked.

An attempt to find another route through the scenic town of Kensington, MD is made. Lots of wrong-turns are also made. We see some neat houses and a cool old trainstation-cum-office building.

While crossing a bridge back to the wrong side of the beltway, the spires of the temple are finally sighted. A U-turn at a very confusing three-way stop is made, and a few minutes of backtracking later, we find a turn to get us headed in the right direction.

Temple arrival time: 8:20
Session start time: 8:30
We still need to change.

The girls rush up. The guys at the desk checking recommends have no idea what I'm talking about when I refer to my stake president calling to get me in. A phone call to the temple president results in a voice mail message. One of the men "rushes" off to find him (he was at least 65 years old and 225 pounds and only 5'4", rushing is relative here).

Temple president fortunately knows what's going on and lets me in. Dressing room arrival time: 8:28.

So I made the session, so I guess everything turned out (except for my brother-in-law getting me lost on the way out). Someone/thing was trying to keep me away though.




And that is why I don't write a blog.

[stacer]

That's a good thing that you did make it, though. I need to go, myself. Our ward temple nights are always on Wednesday night, so I need to try harder to make it there myself. It's a long ride on public transportation, so I seldom think of it on my own.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

Boy, you've just wierded Mormons up a little bit more for me. Thanks. (And no offense to youse Mormon peoples.)  

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I'll explain some terminology to help unweird it:

Stake President: A local ecclesiastic authority. The bishop is the head of a ward (congregation), and there are usually 5-10 wards in a stake. The stake president is the presiding religious authority of that stake

Temple president: this is the guy in charge of the temple. Both spiritual and practical.

recommend: a piece of paper signed by you, your bishop, and your stake president that says you're living right and may therefore enter the temple. You no havey recommend, you no goey in.

[Entsuropi]

So the heirarchy is...

Congregation
Deacons
Bishops
Temple President
Stake President

Or are those last two the other way around?

[fuzzyoctopus]

Wow.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, sort of. no. Not really.

For one thing, stake presidents and temple presidents aren't in the same branch of a hierarchal authority. They report separately to higher authorities.

also, deacons aren't really "over" the congregation. That's just no their position. The Bishop does preside over the deacons, teachers, and priests (offices in the Aaronic priesthood), but while authority expands as you go through those offices (in that order), they don't really preside over each other.

Stake Presidents do, however, preside over Bishops.

[House of Mustard]

It's a lot more complicated.  In the priesthood, the heirarchy is this:

Aaronic Priesthood:
Deacon
Teacher
Priest
Bishop

Melchezidek Priesthood:
Elder
High Priest
Seventy
Apostle
Prophet

Of course, that doesn't answer your question.  The priesthood heirarchy more eclesiastical (or however that's spelled).  Things like Stake Presidents are more administrative:

Here's how the church groups are organized:  A group of people (about 100-200) are called a ward.  A bishop is in charge of a ward.  Several wards (7 or so) are called a stake, and the stake president is in charge of that.  Several stakes are called a region, and a regional representative is over that.  Several regions... well, several regions make up the church.

Each temple (there are about 115? or so) has a temple president who presides over the temple.

As far as temple admittance, a bishop and a stake president have to approve a person's worthiness to enter, and they issue something called a Temple Recommend.  That is what SE ran through the wash.

I know this isn't complete, but I just ran out of time...

I'll post more later if someone doesn't get to it before I do.

[stacer]

I think between the two of you, you got a good general explanation down for a casual inquiry.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I just feel compelled to add to HoM's explanation: The Stake President IS in the ecclesiastical hierarchy: he's the president of the High Priests, so he's like, the highest priest, sorta.

The Bishop is the president of the priests in his ward, but he's also responsible for temporal authority and directs the local elder's quorum on a lot of issues, even though technically the Elders are in the Melch. Priesthood hierarchy.

anyway, this is also why I don't write blogs.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

also, understand that Deacons, Teachers, and Priests are usually people under age 19. (Deacons start at age 12.)

Adult male members are usually Elders first, then after a while become High Priests. So elders might be age 19-40, and High Priests 40+, but the transition age is very fluid there. Depends on what you get called to do, since all church officers are unpaid volunteers (well, you don't volunteer, someone higher up volunteers you (as inspired by God) and you accept or decline (generally accept) the call to service).

Anyway I washed my temple recommend once. Not cool.

Recently mine expired a month after I got back from Japan. I should have gotten it renewed there just so I could have one in Japanese for two years!

btw the Melchizedek Priesthood office of Seventy is not currently used. It used to be between Elder and High Priest, on the stake level. Currently all those with the title of Seventy today are on the Church-wide or area level (such as South America area, etc) and are ordained High Priests for various reasons, such as so that they may set apart Stake Presidents (someone lower can't ordain or set apart someone higher).

The 12 Apostles are over the whole world. Then below them are the Area Presidencies, which are 3 people in charge of each region of the globe (don't know how many Areas there are). This role is filled by Seventies (but a couple Areas recently were presided over by Apostles for a while).

Below the Area Authorities are 3 separate hierarchies: Stakes, which take care of the normal members, Temples, which take care of the temples, and Missions, which take care of the missionaries. A Temple district will typically service a bunch of stakes in the local area, but the Temple president has no authority over the Stake Presidents or members of those stakes. Likewise with the Missions; they have several stakes within their boundaries, but a Mission President has no authority over the Stake Presidents or members whose stakes make up the same area as the mission. All 3 presidents report to the Area Presidency.

Unless I've got it wrong and the Temple and Mission presidents bypass the Area Authorities and report to some sort of committee under the Apostles. I'm not positive on that one really.

[House of Mustard]

I just feel compelled to add to HoM's explanation: The Stake President IS in the ecclesiastical hierarchy: he's the president of the High Priests, so he's like, the highest priest, sorta.

What I meant is that the Stake President doesn't hold keys.  Yes, he has eclesiastical authority, but "Stake President" is not a priesthood office.

btw the Melchizedek Priesthood office of Seventy is not currently used

It's not used in the way it used to be: where Seventies were the equivalent of the Stake Missionaries, but Seventies (Like the First Quorum of Seventy) are still set apart as seventies.

The 12 Apostles are over the whole world. Then below them are the Area Presidencies, which are 3 people in charge of each region of the globe (don't know how many Areas there are). This role is filled by Seventies (but a couple Areas recently were presided over by Apostles for a while).

Below the apostles is the presidency of the Seventy, which preside over the Quorums of Seventy.  Right now there are six(?).  Each of the Quorums of the Seventy have different responsibilities.  Three through six are exclusively for Area Authorities, but one and two can be used for other stuff.

Gemm and Ent:  Sorry if we're confusing you more.  All of this administrative, higher-up organization is actually pretty straight-forward, assuming that we had more time to explain it.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

It's not used in the way it used to be: where Seventies were the equivalent of the Stake Missionaries, but Seventies (Like the First Quorum of Seventy) are still set apart as seventies.

Right...they're set apart as Seventies, but not ordained Seventies. There are no ordained Seventies anymore (though I met one on my mission, who went inactive before the time when the Stake Seventies were done away with, so he was never ordained a High Priest--but if he were to become active again, I'm sure they'd get that taken care of). The members of the first through sixth quorum of seventies are all ordained High Priests (though there's probably some among them that are ordained Patriarchs).

Members of the First Council of the Seventy were ordained High Priests during the stewardship of David O. McKay.

Not that this is important nowadays, but I said it because of the posting above that listed Seventy as a priesthood office above High Priest.

---Yeah, there are six Presidents of the Seventy right now, but there are usually seven. One of them passed away recently. It's expected that a new one will be sustained at the October general conference (along with 2 new Apostles to bring the number back up to 12).

The important things about the church organization are that it's directed by revelation from God and that it's the same everywhere in the world (an LDS church in one part of the world is run the same way as an LDS church in any other location).

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

adn this is why I don't write blogs.

[Entsuropi]

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