Are you asking men to confess to “polishing with pleasure” in their adolescence? You might just use the well-established statistic that 95% of young men did, and the other 5% are lying.

The concern about emotion and the Spirit is very valid. I honestly don’t think most members of the Church can tell the difference.

Never went to either PWP or EFY, although I love the name Polish with Pleasure – that is hilarious…

I often hear this criticism (re. emotional experiences vs spiritual experiences) levelled at youth conferences and also missionaries. I look back at my youth and to a lesser extent my mission and cringe at how emotional I was and how often I must have confused emotion and Spirit. But I wonder if these emotional experiences may be part of the development process in learning to feel and recognize the Spirit. For sure our youth and new members need to move beyond emotional experiences, but does anyone else think they may serve a preparatory purpose? Or am I just trying to make excuses for crying too often when I was younger?

I wonder if there are a fair number of kids who come away with emotional experiences they’ve mistaken for spiritual experiences

Just kids? I know a large number of adults who can’t tell the difference.

I’ve never experienced EFY or Polish With Pleasure (which I’ve never heard of before today), because I agree with your very point that it becomes too emotionally charged, TMI (too much information). The beauty of General Conference, as a counter, is that you get a spiritual feast that lasts a long time. You remember more the substance of a General Conference talk than you do the yippity energy of an EFY type experience.

Gomez,

I think emotional experiences serve a purpose and cannot be categorized as entirely counterproductive. Sometimes they are the only hook you have to getting the attention of youth, although experience would probably show that they are not sustaining motivators for good behavior. So I think you’re right, to an extent. The key is having something substantive back up the attention getting device.

BTD Greg: Very good that you were able to recognize it for what it was. I don’t think many kids do.

Ellsworth: Yes, I think I’ll rely on the statistic. Although if anyone is anxious to confess, please feel free. This is a safe place.

gomez and nasamomdele: The emotional hook as an attention-getting device is interesting. I think the problem is that it rarely gets backed up with substance. After all, my audience is crying about this very moving story so they must be feeling the Spirit. My tear-jerker IS my substance.

However, now that I have kids I feel a little less inclined to judge EFY, et al. so harshly. If I have a wayward kid who goes to EFY, I’d prefer her to have a genuine spiritual experience. But if she walks away with an emotional experience that she thinks is a spiritual experience and it persuades her to keep going to church where (hopefully) she will learn to have genuine spiritual experiences, I kind of think I’d be content to let the end justify the means.

MAC: LOL

cmhd: PwP alum in the house! Great to hear from you. I remember taking a survey at the end of the program that asked, among other things, what we thought of the program’s name. Even then I was embarrassed by it. Someone must have been seriously attached to the alliteration, which apparently overrode any consideration of double entendres. I wonder what a better name could have been? Etiquette with Energy? Manners with Mirth?

Not only do I think that many LDS can’t tell the difference between emotional and spiritual experiences, I’ll take it one step further.

I think there are quite a number of people who purposefully TEACH that emotional=spiritual.

I am much to old to have attended either PWP or EFY, but my three daughters did attend EFY and enjoyed it for the social interaction (the boys, mostly).

I did enjoy Behive Camp as a twelve-year-old, but it was more of an outdoor learning experience than a spiritual or emotional experience. The best thing it did for me was give me confidence in my own abilities and help me see some positive aspects to being female (growing up in a mostly male household, this was an issue for me).

The type of emotional manipulation that has been discussed is what I have seen at YW camps in recent year, where I have attended several Friday night campfire/testimony meetings that made me very uncomfortable. I know that some girls’ lives have been changed for the better at these camps, but I think we do a disservice to our youth when we give them emotional cupcakes in place of spiritual meat. They are capable of understanding, and need, so much more.

I just finished being an adult chaperone at a multi-stake Youth Conference. 600 kids from 3 states, 2 1/2 days on a university campus. It was woefully understaffed, but no major catastrophes happened.(God does answer prayers)
It was promoted as an awesome event, it featured a name brand LDS, EFY type speaker,entertainment, etc. It was expensive, and quite professional.
Unfortunately, it was the same format of YC I had 25 years ago as a youth. I don’t think it came close to meeting the real life needs of youth today. It was completely superfical. It didn’t even have a service project!!
I was disappointed as an adult, and found several of the jokes told to the kids by the “famous” EFY guy were in definately poor taste. Or maybe I am just sensitive because I am a girl…Oh yeah, that’s right. At this YC ALL the speakers were men. The one woman participating had the job of organizing a youth choir to sing a hymn.
Luckily, she did a good enough job that all the men speakers complemented her “hard efforts” to get 30 kids who were already in various school choirs, to sound so good, singing a hymn they have heard and sung since toddlerhood. Thank goodness she wasn’t assigned something that she really could mess up.

I always thought of EFY as being for those kids who came from areas where the Church was not well established or lacked a critical mass of youth. I would really question why some kid from the Wasatch front would want to go camp out at BYU for a week.

For those kids who haven’t had the experience of seeing the full programs of the Church the reactions I have heard have always been very positive. It may not provide a spiritual experience, but my impression was always that it increased the potential for a significant spiritual boost for that population that spends every Sunday looking at the same two other kids their age.

Hello,
I just discovered this blog via google’s recommendation and couldn’t help chiming in, especially given the questions about alternative names. I was almost a Polish with Pleasure Alum, but when I went the name had just been changed to A Time for Youth. I suppose the logic was that something that generic couldn’t have other meanings.

For the most part I enjoyed the camp. I was one of those small southern town, only two Mormons in school types, so the social aspects were nice. And they were a lot less rigorous about enforcing the Book of Mormon width during dances, which was a plus. I remember one disappointment was that one night we were taught theater ettiquette and the chosen venue was a Michael McClean pseudo-musical. I didn’t particularly mind Michael McClean music, but that didn’t qualify as “real” theater in my mind.

As a side note, one of the presentations was a John Bytheway talk in which he imagined us all sitting around the afterlife talking about when we lived. When it came our turn to share and we said we were from this era, he imagined that everyone would get quiet and have a general “wow” reaction. Nothing particularly offensive in the way he presented at the time, but I remember that later my parents bought me the talk on tape version and that section wasn’t on it. I’ve always wondered…

Togore, my older brother sends his kids to EFY, and he calls it “the best testimony money can buy.” You have to go back to Nehor to find an accurate account of someone so effective at selling God and religious experiences to an hapless, easilty manipulatable congregation.

But if it will give the kids a testimony, and all I have to do is write a check, then sign me up! (It sounds a lot easier than years and years of family home evening.)

Apropos of nothing, here’s my one comment on the Polish/Polish dilemma, taken verbatim from a Daily Universe headline of about 6 years ago:

Center Helps Students’ Polish Language Skills

Some very officious copy editor inserted an unnecessary apostrophe there, but I do think some of the blame belongs to the article’s writer who MUST have been aware of the unfortunate collision of homophones.

I smile patronizingly to myself about my EFY experience now… but it was definitely a positive influence at the time. And hey, I am all about anything that keeps the youth of the church from doing anything too stupid until they are old enough to fully comprehend its stupidity – like naming a club or retreat “Polish with Pleasure,” for example.

lominare,

I’m responding very late, but for what it’s worth, our ward recently received a letter from the First Presidency denouncing such stories of the afterlife. There was also an article in the Church News some months back.

I think just enjoy the event and just don’t mind all the negative things you got from the got and just absorbs the good attitude you know it’s best for you.

I think emotional experiences serve a purpose and cannot be categorized as entirely counterproductive. Sometimes they are the only hook you have to getting the attention of youth, although experience would probably show that they are not sustaining motivators for good behavior. Thank you for the idea that you share.

This is great article. I think emotional experiences serve a purpose and cannot be categorized as entirely counterproductive. Sometimes they are the only hook you have to getting the attention of youth, although experience would probably show that they are not sustaining motivators for good behavior.

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