Cheesiness is next to Godliness

[Maureen]

OMG.. fingernails on a chalkboard bad..
but hey - give the old white men credit for trying to pull that stale religion out of the 19th century. Ed Young it ain't ..

The seventh one down is shades of Saturday Warrior ..

edit to add..
by the way, I don’t throw the C (cult) word around much but I found the analogy of the Redwood trees and shallow roots interesting – the suggestion that the Church can keep you strong if you stay close to it..

[_John Larsen]

Creepy. Why does the Church always seek to copy the ways of the world? For behold, they have a form of worldliness, but deny the power thereof.

[_Maxrep]

Is there a point at which a New Years "party" can become hyper saturated with messages of extra good,good, goodliness? Can a party actually be a party?

If I'm not mistaken, nobody is complaining that the church put a function together for the youth on New Years. Maybe its that they attempted to throw a celebration, but missed the mark and ended up throwing a "Sunday School" with colored shirts.

Did the youth ask for this in youth committee?

[_Maxrep]

the way somebody looks and dresses drives your assessment of their personal merit

that's what I was telling the youth when asked about double piercings, white shirts & ties and such

[_Dr. Shades]

To usher in this dawning of a new age, . . .

Hasn't there been a new age dawning nearly every year for the past, say, 150 years?

. . . they had a musical bash at the Conference Center. To see the cutting edge of LDS Youth coolness, watch the third video down on this page: [SNIP!]

Let's face it: They really should conduct General Conference this way.

[_Henry Jacobs]

I don't care what they are wearing or how many wrinkles they have. They are scum for using such pedestrian brainwashing tactics as the power of suggestion on your children and mine. Granted it works on 13 year old minds, but only scum would use it to manipulate the way Dahlquist does.

Scripted interplay between speakers and audience:

Dahlquist: (Smiling and bounding onto the stage) "Hello everybody!"
Audience: (Programmed mass response) "Hello!"
Dahlquist: "I said hello everybody!"
Audience: (Programmed mass response) "Hello!"
Dahlquist: "Welcome."
Dalton: (Blanket compliments) "You look so great and we're so glad to be here with you."
Dahlquist: (Power in numbers) "There's never been a gathering like this . . . thousands and thousands of youth all over the world."
Dahlquist: (Change to whispering tone) "Can you feel that feeling here tonight? That's the spirit of the lord touching your hearts."

That's pretty damned low if you ask me. Get an audience all jazzed up together, emotions flying high, then ask them if they feel anything. Duh!! Then go for the jugular by telling them it's the spirit of God.

And next week in seminary kids will be taught how revelation and testimony is a personal matter and the spirit touches everyone in different ways. There is no one way to describe the feeling you get. But it's definitely not just FEELINGS!

[_harmony]

So, age, sex, the way somebody looks and dresses drives your assessment of their personal merit.

I'm just following the prophet, Rock.

[_Some Schmo]

This is exactly the sort of rubbish that drove me away from the church as a teenager, and why being a Mormon was always a source of embarrassment and shame. What percentage of youth would actually enjoy that?

If god were such a smart guy, one would think he could inspire his servants to come up with entertainment for the youth that actually entertained them, not made them feel squeamish. Putting aside the fact that the church is obviously not true, based on this sort of crappy "entertainment," the meetings, and the strange people involved, one can't help but think god is a cheesy bastard if this is all his church has to offer. I'm pretty certain I wouldn't like the celestial kingdom if this was the best he could do.

[_Sethbag]

That's pretty damned low if you ask me. Get an audience all jazzed up together, emotions flying high, then ask them if they feel anything. Duh!! Then go for the jugular by telling them it's the spirit of God.

Perhaps we could get a crowd of kids going like this, ask if they feel anything, and then ask them to consider the Noah's Ark story, and ask how many of them feel confident the Lord is telling them that it really happened? Or that Adam was the first homo sapiens on the planet, around 6000 years ago?

For that matter, get them all jazzed up, point out that it's the Spirit with them, and then tell them to ask God right there and then whether or not organic evolution explains the development and diversity of species.

I think that would be quite interesting. I wonder how many kids would testify that the Spirit confirmed that the Earth really was globally flood 5000 years ago? Or that evolution was of the debbil?

I mean, what better time for getting some real answers from God than when thousands of his beloved youth are gathered together in Salt Lake City and filled with the Spirit?

My guess is that the speaker could probably get the majority of the kids to agree to almost anything he wanted, by suggesting it to them.

[_Phaedrus Ut]

I'm going to be a dissenting voice here. Yeah it's corny and a bit over done. But youth events in the past were pretty boring compared to this. Compared to listening to a speaker drone in his conference voice at a youth fireside it's quite an improvement. And the use of technology on the site is functional and clean in design.

The first thing I thought of was it reminds me of the Youth Ministry events you see at big EV Christian churches.

Phaedrus