Just yesterday I was talking with a friend about Pres. Oaks’ devious plan. About the same hour we were talking, the Deseret News published an interview with Pres. Oaks where he laid out the plan openly, so it is not a devious plan anymore. It is a revealed plan.

For the last twenty years Dallin H. Oaks has been concerned about the future demographics of the church. Around 2007 he presided my stake’s conference, and told us (paraphrasing from memory), “I was recently visiting a stake in England. That stake had a hundred children in the Primary. A hundred children for the whole stake. You know what that means. That stake is in liquidation.” In 2005 in a fireside broadcast for young adults, Oaks famously counseled single men to spend time alone with women, laid out three P’s of dating (Planned ahead, Paid for, and Paired Off), and gave other advise on laying out a path to courtship. (“Dating versus Hanging Out”) Two years ago he gave such counsel to a new generation of young singles. (May 2023 Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults)

For his first address to the Church in General Conference following the death of Pres. Nelson, his topic was “The Family-Centered Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The Church of Jesus Christ is sometimes known as a family-centered church. It is!
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Despite that doctrinal context, there is opposition. In the United States we are suffering from a deterioration in marriage and childbearing. For nearly a hundred years the proportion of households headed by married couples has declined, and so has the birthrate. The marriages and birthrates of our Church members are much more positive, but they have also declined significantly. It is vital that Latter-day Saints do not lose their understanding of the purpose of marriage and the value of children.

Going back to 2013, after 19-year-old women began entering missionary service, I observed more flirty banter when elders and sisters serving in my area were together. My youngest son began serving as a missionary a month ago. Something that he found awkward in his first week in the field was how much the elders talked about the sisters. He thought that aspect of life was supposed to be on hold during this consecration to full-time ministry, and he didn’t yet have any experience with his fellow missionaries to put any departures from ideal into perspective.

Still, it left me wondering. My son told me of daily morning exercise in a community gym. “That sounds beneficial for all of you. It’s you, your companion, and the other companionship you’re living with?” “Yes, and the two sister missionaries in our district.”

Today is my son’s birthday, and last night a member of the branch where he is serving had the missionaries over for a birthday cake, and very kindly sent me a video of singing and blowing out candles and views all around of that district of four elders and two sisters. It was uplifting to watch.

From the Church’s Newsroom site, Pres. Oaks explains:

I think it will increase their time for planning their lives, whether they use their possibility to serve a mission or whether they plan their lives in other directions. It simply increases the options. I also hope that it will reduce the age of marriage. In the time that we have lowered the age for young men and for young women in the past, we’ve seen an increase in people who meet someone in the mission field and marry them, which is perfectly appropriate if it doesn’t start too early in their missionary service. I think it’s part of the Lord’s plan to overcome the tendency of waiting until the late 20s to have a first marriage. I think we will see a reduction in the age of marriages for Latter-day Saints

One note from conversation with my 16-year-old daughter: The word “dating” is no longer a useful label for the paired social activity young men and women should participate in together as prelude to courtship in the near or farther future. It alternatively connotes either being in a relationship or being several decades old-fashionedly out-of-date. Like when Cary Grant in 1959’s “North by Northwest” flirts across the dining car table with Eva Marie Saint, “The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.” I don’t know of better labels already in use. I think “invites” and “inviting out” may work in place of “dates” and “dating.”