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I just got home from Fast and Testimony Meeting. I swear I’m not going to subject myself to another one for a good long time. Today, it was one little kid after another, all of them saying, “I love my mom and dad and I know the Church is true inthenameofJesusChristAmen.” That in and of itself almost put me over the edge, but then a man I didn’t know took his two kids up to the stand. The oldest one was maybe four years old. He stood at the microphone and his dad whispered in his ear what to say. He’d repeat it, and then his dad would whisper the next sentence. Of course he was prompted to say that he knows the Church is true. Then the dad held the even younger kid up to the microphone because he wasn’t even tall enough to reach it when standing on the riser. The kid was maybe three at the most. He just stared at the audience for a few seconds and then buried his head in his dad’s chest. The dad says, “He’s shy, but what he wants to say is that he knows the Church is true.” Who does this dad think he’s kidding? And what kind of a favor does he think he’s doing for his kids? By the time they’re old enough to actually gain a testimony, it won’t even occur to them that they need to. They’ll have been saying, “I know the Church is true” for nearly twenty years by then and will never have given it a moment’s thought. I’m sorry. I know this is just a rant and I’m probably coming across as a real jerk, but this is not what I go to Church to hear. This is religious indoctrination. That’s all it is. Why do we encourage our kids to parrot us instead of encouraging them to think for themselves? And why do so many people in the audience just eat it up? It just drives me up a wall. Sorry.
I also cannot stand this. Especially when it has been said time and time again that if your youngsters cannot do it on their own, they should not do it at all. I’ve expressed many of the same sentiments before, Katzpur. There was even a letter sent out instructing parents that FHE and Primary were appropriate places for children to learn to bear testimony but clearly it went unheeded. Sacrament mtg. is not the place for teaching your young child, no matter how adorable he or she may be, how to use the microphone and regurgitate memorized phrases. Having said that, I’d like to share how our meeting went today. We didn’t have any toddlers or Sunbeams make the long march to the pulpit but a couple of kids from Senior Primary did. One was a girl who does this monthly – she’s 10 or 11 – I believe she is very genuine. The next was a 9 year old boy who was,from all appearances, muttering parroted words to please his parents. (I know these children reasonably well having taught them many times in Primary over the past few years.) The third child was a 10 year old boy. He got up and simply started sharing what was on his mind – something he’s been thinking about regarding how he understands the gospel. It wasn’t the standard testimony mtg. fare, these were clearly his own thoughts, and though he was obviously struggling to express what he was thinking and feeling, it was plain to all that he was moved upon by a desire to draw closer to God through feeling the Holy Ghost. (I know this young man quite well also.) He concluded simply and returned to his seat right in front of me. He was weeping by this point and his little sister asked loudly “Why is
crying, mom?”No one else needed to ask.
So while I typically feel like the Primary parade to the pulpit is inappropriate, today, I was very glad that one young man made the trek.
Katspur, I totally agree with you. My mom used to pinch my sister and I real hard in the arm to get up there and bear our testimonies when I was about 7 or 8. I hated it and she forced us to say memorized prayers at home as well. Of course my mom was mentally ill so and we knew that, still we hated her for it and rebelled and resisted against it. She also made us fast for 24 hours at 8 when we were baptized. I amazed I did not grow up to hate the church but fortunately my sane dad tried to counter act my mom’s crazyness. When my gay son was 13 he got up and said he was investigating other churches like Joseph Smith did because he was not sure whether the church was true. He said that so far he liked the lds church’s teachings the best though. I was so proud of him, but the other deacons and teachers and his advisors made fun of him and told him he should not be visiting other churches because it might make him leave the church.
The insanity continues.
Bridget
testimony meeting in sacrament needs to go, period. Move it to sunday school or RS/PH meeting. Worst 12 church meetings of the year, bar none. Then again, that letter also said not to spend the time with thankimonies, travel logs, and to keep them short and Christ/gospel-centered. It’s a rare occasion that I see any of that. CHI Book 2, Section 18.2.3, 4th Paragraph: “It may be best to have young children learn to share their testimonies in settings such as family home evening or when giving talks in Primary until they are old enough to do so in a fast and testimony meeting without assistance from a parent, sibling or another person.”
This is one of the reasons for this instruction, which probably isn’t followed uniformly throughout local wards.
mercyngrace wrote:The third child was a 10 year old boy. He got up and simply started sharing what was on his mind – something he’s been thinking about regarding how he understands the gospel. It wasn’t the standard testimony mtg. fare, these were clearly his own thoughts, and though he was obviously struggling to express what he was thinking and feeling, it was plain to all that he was moved upon by a desire to draw closer to God through feeling the Holy Ghost. (I know this young man quite well also.) He concluded simply and returned to his seat right in front of me. He was weeping by this point and his little sister asked loudly “Why is
crying, mom?”No one else needed to ask.
So while I typically feel like the Primary parade to the pulpit is inappropriate, today, I was very glad that one young man made the trek.
I did attend a Testimony Meeting once where something very much like that happened. The child was crying almost from the beginning of his testimony. At first I thought he was just scared, but then I realized that he was genuinely just overcome with emotion and that his testimony was 100% sincere. It was awesome. I will never forget it. As for the parrots, I’m done going and listening to them.doubtingthomas wrote:Then again, that letter also said not to spend the time with thankimonies, travel logs, and to keep them short and Christ/gospel-centered. It’s a rare occasion that I see any of that.
I have a real problem with the thankimonies, too, because what they really are is bragamonies in disguise. “I’m so thankful for my eight wonderful children. All of them graduated from Seminary. All of them went on missions. And all of them married in the temple. One of my sons has just been called to the stake high council, and two of them are bishops. One of my daughters is married to a stake president and one is the stake Young Women’s President. We’re so blessed!” A former Relief Society President in my ward once actually said, “My boys are such good boys. I’m so grateful for them. I just know that Heavenly Father looked down on me and said, ‘I’m going to give her good children. She deserves to have good childen.'” That’s the last thing a mother who has two inactive children (out of two total) needs to hear. I mean I know I made mistakes raising my kids, but to have to listen to people brag about their blessings is just too much.Once in a great while, I’ll hear a testimony that is incredible. It just happens so rarely and this other stuff happens every single time.
I’ve never liked forced testimonies either. What bothers me most though is when the congregation laughs at what these young kids say. That happened to me at 8 years of age and it took me over 3 decades to get up the nerve to go up there again. I don’t think that trashing testimony meetings would hurt, as long as ward leaders made sure to invite all ward members to speak often, perhaps with shorter sermon allotments. I absolutely love the concept and principle of testimony meeting. I would hate to see it eliminated, as I have heard some wonderful, inspiring, moving, thought-provoking testimonies in my time. It’s the application, especially in some units, that get messed up too often. It is unforunate when the congregation laughs – and I think it’s a reaction that shows an immaturity of understanding real testimony in so many members.
I think that’s a big part of the reason why there have been SO many statements over the years trying to focus members on “real testimony” and away from the other stuff – including rehearsed or coached words from children.
I actually like it when older Primary children get up and simply share what they appreciate about the Church and the Gospel as they understand it – one or two per meeting, at most. That, to me, is “real testimony” – even if it is, as was the case yesterday in the branch I attended, a girl thanking her parents for being willing to teach her repentance by making her sit in a time-out when she does something she shouldn’t do. That’s genuine – and it’s an accurate reflection of what she understands at this point in her life.
Does anyone know the history of Testimony meeting? When it started and why? I would guess that it grew out of the isolation and persecution of the early pioneers. It was important to solidify the unity of the group as they relied on each other both temporally and spiritually, but this would be pure speculation on my part. Was there a form of testimony meeting in the Nauvoo, Missouri, or Kirtland periods? I had heard from somewhere that sometime after the trek to Utah, fast Sunday was instituted because the saints weren’t fasting often enough on their own. But I never heard anything about testimony meeting.
I have never encountered anything like it in other churches that I have visited.
As I have said earlier, I currently view testimony meeting an exercise in expressing, “I am one of you.” There are some things we tend to say that don’t make much sense (I
knowthe church is true, The scriptures are true, the church is perfect, etc.) outside of the context of stuff we just say to signify membership in the group. I asked a member of the stake pres. what he meant by the church being perfect after a meeting. He started by saying that the organization was perfect as it was perfectly restored from ancient times. I asked about the office of church patriarch being discontinued here recently and if that altered the perfectness or restoration from the primitive church. I found that I was being treated like a dissenter, so I emphasized that this is just an academic discussion and that my faith doesn’t hang in the balance. In the end we agreed that he had meant that the church is divinely led or that God has a hand in this church. But why not say that instead of the easily misleading phrase of the church is perfect? He told me that he exercised a “simple faith.” I understood that to mean that even though we agree that the statement doesn’t make much sense when you analyze it, he was going to continue to use it because that is just one of the things we say and we all want to be accepted as one of the group.
Katzpur wrote:A former Relief Society President in my ward once actually said, “My boys are such good boys. I’m so grateful for them. I just know that Heavenly Father looked down on me and said, ‘I’m going to give her good children. She deserves to have good children.'” That’s the last thing a mother who has two inactive children (out of two total) needs to hear.
On a completely different note, I wish there wasn’t such shame in having inactive children. I too often hear people apologizing that their kids aren’t active. I have taken to telling them, “They are not lost to you and they are not lost to God. Family transcends church, the order of heaven is familial and patriarchal. Your children’s place in the family of God is not dependent on whether they attend their meetings.”
Testimony meetings have been a part of the Church since its beginning – just not as a once-a-month thing coupled with fasting. I don’t know when that started off the top of my head. “Open mike night” at church has a long history in various denominations and religions. It certainly isn’t unique to Mormonism, although it isn’t common anymore in most Christian traditions. That’s a shame, imo – even as uncomfortable as some experiences can be.
Sometimes I know the kids say they want to go up there and talk, kids like to do what they see others do. It isn’t always because parents are trying to indoctrinate them, it is just what happens, and it becomes a way for the kids to make their parents proud of them and get attention, and most parents think it is a good thing to see their kids shines, so it’s not coercion but just bad judgment by parents that don’t know how to say no to their kids. Sometimes I think the kids are cute, but it isn’t spiritually uplifting…neither are most of the adult testimonies. A good testimony is a diamond in the rough. But diamonds are worth enough to keep such meetings and I don’t think that will go away soon.
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