My wife told a bishop she would think about a calling once. He almost fell out of his chair. He assumed she would blindly accept because, as you said, she was being “called of God” to do this “wonderful work”. I forget if she ever did it.
When she was approached about Young Women’s last year, she told her current bishop the same thing. He didn’t seem surprised. The ward she’s in has big problems with the kids and the adults and it’s noticeable.
The adults rarely perform the callings as intended and many of the kids are ambivalent/apathetic about most of it. She accepted, but only after we had discussed it at some length.
Since then, she has changed her presidency twice because the adults weren’t willing to do things as intended. The stress this is putting on her is beginning to show.
The kids are dropping out like flies because she’s making an effort to run it properly and they don’t like it. They want a social club.
Wow. That is a problem.
My last ward, I was called to Primary and when I said I wouldn’t take it, I was pretty much considered ‘inactive’ by the ward (I wasn’t at that point), they dropped me like nothing and I decided, well if they are going to treat me like am inactive, I might as well be inactive. I was still researching the LDS church to prove the ‘antis’ wrong and figured I would eventually go back.
Then my roommate got the same calling and one Sunday (a couple of months later) she was going to be out of town she asked me to teach her class.
The lesson was on the “first vision” and I knew that day I was leaving the LDS. I couldn’t teach the lesson, I just could not tell those kids lies. So I ran down, made an excuse about ‘not being prepared’ (although I had), made some copies of a coloring sheet with Jesus on it and had the kids color the whole class.
That was almost 20 years ago and I have not been to an LDS Sunday service since then .