These days, writing a talk that’s generally fine is easy. Any AI platform can do it in a matter of seconds. It can give you an outline, or write the whole thing for you. I asked ChatGPT to give me an outline for this talk, (Topic? Using the Priesthood to Bless the Lives of Others) and it helpfully rattled off what the main sections should be, including everything from making a personal connection with the audience to encouraging priesthood holders to magnify their callings. It even gave me some quotes from President Nelson.
When you don’t really want to write a talk, it can be awfully tempting to just hit print and read whatever AI came up with. I’ve actually been experimenting with writing using AI over the past few months. My biggest takeaway was that by shifting the task over to AI, I missed out on the thinking that went into the topics I was writing about. I blog most weekdays, and often my biggest purpose in blogging is to discover what I think about a topic, and why. Analyzing those thoughts and getting them down in a format others can understand helps me see weaknesses I wouldn’t have otherwise seen or come to new understandings I wouldn’t have otherwise realized..
It’s my experience so far that people turn to AI to have it do the things they’d rather not do themselves. You might not believe it, but the act of writing a talk is a worthwhile exercise in and of itself. Then again, if you write a talk that could just as easily have been written by artificial intelligence, you’ve missed out on an opportunity to do something much more impactful. The Stake Presidency has been emphasizing the importance of people giving talks that only they can give. It’s the difference between providing a summary of Gospel principles that could be found in any number of lesson manuals and discussing how those principles have impacted your life directly. Specifically.
Yes, I could stand here and talk about what the Priesthood is and how it can bless lives, but if I did that, I doubt many of you would remember much of it other than the general topic. It would just be me telling you things you’ve already heard many times before. So let’s not do that. Instead, I’ll focus on my personal experiences with the topic. How I’ve come to understand it and what sort of an impact it’s had on me in my daily life.
On the surface, “Using the Priesthood to Bless the Lives of Others” seems pretty straightforward. The immediate answer that springs to mind is “by giving others blessings with the priesthood.” And indeed, that’s a significant way I have experience in this area.
In April 2018, President Nelson gave a talk focused on the power of priesthood blessings. He said, “Not long ago, I attended a sacrament meeting in which a new baby was to be given a name and a father’s blessing. The young father held his precious infant in his arms, gave her a name, and then offered a beautiful prayer. But he did not give that child a blessing. That sweet baby girl got a name but no blessing! That dear elder did not know the difference between a prayer and a priesthood blessing. With his priesthood authority and power, he could have blessed his infant, but he did not. I thought, “What a missed opportunity!””
This is something I have tried to consciously lean into. At the start of school each year, I give each member of my family a blessing to prepare them for the year ahead. That tradition has inspired me and pushed me to live my life in a way that I can be worthy to really be in tune with the blessings God would have me give each year. As I’ve done it more often, I think I’ve gotten better at it. I have also given numerous blessings to those who are sick or afflicted. Some of these have been miraculous, though that wasn’t because of the person who gave the blessing, but rather the power that blessing tapped into.
But to be honest, I don’t feel I’ve used the priesthood for this purpose as much as I might have. Those blessings typically end up being few and far between. A handful a year, and I don’t believe having the priesthood should mean I only make a difference with it now and then. So does that mean I haven’t really been using the priesthood to bless the lives of others?
Approaching this topic from a different direction, I asked myself, what is it that I, as a priesthood holder, can do to bless the lives of others that people without the priesthood cannot?
In the handbook, you need to have the priesthood to hold any number of church callings. Everything from the Stake President to Assistant Ward Clerk. This doesn’t cover all leadership callings, however. Relief Society Presidencies, Primary Presidencies, and the like all operate wonderfully without holding the priesthood. That sort of observation is way above my pay grade, so typically I’d be tempted to quietly walk away from it and turn this in a different direction. But you’ve caught me on a good day, so I’m going to keep going.
Why does a Stake President need the priesthood if a Stake Relief Society President does not?
Well, what is “the Priesthood”? According to the Guide to the Scriptures, it’s “the authority and power that God gives to man to act in all things for the salvation of man.” I think that’s key to this conversation. Usually, I hear the definition stop with “the authority and power of God,” but the purpose of the priesthood is very specific. It’s not to go around telling people what to do. Rather, it’s to accomplish the tasks necessary to allow people to be saved.
I have now been the Stake Executive Secretary for over 5 years. To be honest, it is far from my favorite calling. If you ask Denisa, she’ll confirm that one of the things I like least in this life is calling strangers on the phone. You wouldn’t think it, I suppose, for a guy who’s generally chatty and has nothing against writing about anything and everything online, but it’s true. And one of the things I have to do often as Stake Executive Secretary is . . . call strangers on the phone.
In the past five years, there have been many times when I’ve looked at my calling as nothing more than administrative. I set appointments. I set agendas. I take minutes. Rinse and repeat, week after week, 270 times and counting. It’s a good thing I like Groundhog Day, because in terms of church callings, that’s been my life.
So why in the world do I need the priesthood to do something that countless secretaries and executive assistants do across the globe, every day? What’s different? Because maybe if I can figure out that answer, then I can see more clearly how I’m using the priesthood to bless the lives of others.
As I thought it through, I realized that part of my problem was I was too quick to dismiss an administrative task as being something not all that important. No, this isn’t where I now tell you for ten minutes just how important a stake executive secretary is. Rather, I want to look at the word “administrative.” As a former linguist, I’m big into word origins and meanings. The language we casually speak every day all comes to us from a long line of small changes in meaning over the years. When we use it, we draw on those historical meanings to create what we mean today.
“Administrative” comes to us from the Latin words ad (which just means “to”) and ministrare, which means to serve, attend, or wait upon. In turn, ministrare comes from the Latin minister, which for the record means inferior, servant, or priest’s assistant. In other words, the concepts behind ministering and administration are one and the same, something I really ought to have thought of earlier, but that “ad” somehow threw me off. For that matter, we use the phrase “administration of the Sacrament.”
When I blithely dismissed my calling as nothing more than administrative work, it appears I might have been completely missing the point. The word priesthood comes from Old English, where it meant “the position of one who is duly authorized to be a minister of sacred things.” The purpose of the priesthood is to administrate.
As someone who’s in a string of meetings, one after another, in my daily career, it can be tempting to view church meetings as nothing more but a different flavor of the same thing. The person running the meeting is the boss, and everyone else in that meeting is there to report to the boss on whatever the boss wants. But when the Stake President or the Bishop is leading Stake Council or Ward Council, he’s not leading just any old meeting. He’s working to administrate the Kingdom of God.
In fact, every priesthood calling exists to help bring to pass the eternal life and exaltation of man. God wants all His children to return to live with him. The church is one big tool He uses to accomplish that, and the holders of the priesthood aren’t there to boss. They’re there to be His hands. You need the priesthood to perform ordinances: bless the Sacrament, baptize, set apart members for callings. You don’t need it to have charity, help a stranger in need, or support a friend.
How does the role of a Stake Executive Secretary bless the lives of others, then? I set up appointments for members to get the second part of their temple recommends, which allows them to go to the temple for themselves or their ancestors. I send out agendas and minutes for stake presidency meeting, unit leader training, and stake councils, which in turn helps coordinate the efforts of the stake in support each individual branch or ward in its efforts to accomplish God’s purposes. These aren’t exactly jobs that spring to mind as vital when you’re looking at different church callings, but they’re nonetheless essential in keeping the efforts of the church in this stake moving forward. (I get a reminder of that every time I go on vacation and step away from my calling for a week. It takes work to get everything back in order again.)
Why do I need the priesthood to be able to do all of that? Because it is God’s church, and He has made that a prerequisite. Because in learning about the priesthood and how to use it, I have learned the importance of using it to bless others instead of just thinking about myself.
When I was a missionary, it was much easier to see the way my efforts were impacting lives for the good. Though again, what was it about the Priesthood that made those specific efforts more impactful? Sister Missionaries do a fantastic job sharing the Gospel. Elders administrate in addition to all of that. They perform the actual ordinances, yes, but I’m not convinced the person performing each ordinance is that key to the process. The authority needs to be there to act in God’s name, but the person saying the words is more or less interchangeable compared to the covenants being actually made by the person being baptized.
The same is true with the administration of the Sacrament every week. It’s important that it’s done by authority, but the personal commitment and repentance process each of us makes is the point of the ordinance, not the person who’s speaking the words or breaking the bread. True, you can do it reverently and deliberately, which might help the congregation feel the Spirit more keenly, but ultimately the key part of the act is between the individual and God.
So couldn’t you just argue all of it is nothing more than religious red tape? For example, if everyone needs to be baptized to return to live with God, and we’re all ultimately going to be baptized whether physically in this life or by accepting the ordinance that has been done vicariously on our behalf in the next, why even have that as a step to follow? Phrased differently, why do we even need a church? Can’t we all just develop our personal relationships with God without the need for all the trappings and talk of authority?
I see a few essentials that we lose without the church. Perhaps the largest one is the inevitable drift away from core principles that occurs without an organized religion. That Great Apostasy happened for a reason. Over time, without an active, functioning church, the teachings of that church splinter and change as people (sometimes well meaning and sometimes not) try to warp it to be what they wish it would be instead of what it is. I don’t mean by this that our church is perfect. Our ninth article of faith states: We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” That didn’t come with an expiration date. And while a shift from three hour to two hour church on Sundays was pretty great and one might say important, I don’t think it’s quite in line with what that Article of Faith means.
2 Nephi 28:30: “30 For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.”
So no, the church isn’t finished, and so it isn’t perfect. Sometimes parts of it can be frustrating or even bewildering to some. But without it, things don’t magically get better. The Priesthood–”the authority and power that God gives to man to act in all things for the salvation of man”–plays a huge role in that.
But the church isn’t just there to teach us principles or doctrines. It exists as a way for us to grow individually. See my earlier point about my dislike of calling strangers on the phone. By having me step outside my comfort zone, I get the opportunity of becoming better. Not that calling strangers successfully suddenly makes me super Bryce, but being a member of the church is more than just a single calling. It’s coming here each week and interacting with other people. Learning how to treat people with kindness and respect, even if you don’t agree with them or they annoy you.
I want to swing back around to my earlier question. Why does a Stake President need the priesthood if a Stake Relief Society President does not? The more I looked into this and studied this, the more I realized that question shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Priesthood is and how it is used on earth. I think it’s easy to hear this topic “Using the priesthood to bless the lives of others,” and assume it’s a talk only a man can give. That would be 100% wrong.
In 2014, Elder Oaks gave a talk in general conference on the keys and authority of the priesthood. The entire talk is worth reading, but this part jumped out at me. “We are not accustomed to speaking of women having the authority of the priesthood in their Church callings, but what other authority can it be? When a woman—young or old—is set apart to preach the gospel as a full-time missionary, she is given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function. The same is true when a woman is set apart to function as an officer or teacher in a Church organization under the direction of one who holds the keys of the priesthood. Whoever functions in an office or calling received from one who holds priesthood keys exercises priesthood authority in performing her or his assigned duties.”
The Stake President and the Stake Relief Society President both use priesthood authority in their callings. Elder Ballard said in 2014, “Our Church doctrine places women equal to and yet different from men. God does not regard either gender as better or more important than the other. …When men and women go to the temple, they are both endowed with the same power, which is priesthood power. … Access to the power and the blessings of the priesthood is available to all of God’s children.”
With that knowledge, it’s clear that any church calling is an opportunity for us to use the priesthood to bless the lives of others. Ministering brothers and sisters use the same authority and power to fulfill their callings. I had heard these talks before, but clearly they hadn’t fully penetrated my skull, because it took writing this talk–on my own, and without AI–to really cement them as concepts. I testify that we all can use this power in countless ways to help our neighbors and our families come closer to God. To guide us and inspire us to do the things God would have us do. And yes, occasionally, to even call strangers on the phone.