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Different kind of church today. First, my son gave a talk in Sacrament meeting on Fathers Day. My wife had to really push him to do it mostly because he doesn’t like church, or talks etcetera. It was about myself as a father. In a way, it was a reintroduction of myself to the Ward again, highlighting community service and other things I do. I actually felt emotion as they went into the list of things I’ve done over the years to serve family and community. I’m sure each father has a similar list, as does each caring parent, but it was touching to have it mentioned publicly and all in one list. Especially in front of a ward where my reputation as a stalwart leader was tarnished years ago when I quit a high profile calling. My daughter, who is not really affectionate, was very kind and loving and affectionate toward me for the rest of the time at church, which surprised me. She is not usually like that.
A former RS president I served with saw me for the first time since I returned to church a few months ago. She used a very different approach to conversation with someone like me — that she hasn’t seen at church in a while. She said “I just want to say how much I appreciate all the service you gave in the church, in the past”.
I was a bit floored by the statement, partly because it alludes to the fact I’m not doing very much in the church right now (a point well-taken), but mostly that it was so appreciative and commemorating of the service I did give before I went out in a blaze of “shame” (kind of) years ago. She went on about how hard I worked as an HPGL, and then said “No doubt you’re serving just as hard in a different context now”. I think she knew what I’d been up to in order to be able to say that (It was before my son’s sacrament meeting talk). So, she let me talk about my activities of the last 3 years outside the church. That was rather fulfilling as it was the first time I felt some validation from a Traditional Believer for the work I do in the community.
Then the HPGL asked me to teach HP Group next week. The topic is DHO’s topic of of Opposition in all things from conference. I said “OK” because you can take that just about anywhere, as DHO did in his talk — in multiple directions. I feel neutral to slightly unenthusiastic about the topic, but there is some interesting stuff in it. I may open a thread on it.
And then, the Bishop asked me to assume a new “calling” in the church involving facilitating discussion among teachers during Sunday School to help the teachers in all positions improve quality. It is an interesting concept. I am not sure if it is church wide or not, but I went into my meeting with him prepared with excuses for not serving, but the calling was interesting enough. He is going to let me do it on an assignment basis for a while and said “it could become a formal calling if it works out”. I was impressed that he respected my wish given in an email where I said I did not want a formal calling. The guys is a lot like me in a few ways — keeps trying until he hits success, isn’t afraid to break a few policies and rules if it makes sense, and has used his smarts to get me to say “yes” to something. It was a process of failing and learning on his part, where I slowly educated him on what I needed to be able to say “yes” without being overt or demanding about it.
I really don’t want to serve much in the church, in any capacity. But I do express dissatisfaction about the incredible lack of resources committed to helping people teach better when really, we are a teaching organization. For years, I have been very unhappy with the quality of teaching in so many meetings. I would say that at the Ward level, at least 60% of what we do on Sunday is teaching and learning, plus administration. So, this is kind of therapeutic for me — to be instrumental in helping people teach better and improve the quality of the church experience. It’s a non-doctrinal position mostly. I don’t have to go into much doctrine. I feel neutral about it. It is only once a month. I was pretty authentic about how I felt about the Sunday experience, with no disrespect to the teachers, but did say I felt the quality of the Sunday experience can be a huge boon to activation and retention, and so I was glad that we are committing resources to this.
Interesting, he told the story about one gospel doctrine teacher who was so effective, the less actives skipped sacrament meeting and came for Gospel Doctrine and left. These people were not the actives — their exposure to the teacher brought them back to church for that meeting at least. I had the same experience as a Gospel Essentials teacher where all the Gospel Doctrine students started coming to Gospel Essentials to the point there was no room in the RS room for them. The Bishop at the time made it a ward rule you can only go to Gospel Essentials if you have an investigator, are fellowshipping or are a Ward missionary. I thought it was silly because why not give people what they come to church for? If they find one meeting more uplifting than another, and there are no hard and fast rules, why not let Gospel Essentials balloon with veterans who want to be fed, provided we don’t let the conversation turn to Kolob or Blood Atonement?
Anyway, it was a different kind of church today.
SilentDawning wrote:I really don’t want to serve much in the church, in any capacity. But I do express dissatisfaction about the incredible lack of resources committed to helping people teach better when really, we are a teaching organization. For years, I have been very unhappy with the quality of teaching in so many meetings. I would say that at the Ward level, at least 60% of what we do on Sunday is teaching and learning, plus administration. So, this is kind of therapeutic for me — to be instrumental in helping people teach better and improve the quality of the church experience. It’s a non-doctrinal position mostly. I don’t have to go into much doctrine. I feel neutral about it. It is only once a month. I was pretty authentic about how I felt about the Sunday experience, with no disrespect to the teachers, but did say I felt the quality of the Sunday experience can be a huge boon to activation and retention, and so I was glad that we are committing resources to this.
Interesting, he told the story about one gospel doctrine teacher who was so effective, the less actives skipped sacrament meeting and came for Gospel Doctrine and left. These people were not the actives — their exposure to the teacher brought them back to church for that meeting at least. I had the same experience as a Gospel Essentials teacher where all the Gospel Doctrine students started coming to Gospel Essentials to the point there was no room in the RS room for them. The Bishop at the time made it a ward rule you can only go to Gospel Essentials if you have an investigator, are fellowshipping or are a Ward missionary. I thought it was silly because why not give people what they come to church for? If they find one meeting more uplifting than another, and there are no hard and fast rules, why not let Gospel Essentials balloon with veterans who want to be fed, provided we don’t let the conversation turn to Kolob or Blood Atonement?
Anyway, it was a different kind of church today.
I don’t have anything to report because I didn’t go to church today but this is very similar to what happened in my ward several years ago. We were going to Gospel Essentials because we thought the teacher was great. Word was kinda getting around and the class kept getting bigger and bigger. Then one sunday Gospel Essentials was canceled and they didn’t have it for a few weeks. Then bishop said that only the investigators, Ward missionaries, etc could attend the class. In our ward the Gospel Doctrine class has been so consistently bad for years and second hour was always really tough for me. I think that’s probably one of the hardest callings in the church and I’d never want and I admit I’d probably be terrible at it. It just seemed like every time there was a good teacher for a month or so they’d get called to some other calling like RS President or something else.
I’m not in the US, so we didn’t have Father’s Day talks. They’re really pushing the subject of tithing in our ward, partly because that’s what’s keeping us from getting a new building. Something might be lost in translation, but one speaker used the story of the talents to explain why we needed to pay tithing. I’ve never heard that story used for tithing. He also used the story in 1 Kings 17 as a reason to pay tithing (even if it means starving to death). Looking at that story, I can see how we’ve gotten this idea of paying tithing even if it means not paying your bills, and that paying your tithing comes with blessings. But, then we’re also told not to go into debt, so… I have a big issue with speakers telling us to pay tithing no matter what.
In between classes a group of us discussed a number of things, including tithing and I brought up one speaker recently in SM who had said tithing was fire insurance. We talked about how, at least in the US, we’ve moved away from referring to tithing as fire insurance since that’s a misinterpretation of the scripture it comes from. Plus, we discussed how we shouldn’t looked at tithing as a way to receive blessings.
I said I liked to look at it as, “I am able to pay tithing because of the blessings in my life.” They liked how I looked at it, even though I also think my tithing shouldn’t go completely to a church that isn’t transparent with funds (not that I said that part).
Then, another member around my age had to say something completely opposite to what I had said, which totally messed with the direction we were going with how to view tithing.
Surprisingly our talks weren’t about fathers, especially considering our bishop is very pro fathers. He talks about his own father in the veteran’s home all the time, and is the father of 6 sons himself. Anyway, the first speaker was the youth speaker, a young woman. Not knowing that the topics weren’t related to fathers yet, I was surprised to see her name on the bulletin because she doesn’t have a father. She did a fine talk on service, which was not out of line because the youth had participated in a big community service project Saturday.
I always like the next sister’s talks because her talks are much like mine – very Christ centered. And I was not disappointed. She gave a wonderful talk about the sacrament with lots of scripture and testimony. It was the highlight of the day (and actually probably the last several weeks of SMs in my ward).
That is not to diminish the last guy’s talk. I actually haven’t heard him speak before, he frequently works Sundays (not by choice) and it’s likely my travel schedule has probably kept me from hearing him if he has spoken since my return to church. I like the guy, and he moved up a notch or so on my “like” list today. The kicker is that he talked about something I normally don’t like as a SM talk – tithing. However, he did a pretty good job at limiting the prosperity gospel stuff, and he did make the clear point that how much we pay is nobody’s business but ours and God’s. He even used the words “paying what you think you can is enough.”
And I appreciated the sisters’ efforts in providing our traditional quiche brunch during priesthood. I happened to get a really good piece of quiche with bacon on top that was also perfectly caramelized.
:thumbup: I have been down in the dumps lately, and some events of the past week had put me even deeper in the hole – but I can honestly say that today’s meetings give me a bit of a boost and I came home a little bit better than when I left.
I have been debating about where to post this or start a new discussion. If I started a new topic I would call it Quote:Opportunity Lost
.
Church was Ok until we got to HP group lesson. I like the teacher. The topic was about reactivation. There are others in our group who, at one time
or another who have been inactive.
There was an opportunity to really discuss:
– what does it mean to be inactive?
– what are the reasons a person becomes inactive?
– what is the responsibility of the church if someone doesn’t want “contact”?
– how do you know if a person wants to become active again?
– what methods have you (or someone else) used to help reactivate a member?
– what was your “turning point” of going from inactive to active again?
I understand the limitations of a 45 minute lesson on any topic. Especially if the class members aren’t prepared or haven’t read the lesson.
The conclusion of the lesson was: “you have to love them”.
This is one of the frustrating things about attending church. No real or meaningful discussion. Only platitudes.
Priesthood (especially HP) lessons are a real opportunity to discuss a topic in depth. It can be done in 45 minutes.
If it can’t be discussed in 45 minutes carry in over for the next week or two.
We go a little overboard with our announcements, the lesson portion of PH is typically only 20 minutes. Minyan Man wrote:This is one of the frustrating things about attending church. No real or meaningful discussion. Only platitudes.
We had a similar lesson in my PH quorum but we mentioned home teaching as well as love. It’s hard to make comments in the quorum because I feel like the “where the rubber meets the road” comment I want to make would be seen as being bitter or negative when juxtaposed to all the “feel good” comments people make.
After thinking about this for a while, I sent an email to my HP Group Leader & told him what I thought. I feel better now. I will inform you about what he says.
Minyan Man wrote:I have been debating about where to post this or start a new discussion. If I started a new topic I would call it
Quote:Opportunity Lost
.
Church was Ok until we got to HP group lesson. I like the teacher. The topic was about reactivation. There are others in our group who, at one time
or another who have been inactive.
There was an opportunity to really discuss:
– what does it mean to be inactive?
– what are the reasons a person becomes inactive?
– what is the responsibility of the church if someone doesn’t want “contact”?
– how do you know if a person wants to become active again?
– what methods have you (or someone else) used to help reactivate a member?
– what was your “turning point” of going from inactive to active again?
I understand the limitations of a 45 minute lesson on any topic. Especially if the class members aren’t prepared or haven’t read the lesson.
The conclusion of the lesson was: “you have to love them”.
This is one of the frustrating things about attending church. No real or meaningful discussion. Only platitudes.
Priesthood (especially HP) lessons are a real opportunity to discuss a topic in depth. It can be done in 45 minutes.
If it can’t be discussed in 45 minutes carry in over for the next week or two.
We had this lesson too. Members know I was inactive for a long time. Although we also had a short time for the lesson (20 minutes seems about average for us after announcements and moving to the classroom – it takes the 80-year-olds a bit to get there), I was able to offer what I hope were some helpful things. I said that when I was inactive I didn’t want to be a project, and I didn’t want to be visited by an assigned home teacher just because he was assigned to do it. Someone mentioned Hinckley’s “everybody needs” things, one of which is a friend and I concurred and added that true friendship and true caring/concern/love matter. There was also some discussion about how to react to people who come back after a long absence, and I contributed that just saying hi was adequate – acknowledge they’re there, but other platitudes (e.g. “We missed you”) are generally unhelpful. And I will acknowledge the guy teaching did a better job that most, he made a good attempt at having a discussion and used only one quote from the manual to get things rolling.
It was announced that a new SS class is going to start next week. Two Sisters are organizing a class about Church music.
It will be about the history of LDS music, composers, etc
I think I will go there instead of GD. Has anyone seen this in your ward or branch?
No, Minyan Man, but I love it. So good. Minyan Man wrote:This is one of the frustrating things about attending church. No real or meaningful discussion. Only platitudes.
Priesthood (especially HP) lessons are a real opportunity to discuss a topic in depth. It can be done in 45 minutes.
If it can’t be discussed in 45 minutes carry in over for the next week or two.
That is how I feel most of the time also. I teach a class and try to make it meaningful. Sometimes I’m not successful. But I try.One thing I hate is all the wasted time with announcements when we could be in class studying meaningful things…but since the classes don’t have meaningful discussions…sitting through dull announcements of what the deacons have planned that week, or listening to the HP teacher read manuals are equally boring.
Minyan Man wrote:After thinking about this for a while, I sent an email to my HP Group Leader & told him what I thought.
I feel better now. I will inform you about what he says.
Good for you. Very pro active. Good job.We were traveling, so the GD teacher didn’t know us. Very nice guy with a good lesson prepared, but he leaned over before class and said, “Are you true blue Mormons?” I don’t even remember what my response was because I was taken by surprise. But it ended up that he wanted us to give the opening and closing prayers.
That is such a loaded phrase.
That would throw me if they asked that question. I would probably ask what he means first, and if his intent is to see if we would give a prayer I’d just say I’m TBM then. Church is the wrong place to come out!!! Ann wrote:We were traveling, so the GD teacher didn’t know us. Very nice guy with a good lesson prepared, but he leaned over before class and said, “Are you true blue Mormons?”
I don’t even remember what my response was because I was taken by surprise. But it ended up that he wanted us to give the opening and closing prayers.
That is such a loaded phrase.
Ann, could you tell by his lesson or the questions asked if he is a TBM?
That is strange.
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