#lds — Blog — Ben Crowder

Saturday, August 21, 2021 / #lds #religion

My friend Stephen Cranney wrote a guest post for Times & Seasons about Church growth in the United States. I especially want to echo his third point at the very end of the article. Expecting unending growth seems like one of those flawed assumptions that inevitably lead to disappointment and disaffection.

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Sunday, June 7, 2020 / #coronavirus #covid-19 #lds #religion

Our stake has thankfully decided that given Utah’s current COVID-19 numbers, it’s too early to start church meetings up again. Which seems wise to me. Prudence and patience are what we need here.

Over the past week or so, by the way, I’ve come to realize that we as a family are probably going to need to self-isolate for another year or so while we wait for a vaccine. It’s a long time, but also not that long. Someday this will all be safely tucked in the past. (I should add that I don’t for one second think that COVID-19 isn’t going to leave a permanent mark on the world. The pre-COVID world is surely dead; the world in its wake can’t possibly look the same. But I feel confident that the need to self-isolate will eventually end, at least until the next pandemic.)

This may not comfort others the way it comforts me, but I occasionally think about World War II (I was reading Anne Frank’s diary before the pandemic), more particularly how people wanted the war to end but had no idea in the moment how long it was going to last. It took six years and so many lives, but it did end. As did the 1918 pandemic. This too shall pass.

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