Your Power is Your Own
In the Mormon church, the bishop is the leader of a congregation, and members tend to revere the bishop just like they revere any other leader. While perhaps not placing them on a pedestal as high as the upper church leaders and church president, they still view the bishop as the representative of God among the ward, or congregation.
They also tend to believe the bishop has supernatural spiritual powers above those of the other ward members. This tends to lead people to be nervous around the bishop, or it leads them to think the bishop has some sort of special insight that he doesn’t actually have.
Because of his position, when the bishop asks someone to do something there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to do it, whatever it is. People willingly give their power away to this church leader, believing whatever he says, doing whatever he says, and treating him with greater reverence than people of other faiths even tend to treat their priests.
The trick though, the thing to remember, is the bishop’s only authority is administrative. He has no special spiritual authority. He has the same authority as any middle-manager in any corporation, and that’s it. Which means, other than being able to handle administrative tasks, he has no power. Which means, he has no power over you. Your power is your own.
If you attend the LDS church for the community, or to keep a family member happy, or something similar, there is no reason to agree to whatever the bishop asks you to do. If he or one of the other church representatives asks you to do something and you don’t want to, you can do what’s right for you and politely turn them down.
They may try to make it sound as if they received some sort of revelation indicating that you should volunteer for whatever position they want you to volunteer for, but of course that’s not the case. They might want to call you in for a special meeting, causing you to take time out of your schedule, so you can talk with them about it face-to-face in the hopes that will make it more difficult for you to say no, but remember, you own your power. They do not.
It’s no different than if some other random person asked you to do something for them. You might decide to do it just to be nice, but you have no obligation to, spiritual or otherwise.
If they or anyone from the church asks you to do something you don’t want to do, or asks you to do something that makes you uncomfortable, you can, and should, say no. The decision isn’t theirs to make on your behalf.
Your power is your own.