What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday, 2/22?

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February 23, 2026

Who is responsible for your experience at Church? Is our worship passive, dependent on the skill of the speakers, musicians and those organizing the meeting? Or are each of us active participants, trying to pull worship out of what we’re given?

We claim that we go to Church to worship, but often members talk about Church like it is entertainment. I hear things like “I got bored”, “I didn’t like that talk,” “What they said was wrong,” etc. If you go to Church to worship God, why would you let these issues get in the way? Is the presentation, good or bad, why you came to Church? If you are worshiping, why would you allow the inabilities of speakers or teachers keep you from that?

The simplest model of communication consists of a speaker, a listener and a message. But when we apply this to worship, is it different? Where does God fit in that model? Is he the speaker? If so, how is he communicating and what is the message?

Sometimes, we hear that God speaks through others, if so, are we listening to that? If we are disappointed because we are expecting to be entertained, are we letting that disappointment keep us from hearing God’s messages?

Given this idea, 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 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 the spirit of 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.

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

One response to “What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday, 2/22?”

Kent Larsen

February 22, 2026
Here are a few of the things I thought about because of attending Church meetings yesterday (2/22):
- The speakers in sacrament meeting were asked to talk about studying the scriptures, and one speaker mentioned growing up with the old living scriptures set of illustrated Book of Mormon stories. I grew up with those stories also. Since these books were an adaptation of the Book of Mormon, I wondered to what degree they could be considered scripture.
  The stories were the same, and IIRC the words were very close to what was in the Book of Mormon (perhaps made simpler, I haven’t looked at them in a long time). But they left out large portions of the text, and they added images, which gave or implied certain interpretations of the Book of Mormon.
  
  If these books are not scripture, what changes made them not scripture? Is scripture in the words? In the stories? In the message? In our reactions to scripture? Or our reverence for them? When we use a different Bible translation, is it still scripture? If so, then what about a story that re-tells something from the Bible? Is that scripture? If not, then what change makes the difference?
- We sang “Lift Every Voice And Sing”, which is not in the hymnal or the new hymns provided on the app. But I was struck by how the language seemed to fit what we use in hymns. What is different in this hymn is its references to the African-American experience. But we have a lot of references in our hymns to the LDS experience, and many of the hymns we have borrowed from other traditions also have references to their experience, so why would the African-American references be a problem?
  Of course, like the musings above about what is scripture, we can ask a similar question about what is a hymn.
- Drawing on Elder Kearen’s recent conference talk, in our Elders Quorum lesson we discussed new beginnings (the concept, not the YW’s program). It occurred to me that the idea of a beginning is something contested in LDS thought. We believe in eternity, which s without beginning nor end, but we talk about new beginnings in things like baptism. In many ways our lives are full of beginnings, repeated points at which our lives change significantly. The idea of “repentance” is all about beginning again, isn’t it? So I think that it could be that eternity is actually a kind of infinite beginning, repeated change and new beginnings forever.
  So, in the eternities, will we need to accommodate ourselves to a new way of life, a new beginning? Or to the very process of change, of infinite new beginnings? I think we will have to find out when we get there.

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