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Post by LDS Anarchist on Apr 9, 2004 6:00:44 GMT -5
It would seem to me that if more than a few people got together and wanted to implement a planned United Effort to cut off as much of their dependency upon Babylon as they could, meeting, deciding and performing all functions as a group might be impractical. Establishing councils would make the whole thing work more efficiently. I will write more of this at another time, but in the meantime, you can go to www.lds.org/ and look up the following talks by Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in which he spoke at length about councils: - A Chance to Start Over: Church Disciplinary Councils and the Restoration of Blessings, Ensign, Sept. 1990, page 12
- Strength in Counsel, Ensign, Nov. 1993, page 76
- Counseling with Our Councils, Ensign, May 1994, page 24
- Are We Keeping Pace? Ensign, Nov. 1998, page 6
- Now Is the Time, Ensign, Nov. 2000, page 75
- Family Councils: A Conversation with Elder and Sister Ballard, Ensign, June 2003, page 14
My object in mentioning these talks is that Elder Ballard explains the Lord's inspired council system that He has for His church. Although not everything stated in all of these talks can be applied, the pattern of councils which Elder Ballard explains can be applied to any plans that are made here.
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Post by LDS Anarchist on Apr 10, 2004 0:39:46 GMT -5
Let's imagine that a United Effort (UE) is made up of units. Let's say that each UE unit can represent either a single man, a single woman, a married couple without children or a married couple with children (family.) Let's say you've got 100 Latter-day Saint UE units who want to enter into a United Effort to enact one of the plans found in this think tank. Let's also assume that these 100 UE units all live in the same geographical region, say the same exact city. Perhaps they are all a part of the same ward, but perhaps not. Let's just assume that they are all a part of the same city.
They decide to hold a meeting at one of their homes. Each UE unit sends at least one representative. For the single man or single woman it would be the man himself or the woman herself. For the married couple or the family it would be either the husband or the wife. Perhaps it would be both. This first meeting would be to organize councils. Councils can be used to perform research in any of the areas that need to be researched. For example, let's say that supplying the energy needs of the members of this United Effort is something that all members decide is important to research right away. Someone suggests that an Energy Council be organized to research the various technologies out there and come up with solutions to either reduce or eliminate dependence upon Babylonian-supplied electricity. A vote is taken and it is decided to organize this council. Volunteers with engineering background or others who feel they would be able to contribute to such a council are asked to raise their hands and give their background or reasons as to why they should be on the council. Several people raise their hands. Let's say 7 people raise their hands. A vote is taken and the body votes to accept these 7 as the councilors. Let's also say that according to the plan that these people are going to implement, that they decide that each council should have 12 councilors. So, the next person that speaks asks for suggestions from people of who should fill the rest of the council (5 more councilors.) People begin to stand up and say that they think "so and so" should be a councilor on this council for "this or that" reason. The person named stands up and says he will or will not be on the council. If he says he will, a vote is taken whether the body will accept the person as a councilor and so on and so forth until 12 councilors have been named. A date is named when the councilors will give a report of their findings to the general body. The procedure continues with other councils being named, etc.
The individual council acts independent of the general body. So let's say that the meeting of the general body is over. Let's say that the Energy Council has been given 4 weeks to come up with a viable solution and plan to implement. After the general meeting, they meet in a group and decide to meet weekly at one of their homes. During each 7-day period, each council member does his own research, comes up with his own ideas, says his own prayers, etc. At the end of the 7th day, they meet as a council and each one explains what they have found and what their feelings and inclinations are. They exchange their findings with each other and discuss everything openly. Then they close the meeting and continue their research for another seven-day period. Each week of meetings, their findings, in theory, should be more and more fine-tuned and their opinions more and more united in narrowing down what the wisest course would be to take. By the fourth and final meeting, they have narrowed it down to a single solution. They select one of them to present their findings and suggestions to the general body at the next general meeting. Each council can follow this same procedural pattern.
Councils can come to single solutions or multiple solutions. For instance, let's say the Energy Council decides that there are energy alternatives that can be implemented now at low cost, but that they don't offer a complete, long-term solution. And they also discover that the long-term solutions are the best way to go, but that they require much more money and much more effort to implement, because the devices need to be built (or whatever the case may be.) They may present the general body with 8 different solutions of varying costs along with the pros and cons and effort involved with each solution. The body, upon hearing their findings, may opt for one of the more costly, long-termed solutions and decide that it may take several months before the funds are accumulated to implement the solution. So, they may divert the funds to other areas, such as providing food, etc. Maybe the general body decides that they will implement one of the low-cost, short-term solutions, to reduce dependency upon Babylon and work towards implementing one of the long-term, costly solutions later on.
If a council's suggestions are not immediately acted upon, due to whatever is the most pressing need of the general body, the council can be used for further planning of a suggestion in anticipation of future funds. For example, let's say the Energy Council decides that the Searle Effect Generator is the absolute brightest energy and transportation solution, but that it will be costly and they'll have to build it from scratch. Let's say they present this to the general body and it is decided that there is not enough funds to build these generators, but that they must prepare for the future, so funds are appropriated to the Energy Council to purchase the necessary how-to manuals written by Searle and to learn how to build the device. At the next meeting, the Energy Council is to present their opinion of the cost and skill required to build it, based upon the literature they will have studied. They do this and these engineers return with the news that they believe it can be done but that it will cost "X" amount of dollars and require "A" and "B" and "C" materials, etc. The general body may decide, then, to appropriate a certain amount of funds to the Energy Council so that the council engineers can build it piece-by-piece, or step-by-step, purchasing this item and then that item, instead of all at once. Eventually, the device is built and tested and an exact procedure of how to duplicate the process will have been learned, so that all the members in time can benefit from these devices. It may even be that each UE unit can contribute something, can do something that helps in the construction process of building the device, making it go much, much quicker and cheaper, since labor costs are not part of the equation, only equipment costs.
If the device is found to work as promised and cuts off all the strings of attachment to energy Babylon, it may be decided to reduce costs further by having certain UE units get resale licenses whereby they can purchase the material at cost and sell it at retail. The supplies purchased at cost will be used for the devices for all the members of the united effort and will be sold at cost, or given freely, without profit, but also, the resaler can sell the items to people who are not associated with the effort at a profit and put those proceeds into the general fund.
There are many possibilities.
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