Saturday night I attended a joint performance of the New York Philharmonic along with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. If you don’t know, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra plays Latin music, mostly salsa. As a result, the concert was not classical music. The concert was all salsa, played to a sold-out 3,500 seat 1920s era movie palace. And the height of the concert was a special appearance by the salsa master Rubén Blades.

The performance made me realize how much concerts like this have changed over the years. When I was growing up in the 1960s, no self-respecting orchestra would have played any kind of popular music, let alone something as foreign as salsa. That music was seen as beneath a classical orchestra (and that may still be true in some quarters, for all I know). As I grew up pops concerts became more popular, influenced by the famous Boston Pops concerts. But even those concerts weren’t quite popular music — but rather popular pieces arranged for a classical orchestra. While they were a step towards popular tastes, the music didn’t come across the same as the original popular music — something was missing.

So what does this all have to do with participating in Church? Anytime we attend or participate in a  gathering, we go with certain assumptions about what will happen. We assume that the program will follow a certain style and be expressed in a particular way. We conform to the culture. What made the concert on Saturday so different was that the New York Philharmonic conformed to the salsa culture. They approached the event with humility, allowing the Spanish Harlem Orchestra to set the cultural tone. Instead of assuming that classical music was Betty nature better, they treated salsa music with respect.

We should be doing this in church!!

And it starts on an individual level. If we assume that there is value in the way the meeting is presented to us (who, I assume, don’t have the ability to control what happens in the meeting), if we approach meetings with humility, we will learn something, and we will be inspired and uplifted by how we interpret, how we thought about and how we received what happened in Church.

So, what are you thinking in reaction to what happens in Church?

In these posts I am trying to suggest that each of us can have better experiences at Church if we take responsibility for our experiences, and if we are open to learning from what happens by pondering it — by thinking about it in many different ways. We can choose to learn and benefit from what happens regardless of whether it fits our perception of what is “good.” Thinking about our reactions and what we understand allows for revelation and for better understanding.

In this vein, I like the statement that President Hugh B. Brown made in a 1969 BYU devotional, President Hugh B. Brown declared that the Church is “not so much concerned with whether your thoughts are orthodox or heterodox as we are that you shall have thoughts.” We should be carefully considering what we hear at Church, regardless of whether what we heard is right or wrong, orthodox or heterodox. 

A lot of our thought depends on how we look at it. It is not different from what many artists figure out—they understand that how you see the  world before you is more important than what you see. You might call it ‘active listening’ or shifting perspective. It just means that you see differently. And seeing differently reveals a different world.

In my case, I tend to focus narrowly, thinking about groups of words or sentences, sometimes taking them out of context and thinking about what they say, even if the speaker didn’t intend what I heard. It’s not at all like what we’re taught in school, where the focus is on understanding accurately and completely what the speaker or text says. Its about pulling out useful or inspiring thoughts in spite of what was said.

So, if you aren’t thinking this way, maybe try it next Sunday, or the next time you are in a class or meeting. If you have already thoughts inspired by what happened at church, what are they? How did you react to what happened in Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they looking for what God had to tell you? Did your reactions make things better?

This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing a series of weekly posts that started with my post on September 25th about how we receive 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. In these posts I’m asking us all to think about how we listen and receive what happens at Church. If we only listen for mistakes, or things that bother us, what does that say about us? Is it most important to criticize others? Or to try to change ourselves?

The point here is that no matter how poorly prepared the speaker or teacher is, or no matter how what happens triggers us, or is objectively or doctrinally wrong, 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.