The direction on this appears to have reversed four or five years ago, i.e. the direction to local units has been to have more rather than less activities than they were recently having. Whether this direction comes with additional ward budget allocations, I don’t know.

The most notable activity that I miss is ward campouts like we had during the 1970s.

The church is more focused on growing the church in other ways: building temples, growing the church in places like South America and funding the massive humanitarian machine we’ve become known for.

I want to see the list of things we’re doing better now that the adults aren’t spending their week nights and Saturdays putting on events and shuttling around teenagers.

Do you realize how ironic that is, given how much we get criticized for “cultish” behavior based on how much time we spend with each other?

What to do?

The next year we switched and made videos for the first time (1987). The videos were terrible, but it was my first introduction to video directing and editing — which I’ve continued to do on and off, mostly for corporate clients lately.

And BTW, while I do miss the sports stuff, I think it was a good move for the church in general to cut back on all of this. Stakes and wards are free to plan activities, and many do.

We had a short but successful run of “Anything Goes” activities for the stake youth where wards competed at the lighted high school football stadium in a number of absurd events. I agree that it is good to know the other youth in the stake. I miss the stake and regional volleyball tournaments that we used to have. Our area stakes are just now trying to emphasize multi-stake young adult activities because the number of young adults sticking around the area are low in general and those who do stick around are frequently lost

I remember my mom’s nostalgia for the days of the cultural refinement lessons where they studied ‘The Scarlet Letter’, sort of like a Relief Society book club. I also recall a description of a stake quartet contest that sounded kinda cool. My sister’s Arizona ward recently had a girls camp fundraiser that was a Mexican dinner with auction of donated items, just like the old ward budget days. She bought a computer that was auctioned off. My jaw kind of dropped when I heard about it.

I also miss those area conferences where you got to go to your nearest University or community sports arena and hear the General Authorities and Apostles speak. It was fun to see the masses of LDS gather. (I know in Utah this is a common occurrence, but its not so in other states). I don’t think, honestly, I would miss it enough to drive 2-3 hours necessarily to attend.

Oh, and I like trunk or treat.

“When was Know Your Religion officially stopped?” While I don’t wish to get into a back and forth on this issue , I think it was 2004 that it was eliminated. But i found that something has taken it’s place, so to speak…..

http://ce.byu.edu/ed/arc.cfm if you don’t live in Utah, too bad.

#36 — I just back from accompanying our Stake youth on a trek. We were rained out, and only hiked 2 miles before turning around and calling the whole thing of.

As I’ve written other places, what I miss our annual ward fundraisers, such a ward auctions. These were always a blast as a kid.

Living in the SF Bay Area, we were lucky because KYR was going on about three weekends a month somewhere. You could conceivable go to 6 different ones within a 2 1/2 hour drive. I know that that allowed us to go see my favorites when they came to town. Most were CES and BYU types who are considered some of the foremost scholars of the Church. If they worked for CES, you know they needed the extra money! But a lot of them spent a lot of time away from their families, so that probably had a lot to do with the discontinuance. They tried using local speakers but they were never as popular.

For that matter, all of these things were long gone by the time I joined the church (1999) so I can’t say I technically miss any of them.

Paula (37): I loved weekday Primary, too. Singing songs, doing activities and programs that had no overt doctrinal emphasis. It was more a reflection that primary was our extended family, not a preachy nor “churchy” place. It was a place that young friends of other faiths would join me for fun, and their parents didn’t mind it at all. I agree with you that kids need time (at church) to just be kids. What changed Doctrine is so over-extracted into pearls of life-application that kids, ironically, don’t actually grow up knowing the scriptures all that well, nor do they often grow to appreciate that faith can take forms other than what makes for good testimony-bearing sound bites.