Criminal Stake Presidents and Leadership Failures
Salt Lake Tribune has a report today that a former Stake President in Kaysville, Utah, has been charged with using his position to trick members of his stake into giving him $1.5 million for a fraudulent investment scheme.
This story makes me sad and angry.
I am beginning to learn by sad experience that is the nature and disposition of almost all men, that as soon as they get a little authority, they will begin to exercise unrighteous dominion — I probably should have just believed Joseph Smith when he realized the same thing.
And this reminds me of the Bishops who have been accused of sexual abuse or even misuse their authority to give endorsements as was reported a month or so ago.
We have a lot of bad men in the Church of Jesus Christ. Well, maybe hold on for a second. Maybe it’s more like not a lot. Between Bishops, Stake Presidents, and their counselors, there are over 100,000 priesthood leaders in the Church. Each of these leaders makes multiple highly sensitive personal interactions every week. This means each year we are looking at millions and millions of opportunities for wrongdoing by Church leaders.
We should never be okay with bad behavior from our leaders, but as Joseph Smith noted in D&C 121, we should expect it. And while there’s no way to know for sure how we’re doing, based on the reports in the news and my personal experiences, I feel like our batting average is pretty good.
When it comes to choosing faithful Church leaders, even Jesus only went 11/12.
When it comes to church leaders, I expect that the Church will have good policies in place to help leaders be as good as they can, maybe you could even call it a handbook. And that then when leaders do screw up, I expect that justice is served like it is with this former Stake President.
I worry that based on the news cycle we may get the wrong impression about how the Church deals with leaders who make major mistakes like this former Stake President.
We often hear about Church critics being faced with Church discipline. This is because the critics are publicizing the discipline, and trying to use the fact they are being disciplined to win more people to their argument.
Since these critics are the only people who publicize their Church discipline, I think we get the skewed idea that the church primarily disciplines critics, while protecting others.
If Robert Glen Mouritsen, the former Stake President, is found guilty, I strongly suspect that he will face Church discipline. But since he has no reason to ever mention this to anybody, I also suspect that I will never know about it. And I worry that may give the impression that the Church is more tolerant of this behavior than it really is.