Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 11/23

Kent Larsen

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How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently?

Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical?

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 — instead of as a part of this post, because my 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 or your fellow congregants. The point is to post what you learned because of what happened at Church or how that led you to think. It’s about the good things we can get out of Church, not the negative things that disturbed or upset us. It doesn’t have to be orthodox, traditional or even on topic.

If you like, make your response in the format, “They said or did this, and I said or thought 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, 11/23”

  1. Kent Larsen

    Here are my reactions to yesterday’s Church meetings (11/23):

    • During one of the hymns I began to wonder who we sing for. Yes, hymns are a kind of prayer to God, a way of worshiping Him. But they are also for us, aren’t they? They help us feel something, making a connection to God that is helpful in life. I think much of our worship is like this—on the surface a way to worship God, but also a benefit to us spiritually.
    • One speaker, talking about gratitude because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US this week, talked about anxiety for blessings, needing to metaphorically go to the ‘vending machine’ time after time to get needed blessings. The speaker implied that this wasn’t a good idea, especially without gratitude. I also wonder about that pattern—what do we learn and how do we progress if we are dependent on blessings to solve our problems? Perhaps this is one reason why blessings seem resistant to simple formulas.
    • Like many sacrament meetings, yesterday’s included the regular movement of people in and out as they went to the bathroom, took care of children, or whatever else. I know this sometimes annoys others, but it occurred to me that it is kind of a dance, a work of art created anew each Sunday. I’d like to figure out what it means, if anything.
    • In Elders Quorum one brother kept interrupting the lesson with MAGA-inspired political statements that seemed off-topic at least. He prefaced his comments by saying that he felt like an outsider in the ward—a blue-collar man in a ward of educated professionals. As a visitor to the ward, I couldn’t help but wonder what drove the comments. My friend who lived in the ward said this brother had never expressed himself like that in Church before. Yes, I know that the statements would seem ‘inappropriate’ to most church members, even if they agreed with him. But if he doesn’t communicate what he feels, where will he be able to say it? And to the extent that his views are incorrect (we all have views like this), where else will he have anyone to talk to so that he can figure that out?
  2. Jonathan Green

    I think it’s generally better for people to share their authentic sorrow and joy at church, including when the sorry or joy is caused by political developments, even if they haven’t found a 100% trouble-free way to express it.

    I’m organizing the ward Christmas dinner and coordinating a few other things, which means a critical time for me is the 10 minutes before, after, and in between meetings. I have a list of people I need to check with, who I mostly failed to find before they left, but I did get a chance for a good conversation with someone from last week’s list.

  3. RLD

    One of our speakers riffed on Elder Uchtdorf’s likening discipleship to developing talents to talk about his contrasting experiences with playing the piano and cooking. He learned to play the piano as a child, but his parents had to push him to practice and eventually gave up. He regrets not being able to play very well, but recognizes it is the result of his choices. (This is all very familiar to me.) By contrast, he got interested in cooking on his own, has spent countless hours watching instructional videos and trying various experiments, keeps getting better and better, and loves every minute of it.

    Our discipleship may start like a child being pushed to learn to play the piano, but eventually needs to shift into something we choose for ourselves and do with enthusiasm.