Thoughts From Brother Dale

The following document was generously furnished by brother Dale Volskay for inclusion for your consideration.

I awoke early this AM and was not able to go back to sleep, and thought about all that has gone on with the “Church” over the past several years, especially with the “conferences." I felt that I should post more of my feelings that I have received over the years, for I feel that the Lord has given me some of that Gift that I told you all to exercise. This is going to be a long post, so forgive me for the length.

What has come upon us has been going on for many years. I was ordained an Elder in 1965 and 2 years later elected as Presiding Elder in my home congregation. The first “battle” I got involved in was the “New Church School Curriculum.” Having come up with the old quarterlies, I was appalled by the fact that no one could obtain information about what was being written. It took 2 years to get that information, and by that time, I was fit to be tied. Why the secrecy? It did not take long to find out. I sought information from those who served on committees, and one group was the "Mothers of Israel."

I moved to Independence in 1972, and this was still going on, but winding down, and the "Church" was not being taught what I was taught as a youth. It gets worse.

To slice and shorten history, let me say that many things transpired between that period of time and the period we are dealing with now. My tenure as an Elder has been nothing except to disagree with what has taken place; strangely enough I am still at it.

In 1992, the idea of the Elders Conference was taking shape. Working for the RLDS Church put me within the limelight of several things. For one, the person heading this up was at one time one of my bosses, and I was not overly fond of him, yet knew not why. I had reservations about him, which is now history. I refused to join the beginnings of the CRE for that reason, but I “bad mouthed” the situation and repeated several of the happenings, until my wife jumped my case for passing secondhand information. I was able to serve on the Evangelism Council in 1995 even though I was not a member of the conference. At that time it was organized much differently than today. I attended my first conference in April 1996, and frankly I thought it might have merit.

In fall of 1990 and early spring of 1991, I was given an experience that I know came from God that changed my life once more. This experience was pertaining to the office of Prophet of the Church, which I will not go into at this time. I served in this council until April 2005 which was finally the last straw and decided I did not need to fight this battle any farther. The handwriting was on the wall, so to speak.

In 2003, there was a great push to bring “unity” to the Restoration Branches, so the Auditorium was rented by certain individuals and we held a huge Sacrament Service. One would have thought they were witnessing a General Conference of the late 1960’s or so. It was very impressive. That is, until near the end of this service, the Patriarchs hesitated to see if anyone had a ‘message’ to bring to the congregation. There was one, and it has divided the entire body to this day. Why? Very few in that congregation understood the term “General Assembly," and they certainly did not understand how one was to be called, or what it was for. Personally I had an ill feeling, and told my spouse that that just split this church. Check the history of our movement and you will see that I could say “I told you so,” but I won’t say it.

The Patriarchs worked for 2 years to get this organized. If we study the duties of the Patriarch, we find that they have no responsibilities to get involved in organizational proceedings, except by council if sought. In this case, we can see that this was basically ignored, and out of that, several men were chosen to serve as a “Stewardship Fellowship Committee.” But in the discharging of duties, it appears that the Patriarchs were very much involved in the proceedings. Be that as it may, what was done is done and is now history. We cannot go back and change that, but here again is an example of not knowing what the “law of the Church” says. All I will say is people do not know.

Out of all this then came the dividing of the conference week, sharing the last half with the Patriarchs. No one could, or would, deny such a request. The “General Assembly” was held at the Auditorium. It was not conducted as a General Assembly, but as a series of prayer services. No business was conducted and the people came together and prayed their hearts, and I will say that when you get a bunch of Saints together in prayer, you have good comradeship and unity.

The dividing of the week has set precedence. From 2005 through 2007 the week has been shared with what became the JCRB movement, and neither group has been able to conduct much business. What can be said? In this proceeding, the JCRB has taken a forceful stand uniting people behind it by giving the people voice and vote. In its organizational proceedings, it has copied the CRE format completely, just changing the names of its committees. It has sought to win over all the persons holding high office of priesthood, and has succeeded in this to a great extent. They now have all the Seventy involved; the Patriarchs have embraced and used their influence to promote. There have been those who sought to seek wisdom, but have been pushed aside as if we have run out of time.

This movement has been allowed to send representatives to both the CRE and the JCRB. When there were objections, those in leadership shrugged shoulders and claimed, “Well, the elders elected them."

Look at the resolutions now being brought before the CRE in their meeting in the next two weeks. They were originated within the JCRB. This came about by a resolution being presented at the last CRE conference {look at its contents and see if you can tell what body presented it}:

“Resolved, that the CRE call a general gathering of the elders to meet in worship and study to consider the matter of succession in Presidency; and be it further Resolved that the gathering seek in solemn fasting and prayer, the mind and will of God in these matters [James 1:5; D/C 41:1,2 and 46:3b.c], and be it further Resolved, that this body report back to the 2008 CRE and Joint Conference of Restoration Branches (JCRB).”

There then follow 4 resolutions concerning Lineage and the office of President (Prophet?) of the Church.

When a group is overcrowded with members of another group, can one not see the problems created? More especially when that group is a bunch of priesthood who has very little idea of what is taking place? This is what happened to us while in the Institutional Church in the 1970’ and 1980’s.

I have often said that “If we do not know our history, we are bound to repeat it." I made a report in 2007 on the conference. I’d like to share an investigation that I did on one resolution that took place on Tuesday, April 4, 2006, in the CRE conference. There will be names included, but this is found in the CRE Bulletin on page ‘Section 6-13’ and headed as a “Motion to set the proposed CRE agenda aside." Although this happened in 2006, I made a report in 2007 that contains what happened in 2006:

Conference of Restoration Elders April 2007

This conference started with the Sunday AM services at the Waldo Sanctuary and after the noon meal, it continued to organize itself. This year, they had the parade of flags, which is always impressive. After the conference was organized, and the Elders seated by the credentials committee (with 53 Elders), Br. Paul Gage was sustained as Chairman and Steve Ferdig as Secretary. They then entered into discussion of the budget. With few problems with the outlined budget as printed, it passed, and other resolutions were then introduced, but not acted upon. The most interesting was the four resolutions from the JCRB concerning the lineage of the Smith Family and the office of Prophet. Also a resolution was passed to meet with the Elders who could not document their ordinations with the intention of accepting them as a body. The CRE is looking at a budget of $302 thousand total with only a little over $40,000 for the CRE office and leaders. The balance of that is caught up in the missionary councils, with the ARM (Africa) budget of $143,650, according to the minutes.

The CRE had at least 4 sessions with the "quorums." (The JCRB had none) It is interesting that the CRE is still hassling over the credential guide lines—about 3 years' worth now. They are attempting now to put all information of ordinations, etc. on a data base, and if your name comes up in the future, they will feed the computer and you’re in without a hitch. They are still trying to define a “Restoration Branch” and are reaching back to the Pastors of Zion and the Joint Conference of Branches for a definition. If they continue to whittle away at it, they will find that according to that decision almost any ordination will be okay as long as it is to the office of Elder. When this was discussed, they kept going back to the 1876 Rules of Order and Debate. Their reasoning is that in this writing (1876) the Branch had the most authority. What apparently is not thought out is the fact that over the years the Church continued to grow. In the 1860’s, there were very few in the leadership positions, and on top of that there were no funds to conduct much business from headquarters. Most of these leaders were self sustaining. The leadership had to depend upon the local Presiding officers to lead the sheep. As the Church grew, so did the need to oversee the work and have more leadership from the top.

There was a mention of the fact that one branch in the state of Illinois (DeKalb) resisted the General Church authorities and refused to follow, and to cut a long story short, they got by with it as the leadership gave in. I have been looking for that in our Church History, and would like very much to make a study of that to see what this was all about. For that reason, all I can do is mention that it was mentioned. I suppose its reason was to show that the “branches” have the most authority. If this is so, then if we have 25 branches, it would stand to reason that we have 25 different heads and a whole handful of theories to sort out. Not sure what we would do with that.

One of the many prevailing formats to come from these “quorums” was the fact that each had resolutions that instructed the CRE to work with the JCRB in one way or another. One resolution came forth that stated: “Whereas, conferences that do not provide voice and vote to all members of the church are an affront to the entire body of Saints, therefore be it resolved that the CRE merge with the JCRB retaining the responsibility in education and directing the priesthood.”

{Editor’s note: we shall pause here in the Dale Volskay correspondence and continue with the balance tomorrow.}