Back around the turn of the millennium in the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest, my teenage self was selected to some “Stake Youth Leadership Committee” or whatever it was called; ostensibly its purpose was to call one representative teen from each ward, in order to involve the Youth of Zion directly in the decision-making processes of the Stake by…doing leadership things, I guess?  Actually, I never was quite clear what our point was.

Mainly we went to meetings.  Lots and lots of meetings.  I seem to recall a group of us painfully self-conscious, sleep-deprived teenagers already anxious about school, sports, extra-curriculars, summer jobs, college-admissions, and trying not to have lustful thoughts about the opposite sex (or the same-sex, whatever the case may have been), gathered around a large mahogany table at the Stake Center on a rainy Saturday afternoon with some Baby Boomers who knew our parents.

They solicited our feedback on various particulars pertinent to the youth of the Church, earnestly listened to our suggestions, seriously discussed them…then kindly informed us what we were going to do instead.  It didn’t take me long to realize that our actual function was less to be “leaders” (as we were repeatedly–and perhaps a bit too earnestly–assured), than to serve as the glorified errand-boys (and girls) of the Stake Presidency.

Primarily this service involved unfolding chairs.  Lots and lots of chairs. That, and reluctantly inviting surly teenagers to attend some Sunday Evening Youth Fireside they had scarce time and no inclination to attend, particularly the night before they were expected to get up for 6:30AM Seminary (which they also did not want to attend).  Then later, we would have to explain, yet again, to the baffled adults why no attendance was so poor at their Firesides.  They would then earnestly solicit our feedback on ways to make the Firesides more attractive to the Youth of Zion, and the cycle would begin anew.

Yet though the position was custom-made for the sneers of moody teenagers…

…I wasn’t a total cynic about it, believe it or not, and actually tried to effect some genuine change during my tenure on that committee.  Specifically, I lasered my sights down onto the one activity under our purview that at least some of the Youth in our stake attended voluntarily:

The Church Dances.

As with all things Church related, attendance was OK but not great.  Our Church Leaders worried: How could we convince more of our Youth that dressing up in Sunday clothes on a not-Sunday in order to dance modestly to YMCA, Will Smith, and late-90s Boy Bands, was more attractive than a High School party with beer, “Rap,” swear words, and making out?  We were beginning with an obvious handicap, but I believed we could do it.

First, I helpfully suggested that dropping the Sunday-dress-requirement alone would likely increase attendance immediately.  But judging by their reactions, you’d think I’d suggested hosting heroin-fueled orgies in the chapel or serving Diet Coke: “We will not be dropping our standards,” they piously affirmed.  “Who said anything about dropping standards?” I protested, “I just said we should maybe not require Church clothes at a dance!  What on earth does clothing have to do with morality?” (A question I still have never gotten an adequate answer to.)

“We don’t want immodest clothing in our dances,” they parried.  “Since when are jeans and t-shirts immodest?” I shot back, “What is so spiritual about dancing in uncomfortable clothing?”  Nevertheless, they somehow had it in their mind that neck-ties and maxi-skirts were all that stood between us and “spaghetti-straps” and/or leather-bondage, I guess.

“We’re not dropping our clothing standards,” they again made clear in no uncertain terms.  “OK, but then don’t keep complaining when no one attends your dances,” I muttered back.  (As you can probably guess, I only lasted a year in that calling).

Nevertheless, even I could see that the non-Sunday-clothes thing was a non-starter, so I shifted my attention to at least influencing the music itself.  Once again, I ran into strange resistance, as the adults seemed to assume that NSYNC, Smashmouth, and utterly non-self-aware renditions of the Village People was all that stood between us and grinding to Marilyn Manson or whatever.  (If I could have at least eliminated the “Men In Black” theme-song from rotation, I might have at least considered it a victory, but no dice.)  Now, granted these were popular songs at the time, and many teenagers sincerely enjoyed dancing to them, I fully understood why the DJs played them.  

But not all teenagers enjoy listening to them; shoot, even the kids who liked NSYNC didn’t like listening to them all the time.  Yet adding different songs to the playlist was like pulling teeth.  Here these adults were trying to convince more Youth of Zion to attend these dances, all while actively discouraging anyone whose music tastes were even slightly left of the dial from attending.  But though we tried to introduce, say, a little Weezer, or Fatboy Slim, now and then, the chaperones shut us down.

Once, some friends of mine got the DJ to play the Beastie Boys’ earnestly goofy “Intergalactic,” of all things, and the middle-aged chaperone straight up yelled at us to shut it off.  They asked me the next day, in all bafflement, if it had “bad lyrics” or something.  We Alta Vista’d it (it was the ’90s); there weren’t, far as we could tell, and I assure you, we sincerely looked.  Even “Hotel California,” a hit we all liked from their generation, got nixed, because it was about haunted houses or played-backwards-directions-to-the-L.A.-Church-of-Satan or some such nonsense.

So I narrowed down my focus even further: Chairs.  I just wanted there to be more chairs at the dances.  The folks who did bother to attend mainly just wanted hang out with their friends anyways, and it gets tiring just standing around waiting for free chairs to open.  So I suggested that we should set out more tables and chairs, to give people a place to sit and chat, you know, actually enjoy one anothers’ company.  “But then the kids won’t dance!” they complained. 

This was too much.  “We don’t dance anyways!” I cried out, exasperated, “The music is lame, our clothes are uncomfortable, we only go cause our parents make us, and if we enjoy ourselves it’s purely by accident!  If you actually want more kids to attend your boring dances, the very least you can do is put out more chairs.”  They didn’t concede my point, but they also didn’t try to stop me when I physically opened the supply-closet myself and set out more chairs and tables all alone.  That, sadly, was the extant of my teenage rebellions in High School.

Over a decade later, I strolled past a chapel in Utah where I could over-hear a Stake Youth Dance inside, and was astounded to pick out, yes, Will Smith and late-90s Boy Bands.  Goodness, have Church dances really changed so little since I was young?  And the folks my age who are presumably running these wards now: are they still just as baffled as their parents were by how few Youth attend their lame dances?

These random memories have been on my mind ever since Elder Uchtdorf introduced the new For Strength of Youth pamphlet at our most recent General Conference. By all accounts, it was a vast improvement over all previous iterations, including the one I was subjected to as kid in the ’90s. I’ll have to take everyones’ word for it, because I never once read it myself. Serious, I remember being handed copies of the FSOY near-constantly as a youth–from well-meaning Bishops and Youth Leaders–every last copy of which I promptly threw in the garbage. And let’s be clear: despite my complaints otherwise, I was overall an obedient, timid, eager-to-please kid and a voracious reader. Yet I was never even tempted to crack open the dang thing once.

And here’s the thing: by the Church’s standards, I turned out fine—RM, BYU grad, temple married, full tithe-paying, stake calling, children in Primary, all that nonsense. But that all happened in spite of, not because, the FSOY, which (again) I never read.

So here’s the question: if the FSOY is, at best, utterly irrelevant towards keeping one active, and at worse (as documented here and here) actively damaging to one’s mental and spiritual health, then why bother keeping it around at all? I am reminded of Joseph Smith’s scathing indictment from Liberty Jail: “how vain and trifling have been our Spirits, our conferences, our councils, our meetings, our private as well as public conversations, too low, too mean, too vulgar, too condescending, for the dignified Characters of the called and chosen of God.” I am also reminded of Jefferey R. Holland’s eminently quotable, “It has to be a really good meeting to be better than no meeting at all.” Really, I reflect how, in our quest to return to our Heavenly Father, we often fixate on the absolute least important things.