Age changes
The most recent reform in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was announced this week. It involves changes of the age at which youth can advance in the priesthood, receive limited use temple reccomends, and related issues.
The change involves shifting movement to being fixed by birthday, to the start of a year in which a person's birthday occurs. The change is not universal. Baptism is still at age 8, and rules about advancement to relief society, the Melchizedek priesthood and being able to go on missions have not changed. Nor has the age at which the Church allows dating, 16, changed at all.
Cub scouting and boy scouting seem to be largely unaffected, but if I read it right the move from 11-year-old scouts to regular scouts is at the start of the year one turns 12. This means some will be 11-year-old scouts for weeks, while others for virtually a whole year. Since the Church is fully leaving scouting at the start of 2020, this is not a long term issue.
Starting activity days is at the start of the year one turns 8 not at ones 8th birthday. However attendance at the general women's meeting still seems to start with ones 8th birthday. Attendance at general priesthood meeting on the other hand begins with the year one turns 12.
To me this is a good change. Being someone with a late October birthday, I missed my first potential general priesthood meeting by just a few weeks. I also faced a situation where most of those in my primary class were able to go to scout camp and enter the priesthood long before me, go to stake youth activities, and these people I felt connections to could go on youth temple trips and to stake dances and youth conference before me.
The new system will also end the true uncertainty that have plagued some with summer birthdays. These people often would find that attendance at summer camps and youth conference for the first time could go one year or the other based on when exactly in the summer these events were scheduled.
While there is not explicit statments on this matter, I am guessing this also reformats age attendance guidelines for programs like EFY and FSY.
While this is largely a logical reaction to the two hour schedule and what it means for attending Aaronic priesthood and young women meetings while also attending primary it has broader implications.
First off, it creates a system where there is more unity. Since about half a quorum or class moves up at the start of each year, this ends the old system where often many members would move up at one while a few would be left behind. Also with Sunday School, Aaronic Priesthood and Young Women all making changes at the start of the year, we no longer have imbalanced and uneven groupings.
The one group that does not move easily are those who are turning 18 in the year coming up. Actually, it appears that some who are already 18 on January 1st will still be in a situation to not move up if they are still in high school, as many who have birthdays after October 1st, and in some areas after September 1st, will be. On the other hand I think the new policy will make it easier to accept fully moving into adult programs those who graduate from high school in May or June but do not turn 18 until later in the year. There may be further refining of the guidance on this shift.
At some level it will always be easier to figure out how to accomadate those who leave for college, missions or military when they graduate high school as opposed to those who remain at home.
The clearest change here is the end of the Valiant 11 class. Previous guidelines said that children either could move to Sunday School the first year they were 12 or when they turned 12, although most moved at the start of the year when they were first 12. The new shift to moving up all at the start of the year they will turn 11 is in my view a plus for all.
While some may feel that people barely 11 as priesthood holders or young women and those barely 13 at stake dances is putting people too young in such situations, I really do not and think the benefits of people moving as groups is very high. I also think that the social awkwardsness of boys at 13 and 1 month is essentially the same as at 14, and girls at 13 and 1 month in general are ready for stake dances. I think that those at 11 years and 1 month are just as ready to pass the sacrament as those at 12, and considering that prior to the 1880s boys as young as 8 were on occasion ordained to the Aaronic priesthood, and up until at least 1940 sometimes 17-year-olds were ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood, I am not going to get hung up on ages. Anyway I fully accepts Presidents Nelson, Oaks and Eyring having the ability to receive revelation on this matter.
One result of the new program will be some will be able to go to youth conference even though the coming fall they will not be attending seminary. Since the two are not closely linked, I really do not see this as problematic. I think it is a better situation than the past where some youths were not old enough to go to youth conference the summer before they started high school.
The implimentation guidelines says that it is possible to chose another time to implement the changes than Janaury. However with the new Sunday School manuals and family and individual study manuals specifying a specific week for each lesson, I do not think implementing a different policy is likely.
President Nelson wants us to see the spirtual implications of this change. I think its biggest implication is creating more unity in Church programing, more aweness of being ministers to others. It allows people to first get ministering assignments at ages in some cases 11 months younger than they would in the past.
Considering I was a home teaching companion starting at age 12, I think it was March of 1993 when I was first given this calling, and I think having the assignment starting that early did me nothing but good, since I would not normally have been assigned any earlier than November 1994, I think this is a very good change.
The new program will mean that some people will be priests starting in their freshman year of high school, and be in the priests quorum I guess in some cases for almost 3 and a half years. To be fair I knew some people under the old system who were priests for almost 3 years.
Also under the old system some quorum presidencies seemed to normally consist of the most senior member of the quorum being president from when he became most senior until his next birthday. For example my time as Deacons quorum president was only a few months and I always felt I was less than effective while in it. Partly because I never actually made reccomendations for who my counselors should be. I felt more effective in my time as teacher's quorum president, and since my time as first assistant to the bishop was actually over a year I felt very effective as such.
The new system will make it more likely that a quorum president will serve for a whole year, although nothing requires such a term of service, and there still will be results from boundary changes and movement of members. It will also make it more easy to keep up with these changes, while the old system sometimes lead to vacancies of a month or more if people did not keep up on the constant creeping up of age changes.
The change involves shifting movement to being fixed by birthday, to the start of a year in which a person's birthday occurs. The change is not universal. Baptism is still at age 8, and rules about advancement to relief society, the Melchizedek priesthood and being able to go on missions have not changed. Nor has the age at which the Church allows dating, 16, changed at all.
Cub scouting and boy scouting seem to be largely unaffected, but if I read it right the move from 11-year-old scouts to regular scouts is at the start of the year one turns 12. This means some will be 11-year-old scouts for weeks, while others for virtually a whole year. Since the Church is fully leaving scouting at the start of 2020, this is not a long term issue.
Starting activity days is at the start of the year one turns 8 not at ones 8th birthday. However attendance at the general women's meeting still seems to start with ones 8th birthday. Attendance at general priesthood meeting on the other hand begins with the year one turns 12.
To me this is a good change. Being someone with a late October birthday, I missed my first potential general priesthood meeting by just a few weeks. I also faced a situation where most of those in my primary class were able to go to scout camp and enter the priesthood long before me, go to stake youth activities, and these people I felt connections to could go on youth temple trips and to stake dances and youth conference before me.
The new system will also end the true uncertainty that have plagued some with summer birthdays. These people often would find that attendance at summer camps and youth conference for the first time could go one year or the other based on when exactly in the summer these events were scheduled.
While there is not explicit statments on this matter, I am guessing this also reformats age attendance guidelines for programs like EFY and FSY.
While this is largely a logical reaction to the two hour schedule and what it means for attending Aaronic priesthood and young women meetings while also attending primary it has broader implications.
First off, it creates a system where there is more unity. Since about half a quorum or class moves up at the start of each year, this ends the old system where often many members would move up at one while a few would be left behind. Also with Sunday School, Aaronic Priesthood and Young Women all making changes at the start of the year, we no longer have imbalanced and uneven groupings.
The one group that does not move easily are those who are turning 18 in the year coming up. Actually, it appears that some who are already 18 on January 1st will still be in a situation to not move up if they are still in high school, as many who have birthdays after October 1st, and in some areas after September 1st, will be. On the other hand I think the new policy will make it easier to accept fully moving into adult programs those who graduate from high school in May or June but do not turn 18 until later in the year. There may be further refining of the guidance on this shift.
At some level it will always be easier to figure out how to accomadate those who leave for college, missions or military when they graduate high school as opposed to those who remain at home.
The clearest change here is the end of the Valiant 11 class. Previous guidelines said that children either could move to Sunday School the first year they were 12 or when they turned 12, although most moved at the start of the year when they were first 12. The new shift to moving up all at the start of the year they will turn 11 is in my view a plus for all.
While some may feel that people barely 11 as priesthood holders or young women and those barely 13 at stake dances is putting people too young in such situations, I really do not and think the benefits of people moving as groups is very high. I also think that the social awkwardsness of boys at 13 and 1 month is essentially the same as at 14, and girls at 13 and 1 month in general are ready for stake dances. I think that those at 11 years and 1 month are just as ready to pass the sacrament as those at 12, and considering that prior to the 1880s boys as young as 8 were on occasion ordained to the Aaronic priesthood, and up until at least 1940 sometimes 17-year-olds were ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood, I am not going to get hung up on ages. Anyway I fully accepts Presidents Nelson, Oaks and Eyring having the ability to receive revelation on this matter.
One result of the new program will be some will be able to go to youth conference even though the coming fall they will not be attending seminary. Since the two are not closely linked, I really do not see this as problematic. I think it is a better situation than the past where some youths were not old enough to go to youth conference the summer before they started high school.
The implimentation guidelines says that it is possible to chose another time to implement the changes than Janaury. However with the new Sunday School manuals and family and individual study manuals specifying a specific week for each lesson, I do not think implementing a different policy is likely.
President Nelson wants us to see the spirtual implications of this change. I think its biggest implication is creating more unity in Church programing, more aweness of being ministers to others. It allows people to first get ministering assignments at ages in some cases 11 months younger than they would in the past.
Considering I was a home teaching companion starting at age 12, I think it was March of 1993 when I was first given this calling, and I think having the assignment starting that early did me nothing but good, since I would not normally have been assigned any earlier than November 1994, I think this is a very good change.
The new program will mean that some people will be priests starting in their freshman year of high school, and be in the priests quorum I guess in some cases for almost 3 and a half years. To be fair I knew some people under the old system who were priests for almost 3 years.
Also under the old system some quorum presidencies seemed to normally consist of the most senior member of the quorum being president from when he became most senior until his next birthday. For example my time as Deacons quorum president was only a few months and I always felt I was less than effective while in it. Partly because I never actually made reccomendations for who my counselors should be. I felt more effective in my time as teacher's quorum president, and since my time as first assistant to the bishop was actually over a year I felt very effective as such.
The new system will make it more likely that a quorum president will serve for a whole year, although nothing requires such a term of service, and there still will be results from boundary changes and movement of members. It will also make it more easy to keep up with these changes, while the old system sometimes lead to vacancies of a month or more if people did not keep up on the constant creeping up of age changes.
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