Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 10/26

Kent Larsen

•

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

2 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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.