Peter Davidson is not his real name...and yet he, himself, is as average a member in a big metropolitan Utah community. He is faithful to a fault--and so are his wife and kids. He's a leader--and worked his way up from the day he bought his house in the suburbs and he did it by creatively saying NO to most things.
Mormons call it Vitamin N--
Parents work to apply it by stopping outrageous creativity, even if they discourage initiative .
Church leaders apply it by watching their membership gently and curbing excesses
Oh, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of creativity going on in metropolitan Mormondom. Creative dating, for example. Our son got a big block of ice on the lawn with an invitation to a girl's choice prom mixer carefully crafted and slipped into a transparent baggie. We all had fun holding the big two foot block of ice under hot water until we had chippe out the message, red it with curiosity and decoded it enough to know the neighbor girl who had creatively invited our son to "Sadie Hawkins"
You see it's hard to parent under any circumstances--but in most corners of the known Kingdom, Mormon parents are enlightened. As long as he creativity is "acceptable" the naysayers can relax the naysaying and everybody's happy.
Actually Brother Petersen got where he is by holding the line on administrative excesses inside the Kingdom among the faithful and keeping the lid on according to his enlightened view of "propriety"
The righteous "No" in just the right setting with the tenacity to make it stick, signals a promising innovator to the guardians of the Kingdom. Making budgets stretch is only part of it. A young Elder's Quorum President who has just the right balance of leadership and holding the line--in no time a well balanced leader can rise steadily higher and acquire a little more responsiblity.
By the time I heard about Daniel Petersen he was making a quiet name for himself on a Stake High Council gently but firmly bucking the system with a well reasoned argument and always scripture to back his conclusions. Fellow naysayers cheered him on (without being obvious about it, but the odd hand shake and pat on the back after ground gained.
Oh, yes--a bright young naysayer will rise in the kingdom. A Mormon Leader like Gordon B. Hinckley or Thomas S. Monsen is a balanced product of the system--obedient, even innovative when the necessity demands, but never taking a risk to innovate beyond established guidelines. Always deferential to senior priesthood, quietly learning the system, gradually being given more and more responsibility to preside by senior brethren with the hope that the traditions would be observed.
Gordon B. Hinckley became THE prophet at a time when the Mormon Church was experiencing a growth surge that required innovation, creative thinking well beyond the administrations of his predecessors. The massive Conference Center, the expansion of the Quorums of the Seventy to administer more than 15 million members and beyond; The innovative design of the Hong Kong Temple, the elimination of the auxiliary budgets of the church and depending on Tithing alone--all these innovations demanded superior leadership by a man who had been a careful student of the process.
Daniel Petersen knew a lot about process, rules, regulations, obedience and a careful knack for knowing just when to apply the right amount of pressure to a lazy colleague's half baked plans to send them back to the drawing board--likely indefinitely.
He never had the blockbuster . He loved church sports and the historic TREK experience that gave young people a chance to literally walk where the Willey Handcart Company froze to death in 184?. When a member of the revered Highest Councils of the Church came to address his grand daughter's fireside, he called on Brother Petersen to educate the congregation and thanked him with a good natured, smack on the knee as the two sat together during the postlude. Daniel Petersen had adroitly sucked up to the highest--and that couldn't have hurt him in his High Council skirmishes the next week His positive interest had coincided with his naysaying ability--and his timing couldn't have been better--TREK coincided with the sesquicentennial of the Days of '47.
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