Good Thing at Church Today

I’m glad you had a good Sunday. It is always nice when the leadership recognizes the effort people put in. For me I either enjoy or endure Sundays – this one was more of an endure, but the sisters did do another great job with the brunch they serve the priesthood for Father’s Day.

It was Father’s Day and High Council Sunday. Funny we can’t ever skip High Council Sunday.

Interesting, because the handbook says high council speakers every month are not necessary. From the handbook (15.3.1):

The stake presidency may assign high councilors to represent them by speaking in sacrament meetings and other settings. The stake presidency determines the frequency of these speaking assignments. It is not necessary for high councilors to speak in sacrament meeting every month.

Our stake does not have HC speakers for five months of the year (except sometimes in branches). June, because of Father’s Day, is one of those months. The others are April and October (GC), March (SC), and December.

mom3, I’m glad your experience was good. I guess this serves to underscore that “any given Sunday” it can either be good or bad, depending partly on the content of the talks and partly on what we bring with us.

My Sacrament Meeting was one of the worst in memory, and I thought about leaving. We had a talk on the Priesthood and a HC talk on the Sacrament. The woman who spoke on the priesthood actually did pretty well, but the topic was just awkward. She did include admonitions for priesthood holders to remember the significance of their offices, etc, etc. It’s been something that has always been true as long as I can remember: on Mother’s Day we hear talks about how great moms are… and on Father’s Day we hear reminders that dads need to do better. At least that is my perspective. The HC gave great information about the Sacrament, like when or when not to take it, water or wine, renewing covenants, but there was no spirit, emotion, worship, or uplift. At no time was there any mention of Charleston or any thoughts or prayers given in the direction of those suffering fellow-Christians. I left after SM.

But, like I said, in the mixed bag that is Sunday in the LDS Church, I know that there will be great meetings and bad ones. Thanks for reporting the positive from yours.

Adding to the above about HC speakers, since OON also had one, our SP specifically told us (including his counselors) to go to our own wards yesterday. We were not to visit the wards we advise and any business that needed doing (callings/release interviews, etc.) we could do in our own wards or they could wait until next week – some assignments were actually made that way. The same was true on Mother’s Day. Some of the branches did get HC speakers this month (the YSA branch really struggles in the summer because the college kids are mostly gone) but they were assigned to speak last week.

I honestly spent most of SM (after the sacrament) on my tablet. There were three speakers, only one of which spoke about Father’s Day. There was a guy first who had a great dad that we all knew (he passed away a couple years ago, former bishop) who talked about a mentor he liked and then did this weird twist thing on “Jesus wept.” That was touchy for me to begin with because I really like that chapter/story (John 11) because it shows how Jesus loved his friend and shows a very human side of Him (and if you read verse 16 you wouldn’t call Doubting Thomas doubting at all). Taking Jesus wept out of context ticked me off. (He basically told these little fictional stories of sinful acts and added Jesus wept to the end of each one. That’s not why Jesus wept in verse 35. He also quoted Mormon Doctrine which further turned me off.) The second speaker said she had prepared a whole talk about her dad but decided not to give it and literally babbled for 15 minutes about something – I know I was distracted by my tablet, but I honestly don’t know the point of her talk other than maybe she’s convinced she’s doing what she’s supposed to do and God is directing her path. The last guy was supposed to have 20 minutes but was left with less than 10 and didn’t want to shorten his talk. He did shorten it but we still went over by more than 5 minutes. His was traditional Father’s Day stuff, and was probably the best of the three. In retrospect, it would have been nice if someone mentioned Charleston, even in a prayer – no one did. Add to the rest, we sang “There is Sunshine in My Soul Today” like a funeral dirge (really), the sacrament hymn was one of my lest favorites (“In Humility, Our Savior” – I don’t like it because everybody is worthy of the sacrifice divine) and for a closing we did “Praise to the Man” (another non-favorite). I skipped SS as usual, but priesthood opening went unusually long so the lesson was short so that was a bright spot (along with the brunch).

We were sitting in the chapel waiting for Sacrament Meeting to begin when a man walked up to the front and talked with the bishopric counselor who was conducting today. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place immediately – until he sat on the stand where the Bishop normally would be. (Our Bishop was out of town today.)

It was Elder Sitati, of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy (from Africa).

He said in PH opening exercises that he is touring the United States for a few weeks and was visiting a long-time family friend from Kenya who lives in our ward. (The Stake Clerk is in our ward, and he told me nobody had expected Elder Sitati to be there, so it really was just a member dropping by to visit a friend.)

He seemed like a very gentle, sincere, happy man – and I loved the comment he made in Sunday School. I was glad to have met him.

Nope – and not something I would ask.

I would not be upset, but I also don’t know where he is on the orthodoxy scale. For example, Africa is not exactly progressive when it comes to gay rights. Neither is Central / South America.

Many liberal members I know were disappointed when Elder Christofferson was chosen, because they wanted ethnic and racial diversity – but that choice might have done and continue to do more to help modify the Church’s view of sexual identity issues than any other choice possible.

I think Elder Sitati probably is being considered, and nothing today made me question that or feel any apprehension. I got the sense that he is a good, kind, intelligent man.

We had a speaker share a very intellectually written and well spoken sermon on faith and what it is, and how to find it. He shared his personal journey as he became a history teacher and began approaching church history with the same approach as other things, and went into some detail of his faith crisis, the things he began to doubt, and how he started seeing things differently than before. Not in a negative way, but very much something we would read from people here on this site.

He ended with how he reconciled his faith and has worked to see things differently, and it was very uplifting.

Most people were talking about it afterwards in a positive way.

My feeling was that people are a lot more comfortable with this kind of thing, even the very active ones in the ward. Even if they haven’t gone down the same rabbit hole…they seem to get that people do…and the issues are there…just that many don’t care to or want to pursue them…they are happy in their space. But they recognize that others do, many have family members who leave the church because of it, and they also know many who work through it like the speaker shared.

I was glad my kids were able to hear it. We talked about it over the dinner table. It was nice to openly talk about faith transitions.