Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/26

Kent Larsen

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What did you notice in Church yesterday? How did you react? Think differently?

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

8 responses to “Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/26”

  1. Kent Larsen

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

    • We had Stake Conference, and the process of sustaining votes for all the officers took a long time. I think it might be longer in Stake Conference than it is in General Conference or in Ward Conference. And for many locations, like ours, it is complicated by names from different languages. The counselor reading the names handled it well, stumbling over some names, of course.
    • The Stake Presidency First Counselor spoke. He is recovering from the discovery of a brain tumor 11 weeks ago, and currently can’t raise his right hand all the way without using his left to assist. His story is quite moving.
    • A couple of the speakers apologized in advance because they tend to cry in their talks. I don’t think it’s necessary to apologize for emotion — is anyone really put out by sincere emotion? OTOH, I must admit to crying myself, sometimes at odd times when it doesn’t really make sense.
    • One of the rest hymns was “As I have loved you”, sung in the four different languages in our stake (English, Spanish, Chinese and ASL). While I’ve seen conferences sing together in multiple languages, this time we sang the hymn serially, in one language after another. I kind of liked that approach, since it let each language be the focus in turn — of course time only permitted one verse in each language…
    • A primary member who spoke used the phrase “I’ve come to know Jesus by the stories we’ve shared.” That might seem like a mundane statement, but I think there is a world of meaning there. In fact, for most of us that is the main way we come to know Jesus — by reading and sharing stories about him. And I don’t think that the stories even need to be about him — we can come to know Jesus by stories that help us understand His teachings and values.
    • Another speaker spoke about accepting a calling and ‘surrendering my will to our Heavenly Father.’ For me this raises the question of what are callings for? Are they about us at all? Are they about those who we are serving? We often assume that a calling is about having someone competent to do a job, as if it is employment. But that seems like a simplistic view of callings.
    • The closing prayer was by someone from the ASL branch, signing the prayer, and it was not interpreted. A signed prayer changes how it is received (seen instead of heard, so eyes not closed). I don’t know offhand if the handbook says anything about it, but I guess prayers are usually not interpreted to other languages, or are they? Regardless, its interesting to experience prayer in a different way…
  2. Jonathan Green

    I don’t think prayers were interpreted when I was living in a bilingual stake, although talks in conference were translated sentence-by-sentence by a translator standing next to the speaker.

    Going along with the Come Follow Me lesson on Liberty Jail, a bishopric member talked about something very simple that brought him the solace he needed during a moment of despair and misery.

  3. Fiona

    This week was the Primary Sacrament meeting for my oldest daughter’s ward in another state. One of the wonderful things to come out of the Covid lockdowns is that I can watch my grandchildren perform in church even though I live far away.

    The theme of their presentation was The Light of Christ, and all of the children were dressed in white or yellow. I really liked that. They have a very small Primary, so all of the children had at least 4 parts to recite or read. This is my granddaughter’s last year in Primary, so it was extra special. She sang a solo and sounded like an angel.

    I talked to my daughter later and apparently their ward is even smaller than it appeared – they had children from other units helping out, which I never heard of but I kind of loved that too.

    This is the best time of the year for Sacrament meetings. I’ve seen four this fall – my children/grandchildren’s wards and my own.

  4. Curtis Pew

    My ward is the ASL magnet ward for our area. I believe everything is translated except the Sacrament prayers, where one of the priests offers the prayer in ASL simultaneously with the spoken prayer by one of the other priests.

  5. John Taber

    This last Sunday started with us picking up a mother and two children, rather haphazardly. We went to the house, knock, rang, called, and texted, and waited for about fifteen minutes. While we were heading to church, the mother called back and said they were ready. So we went back to pick them up, and then went on to the meetinghouse.

    Ward business included a new Relief Society presidency. So after the sacrament and before the first speaker, the outgoing RS president was invited to bear her testimony. That and two longish talks made us run over ten to fifteen minutes. One verse of the rest hymn was sung as the closing hymn. (I’m not sure if someone got bumped.)

    Before Elders’ Quorum started, our (relatively new) bishop stuck his head in the door, so I briefly told him about problems I’m having with Sunday School. (More on that later.)

    Elders’ Quorum was on “Feeding the Sheep”, but we only got through two paragraphs because we were short on time. I did interject about the need for accurate membership records. (You can take me out of the clerks’ office after twenty-plus years, but . . . )

    About half an hour later was our weekly baptismal service. The new convert was baptized by a ward member (usually it’s an Elder) and this time the ward mission leader (who plans every service down to the T including confirmations) was the voice himself for that, and he invited every MP holder to stand in. (Not many did, I did not.) During the downtime I talked with the outgoing RS president and her counselor about the state of the ward mission program, given how many converts we’ve had in the last two years or so.

    The mother who we’d picked up had asked us to take them to a real estate appointment after the baptism. We were willing to do that, but the bishop pulled me into his office to talk about my Sunday School concerns. We’re severely understaffed (because of so many teachers getting other callings), and it looks like I have to replace the second counselor. (Said counselor is a stroke survivor and has been less and less functional over the years. We talked about him a little bit.) Fortunately the bishopric is getting together Wednesday night to get these slots filled.

    Of course, my wife and this family were waiting in our minivan the whole time. (I’d found out later that Alisa had tried to call me three times, but my phone was on “do not disturb”.) We went out to the real estate appointment, and after that stopped at the stake center (not our current building) to show the family. The mother (Stephanie) didn’t want to go in, because she didn’t know if they were going to be moving, etc.

    So we took them home and dropped them off, and then drove the mile or so home. Alisa and Stephanie talked the whole way there and back about the Church and what it means, etc. It turned out the family is being baptized this next Sunday. Alisa did help Stephanie download Gospel Library on her phone.

    The fact that we were picking anyone up at all was because the day before, said RS first counselor told us just how stretched out the ward was giving a ride to every friend and new convert who wanted/needed one. (Most of them do not drive for whatever reason.) So Alisa volunteered us.

  6. RLD

    Sacrament speakers were a young grad student couple who just moved into the ward. He talked about how when he was ten, he started paying tithing on his paper route money and immediately got tips that more than made up for it. His ten-year-old conclusion: “tithing is awesome!” He drew on that a couple of months ago when he looked at his last paycheck and compared their bank account to their possible moving expenses. Clicking the donate button was painful, but he did it and they were blessed: their three-day drive across the country went perfectly, and then his car broke down shortly after their arrival when they could afford to be without it for a while.

    It’s remarkable to me how often the Lord uses tithing to help young people, or people who are young in the gospel, develop faith in him (“prove me now herewith”). Then he sometimes tests that faith later by letting them struggle financially even though they continue to pay tithing.

    EQ lesson was on Elder Gong’s “No One Sits Alone” talk. One man shared how in their last ward he and his wife had been getting frustrated that no one was reaching out and fellowshipping them, but decided that they would do the reaching out. Then they quickly found that the ward was full of great people. This tied into an observation I read later that the Book of Mormon describes the Church as a small group of ministers and a much larger group of people being ministered too, but in the dispensation of the fullness of time we’re all ministers even though we need to be ministered to as well. Often those happen sequentially: today I bring you a casserole; tomorrow you bring me one. But sometimes they happen simultaneously: if I take it upon myself to ensure that no one sits alone, I’ll never sit alone either.

  7. LHL

    I particularly liked the Hymns we sang as a congregation; they were some of the older Hymns – perhpas even some that had been used by other Christian denominations for many decades. (I particularly like the old ones. I (we) greatly appreciated taking the Sacrament as well.

    As for the talks – well, they were the standard, fairly scripted, in the boundaries, culturally acceptable…..entirely banal…speeches. I sure wish there were some way to break this habit.

  8. Lisa

    We had testimony meeting due to next week being stake conference. I had been praying about several significant concerns within my family during the week prior. I have a teenage son with level 1 autism and anxiety who struggles to participate in church, and I have been at a loss to figure out why, whether it’s sensory or anxiety-related or more of a spiritual concern. I am the organist have a perfect view of the sacrament table from the organ. I looked across and saw the young men standing to receive the trays and my immediate thought was, “Why isn’t my son up there with them?” I didn’t wonder this so much in a frustrated way as in just a curious but very heartfelt way. And then came the answer to my week’s prayers as the spirit whispered to me, “He doesn’t have a testimony.” It was so interesting to me how the answer I had been seeking came during such a routine moment. I understood that while the other issues (anxiety and autism-related) probably are at play, if my son had a burning testimony it might give him the drive to keep engaging with church despite his other obstacles. This answer gives me a focus, a place to start in trying to help him.

    Then, we had three testimonies in a row that were about the power of reading the Book of Mormon. I have had several promptings over the past few weeks that I need to set a goal to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. I have been ignoring and procrastinating these impressions. I would rather read the Bible than the Book of Mormon. And I don’t like theses kinds of challenges or “programs” for scripture reading. But when three people bore testimony of this very thing I’d been feeling prompted about, I knew the Spirit was speaking to me.

    Finally, in Relief Society I made a comment on the lesson that led a woman who I did not really know to speak to me after class, and it turns out we are both dealing with very similar situations parenting adult children with mental illness. I feel like I have a new ally and friend. I had felt impressed to make my comment and she told me she had been planning to leave after sacrament meeting, but something told her to stay for Relief Society. I think we were meant to meet and connect.

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