The demise of LDS scouting?
 

Went to a stake priesthood leadership meeting last night (which I found excruciatingly tedious compared to previous such meetings).

Anyway, they said rumors that scouting will soon be cut out of the church are not true. "For now" scouting is the activity arm of the Aaronic Priesthood. And then the entire focus was on Duty to God.

Let's assume that the church decides to cut out scouting, and just does Duty to God. I wonder how that will play, and how that willl work.

Let's face it. No one cares about the Duty to God award. No one outside of the church has even heard of it. 99% of church members dont' understand anything about it.

Will leaders have success in drumming up excitement over the Duty to God award? What will happen if scouting summer camp is cut out? No more monthly campouts? Will you have sufficient experience among the boys to do an outdoor high adventure activity?

It will be interesting to see what happens. I wonder if church members will start sending their boys outside of the church for scouting. It's already happened in the dysfunctional wards (when it comes to scouting) in our stake.

Good Question.

I dunno. I send my boys to scouting because, (a) the boys in the age group of my boys in the Church go there; (b) my boys want to go; and (c) an Eagle Scout award is the singly youth accomplishment that will follow one throughout one's life. All three of these reasons are important to me.

If you start removing them, I don't know how I'd react. I don't know what the Duty to God award is, unless I look it up to give a talk.

I think I got a Duty to God award, but am not sure. If I got it, I have no clue what I did to get it. I vaguely remember having to speak a certain number of times to get it.

I know that I got my Eagle Scout, and really do not even care that I got it.

You have to do campouts as part of the DTG program.

I love it. My ward is fired up about it because as the YM Pres. I am fired up about it.

My ward is the only one in the stake that is progressing though.

I have a priest that will get the whole award next month. Out of my 26 YM, I have 14 that are on track to get it all done by the time they are Priests.

It is cool.

I saw the title of this thread and got excited. One of the best things that could happen to the Young Mens program would be to get away from Scouting and focus on a 'Duty to God' type program.

What the!!???

Your response brings out the following words from deep within my being:

The path of the righteous scout is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil pro-DTGers. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my fellow scouts. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

You're getting a lot of mileaga out of Pulp Fiction.

Scouting done right is a great program. Done wrong and it's a deathknell to one's righteousness.

I say bag both scouting and Duty to God.

It's hard enough being a kid these days keeping up your grades, participating in sports, music, earning money for your mission, attending seminary and reading your scriptures, etc.

Plus then I wouldn't have to worry about getting called into scouts.

Having spent many years working in the YM organization I have to say that I'm a fan of the DTG program. As I've said before, it meshes quite well with scouting. I've heard many argue that the award has no prestige. It will never have prestige outside of our church, that is true. But is should be highly valued within the church and would be if people took the time to learn about the program.

I was often frustrated that parents didn't value the award. I found it ludicrous that the Scoutmaster was annoyed by the program for several years. It's not that tough to work the two programs together. IMHO attitudes towards the DTG program need to improve. For that to happen it needs more emphasis from "the brethren". Right now, there are just too many people who don't believe that the program is going to be around for long.

it doesn't take away from scouting? it sure does. in our ward, one week a month is dedicated to DTG. Only two for scouting.