Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/19

Kent Larsen

•

This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit of my post on September 25th about how we can take what happens in Church meetings—sermons, lessons and anything else—and enter a conversation with them, magnifying what was said or adding what we think.

The point here is that no matter how poorly prepared the speaker or teacher is, we can still find elements in what is said and what happens that inspires and edifies us. Even if church meetings aren’t conducted in a way that reaches us, we can take responsibility and find a way to feel the spirit.

So please, write down reactions and thoughts to what happened in Church. You might keep your own ‘spiritual journal’, or, if you like, you can post your reactions below. I’m adding my own reactions and thoughts as a comment to this post — because those reactions aren’t any better than anyone else’s.

Let me emphasize that this is NOT a place to criticize what is wrong with church. The point is to post what you learned because of what happened at Church or how that led you to think. It doesn’t have to be orthodox, traditional or even on topic. Think of it in the format, “They said or did this, and I said that.” Even the things you dislike the most can be turned into lessons for what the gospel teaches we should do.

My hope is that these reactions serve as an example of a better way to treat what happens at Church instead of the perennial complaints about speaker or teacher preparation or ability, or complaints that the Church should do things differently.

Comments

3 responses to “Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/19”

  1. Kent Larsen

    Here are my reactions to yesterday’s Church meetings (10/19):

    • A speaker’s story about how mean-spirited statements from youth in a previous ward helped lead her son out of the church reminded me of my own father’s story of how fellow deacons planted a wad of gum on the crown of his head, leading him to stop going to church briefly. Somehow, despite an inactive father and little support outside of his mother, my father returned and kept going to Church. There but for the grace of God…
    • The same speaker finished her remarks on loving your neighbor with a poignant rendition of “I’m trying to be like Jesus” that left me in tears. I’m grateful for those who have tried to be like Jesus for my sake—and, as for me, well I need to keep trying…
    • Sacrament meeting finished with singing hymn #161, “Lord Be with Us,” a nice but unfamiliar (at least to me) hymn. How many hymns are like this? Will we loose them in the new hymnal because they are unfamiliar, even though they are good?
    • In Sunday School, the lesson (covering D&C 111-115) said we needed to “rise and shine”. One person commented that the shining is not us, but the light of Christ—and it occurred to me that we are then reflecting the light of Christ. So, we need to worry about our Albedo (the amount of light we reflect).
    • The teacher suggested, drawing from these sections, that we can define Zion on three axis’s: unity, holiness and care for the poor. We often borrow trouble when we don’t balance these three well.
    • The care for the poor was then discussed in the lesson. What do we mean by poor? Often, I think, our first impulse is to define it financially, especially if our financial needs are met. Shouldn’t we think about the other ways that we might be poor? And if we think about that, do we realize better what we should be doing so that there are ‘no poor among us’?
    • In this vein, what would a vow of poverty mean? That’s not really an LDS concept, but maybe thinking this way helps us with the concepts of poverty and abundance. As the teacher asked, are we team abundance or team scarcity?
    • After citing Elder Maxwell’s idea of trying to live in Zion while maintaining a summer house in Babylon, the teacher asked what our ‘summer house in Babylon’ looked like? And, (giving it a New York twist) was the summer house rent controlled?

    What happened in your congregation? What are your reactions?

  2. Jonathan Green

    Yesterday was the parent’s council meeting for Sunday School. The teacher/Sunday School president’s lesson was on the role of music and Primary songs, which he presented while the practice for the Primary program was happening on the other side of the divider from us. Then we discussed other pressing issues, mostly related to inactive children. It was a nice environment for some honest discussion.

  3. RLD

    A speaker gave a talk on the Book of Mormon that would have warmed President Benson’s heart, even though the speaker was born well after President Benson’s death. It’s good to see younger generations picking up the same fire.

    In Sunday School the teacher put up a list of prominent members in the period between the dedication of the Kirtland temple and the exodus from Missouri, noting how many of them left the Church, and suggested they all had legitimate reasons for doing so. He focused on Oliver Cowdery and Thomas B. Marsh, in particular that the latter didn’t leave over milk strippings (which kind of misses the point of the milk strippings story, but I digress). I was afraid he was going to go down the “Marsh was a hero of non-violence” route, but he finished the story, including the inflammatory and wildly exaggerated if not just plain false letter that Marsh and Orson Hyde sent to Governor Boggs, which basically prompted the Extermination Order. The moral of the story: yes, there are problems in the Church and leaders make mistakes, but nursing resentment and anger over them will destroy you. Which is actually a really good point. He ended with his testimony of the peace that being in the Church brings him despite his doubts and struggles.