Presiding vs. conducting

[gkearney]

Here is an interesting question the 12 year olds asked last Sunday.

We have all seen the situation in which the Bishop, for example, is presiding but someone else, generally a councillor, is conducting.

So the question that was asked is can the Bishop ask anyone to conduct a Sacrament or other meeting? Could he, for example, have a Sacrament meeting conducted by a woman, or one of the youth so long as he, the Bishop, was present and presiding over the meeting?

My partner in teaching these young people and I said we would look into the matter.

I suspect I know what many of you would think of this but I figured I would ask anyway. LDSFF is my check against my generally liberal interpretations of thing like this.

Greg

[inho]

I would say that in principle yes, but in practice no.

Here are the relevant quotations from Handbook 2:

18.1
The presiding officer may conduct a meeting or ask a counselor or someone else to conduct it under his or her direction.

(emphasis mine)

Notice that there is no mention of the requirement to have some certain calling or priesthood office. However, this is about meetings in general, including those meetings which are not normally presided by a priesthood holder or not necessarily even by an auxiliary president.

18.2
The bishop oversees ward meetings. He presides at these meetings unless a member of the stake presidency, an Area Seventy, or a General Authority attends. His counselors may conduct ward meetings and may preside if he is absent.
...
If the bishop and his counselors are all absent, the stake president designates who presides at sacrament meeting. Normally he designates the high priests group leader, but he could authorize another priesthood holder instead.

Notice that SP can authorize a priesthood holder to preside sacrament meeting, if none of the bishopric is present.

[gkearney]

That is fine and I understand how all of the presiding part works, I once had to preside over a sacrament meeting when the whole branch presidency was out of town leaving me, the Elders Quorum President, to preside over the meeting.

However that is not the question being asked by my class. They assumed that there would be a priesthood presiding authority present at the meeting and wanted to know if that presiding officer is free to choose anyone he wishes to to conduct the meeting even if that person has only the Aaronic priesthood (youth) or is not ordained at all (a woman or girls). In effect they're asking if conducting a meeting, and in this case they were talking about sacrament meeting in particular, requires priesthood.

The way the handbook is writen I would have to say that yes, so long as there is a presiding priesthood authority in attendance then he is free to choose anyone to conduct the meeting. That conducting and presiding are not at all related to one another outside of the fact that the presiding officer can choose who should conduct.

[inho]

True, what I quoted from 18.2 does not say anything about conducting. However, one should also consider this:

18.2.2
Members of the bishopric plan sacrament meetings and conduct them in a reverent and dignified manner.

Does that mean that only if a member of the bishopric should be reverent or does it mean that only a member of the bishopric should conduct and do it reverently?

Handbook also says that if a sacrament meeting is hold in an unusual situation outside the meeting house, only a priesthood holder may conduct.

My reading of the current policies is that, it wouldn't be appropriate to have whosoever to conduct a sacrament meeting. But there is nothing doctrinal about it, it is just the way we do things. And Lord would be also pleased if it were differently.

[kittycat51]

Women conduct the General Women's conference meeting under the Presiding authority of the first Presidency each April and October. (Now only to be October) But I guess it's not the same as a Sacrament meeting?