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Listen, as a girl who once attended a protestant and mildly holy-roller church, I can’t help but cringe. The fact that the LDS Church never pulled this crap helped lure me in.

The looks on the kids’ faces…their robotic reactions and the *horrific* songs just make me want to nevereverever let my children attend a youth event when they get older. It’s hypnotic, and not in a good way.

It’s frightening really. They just need a mass saving, a mass “laying on of hands” to save someone from some ailment to make this more on pointe.

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I think Sister Dalton hasn’t adapted well. She’s still talking in her “Conference voice”: “Wwweee wwant to personally welcome eeach and every one of you… where ever you are.” It just doesn’t work without a podium.

Bro. Dalquist’s shouting enthusiasm, even though it’s kind of corny and strained, works better. She should have gone for something like that, or just gone for a casual style and talked like a normal person.

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Hmm, I’m not sure elaborate choreographed musical numbers are exactly anything new in Mormonism. I mean let’s face it, for a church that hates teh gays Mormons sure do love elaborate musical numbers. And I agree, this is more High School Musical than Lakewood Church. Most mega churches are less dorky frankly.

True, the number itself seemed pretty Mormon. I’ve never seen a megachurch service, so I can’t tell if they’re this dorky or not.

I mean what’s a general authority without a gigantic podium pimped out with floral arrangements, no authority at all that’s what.

lol, so true. I knew there was something weirdly incongruous about this program…

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This has such a top-down one-directional-communication feel to it. So much of what’s fun for young people these days is all about being able to give feedback and producing your own fun stuff to share. And my own positive memories of Mormonism generally revolve around the opportunities to organize things and be creative. Even if the result was often as dorky as this, there’s the fun of “my friends and I created it,” which they don’t get from sitting in the audience of a mass-production. I’m sure I’m just being an old carmudgen (“in my day…” ), but if this is progressive, I’m not convinced they’re progressing in the right direction. And the site Jonathan linked to looks totally corporate to me, like a slick advertising campaign.

If they’re lucky, young people will find this fun and cool, but it’s notoriously difficult for adults to dictate to kids what they should like and think is cool. It reminds me of how the LDS church leaders set up the “grassroots” organization for Proposition 8 — there are some types of human interaction that just don’t work as well in top-down only mode.

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Let’s get one thing straight — this is not your daddy’s Mormonism. I think this is the best proof yet that the old guard has failed its quest for ushering-in the millennium and the church is now settling-in for the long haul.

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