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It’s true, I have something going on the side. I’ve decided to stick with what I’ve committed to, but I am able to meet some unmet needs with another relationship. I’m talking about another church, see what I did there? I have another local Methodist church that I took my family to last Easter and I listen to their weekly sermons online and have lately tuned into their online worship services every week. After watching their service this morning, there are some interesting contrasts after conference weekend: 1. I really like how the sermons draw on a specific biblical story and also draw from stories from literature or even pop culture to further accentuate the point. They pick a theme for 6-8 weeks of sermons and develop and expand it. The overall theme is giving people an example from the scriptures and tools to improve their lives, whether that is wrestling with a health challenge, a strained marriage, goals, serving others or battling other problems. There is no message of not being enough and need to do more, it’s a toolbox opening up to hopefully give people help and tools in their personal struggles.
I feel like we do that as well, but instead of it coming back to helping you improve your life, the takeaway seems to be that the answer to improving your life is to be more obedient. It’s kind of the same end goal, improvement, but I don’t like the obedience/guilt emphasis and message as much.
2. I feel like the message is so stripped down with this Methodist church that it’s simple and always comes back to Jesus. After watching conference, we have a lot of balls in the air that all seem to come back to the institutional Church and following leaders and keeping the commandments to get to Jesus. I appreciate the new logo and goal to get us Christ-centered, but it seemed like a stretch to say we don’t worship Joseph Smith when most of the talks on Saturday seemed to be preaching just that.
3. It’s interesting to see a church and hear messages that are not defending an ego position. The attitude is kind of “here’s what we are doing, hope you like it,” which is very genuine. Our message seems to often be, “here’s why you should listen to us, here’s why we have all the answers, here’s why the people you know who have left are wrong.” I have never heard any of these messages from the other church, which ultimately makes it seem less defensive and more authentic.
4. I hate to say it, but the Jesus of this church and the Mormon Jesus are very different. This is what drives us crazy and we so want to be counted among the Christian denominations and share common ground. The Jesus of my Methodist church is the Jesus of the New Testament, looking at the counter-cultural, pre-Easter Jesus. We tend to skip over the mortal ministry and focus on the pre-existance, post-Easter Jesus. I think it’s because we don’t know what to do with a lot of the New Testament teachings that seem to undermine obedience and authority, but I think they are also the most interesting. As an adult, the symbolism of Easter is powerful metaphor, the loneliness, sadness and dread that come with the cross, the death of the old and the message of hope and rebirth of resurrection and new beginnings, especially during this Pandemic. Our Easter message is that through obedience, we can overcome sin and get into heaven, to me that is less hopeful.
What would I like to see? I would like to see less defensiveness, worship and focus on the institutional Church and the leadership. What if we shifted our focus to the Church being you and me and our own wards and stakes? I would like to see a focus on using the teachings of Jesus and the powerful metaphors of his teachings and life to bring healing and structure to lives of people and communities, tying in some celebration of our heritage and past, but a focus on Christ. I would like to see less defense of literal truth claims and more of an exploration of what can be learned from metaphor in scriptural story. In the meantime, I’m able to get a lot of fulfillment and find meaning and spirituality and stay sane by staying in the Church with an exciting fling on the side.
At one stage in my journey I visited a random church one Sunday per month. Pro tip: if you do this (provided we ever get back to normal society) you can do it on fast Sunday. :angel: I visited several denominations, including our cousins in the Community of Christ. Not to wander too much, but the Community of Christ do sacrament once a month and I just so happened to attend on that Sunday. It was extra special for me because I got to hear “our” sacrament prayer word for word delivered by a woman. I wasn’t prepared for the feeling that experience generated. I wish others in our church could experience that.
Wandering even further… visiting other faiths led to me start going to a Buddhist temple once a week. I kept that up for a few years until I decided that the Buddhist temple was inside me and I didn’t need to go anymore.
To the point at hand, I think homogeneity has its cons, it can lead to isolation, and isolation can prevent us from being well rounded. Like if you only ever ate the same thing. Over time you might develop a vitamin deficiency. Introducing more things into your diet may promote better health. I think the same principle applies to spiritual things.
Addressing your numbered points:
1. Yes, in my ward each Sunday there’s an undercurrent to nearly everything that is said, “Be more obedient and you’ll achieve your dreams/goals/be blessed.” Other churches have some of that, but this variant of the Prosperity Gospel permeates much of what we say at church.
2. Prior to this conference I thought the church was doing better at moving away from Joseph and towards Jesus. It’s very hard to do that when we decide to have a conference theme of the restoration. Given the theme, the focus on Joseph wasn’t unexpected, but at church the focus is too often:
The living prophet
- The leaders, past and present
- Joseph Smith
- The church itself as a central object of worship
- Authority as a central object of worship
- Doctrines as immutable objects of worship
The challenge is that I think many members faith relies on those things. The other challenge is that I don’t feel like any of those help me be a better person. They’re just things that members believe makes a church true. Which brings me to…
3. You get a big agreement from me here. I often say and have recently said, “Ok, great, I get it, the church is true. That’s very nice. Now what? Oh, we’re going to talk about how true the church is again. Cool.”
Maybe insecurity is at the heart of this, but boy oh boy would I love for the church to use its collective resources on something more productive. Our ego has been fed generously, it is the fattened calf ready for the slaughter.
4. Everyone’s Jesus is a little different. I think even the correlated Mormon Jesus is a little different for all orthodox believers.
What would I like to see?
That’s really hard to answer. Maybe since everyone’s Jesus is a little different we could bury our weapons of correlated belief and ask members and non-members alike to, “Show me your Jesus.” It could be the vitamin pill our culture needs.
Great thoughts, thanks nibbler. I got my hopes up during Pres. Nelson’s talk when he talked about doing something and was hoping that the Church was going to commit resources or ask us all to sew masks or do something. I think the fast was a bit of a disappointment for me, but hopefully it can bring people together. I lose track of general conferences, some recent ones I’ve missed entirely, but I want to say that in a recent general conference Nelson listed several humanitarian/charitable things the church had done in the recent past (relative to the time he gave the address). I think he/the church got some blow back of the alms before men variety, so I like to think that the church has continued to do these things and possibly more, but we aren’t necessarily going to hear about it.
Advertising charitable efforts is one thing, but to your point… it’s nice that the church (organization) is doing things with its resources but it would also be nice to call on the church (general membership) to do charitable things.
Not unlike the differences between the early days of the church when the sacrifices the members made were more directly connected to building a temple contrasted with now where members donate money and some time in the future a temple magically appears. There’s something to be said with hands-on charitable involvement. The needs feel more real, the cause feels more urgent.
And yes, a fast doesn’t really feel like it produces something tangible for people.
I grew up going to every church in our tiny village, anything that had a youth program. I often miss some of the aspects of these Christian churches, esp at Christmas as our church doesn’t even come close. Don’t be fooled by the simplistic message presented. Without the PH correlation, it falls short. Our organization and emphasis on religious education are far superior. Manuals, technology, outreach (familysearch) etc I could go on.and that hollow feeling that something is missing…
I do miss the bible stories though, I find we have too many object lessons and repetitive missionary lessons. And way too much regional culture that has nothing to do with me or spirituality.
Two years ago, through a dark period, I turned to a very small, local church and felt such love, such devotion to their causes (feed and clothe the hungry, sponsor a girls school in Africa). Oh my, it was wonderful. And wowee, it was all organized by a female pastor. I can’t remember anyone in my own ward with enthusiasm and acceptance like her.
But no way I would leave for it. But I spent a summer volunteering for them and that was enough for me. Because I know that people are people, LDS or other, and I at least believe in this organization, just not its people. It would just be the same after a while in another church, just more “hollow”.
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