Rough Sunday

[Anonymous]

mom3 wrote:

It was too much for my husband. It really hurt. I know all the traditional answers, but it is painful to be talked about while you sit in a room, as if you weren’t there or that somehow your issue isn’t “the right issue”.

We do a lot of that at church.

Not necessarily in the sense that we see someone show up after a long absence and customize the talk/lesson on the fly to speak to the person indirectly (or passive aggressively, take your pick) but in the sense that we pass some harsh judgments when we believe no one from the judged group is around.

I went to PH the Sunday before yesterday and the lesson was on ministering but we spent a fair amount of time condemning inactives for not showing up. What’s odd is that coffee was specifically referenced multiple times. WoW or no, I’m no coffee drinker, but I couldn’t help but think… what if during the next general conference they announce that coffee is now okay? Aren’t we going to feel silly for dedicating all this time during a lesson to judge people over drinking coffee? Heck we should feel silly for doing that even if they don’t give people permission to drink coffee during GC.

I think I’m becoming more sensitive to this sort of thing. I find myself feeling:

I am a coffee drinker.

I am inactive.

I am an alcoholic.

I am gay.

I am a doubter.

I am whatever type of person we’re passing judgment on. So I guess I should add “I am an orthodox believer” to that list so I’ll refrain from passing judgment on people in my quorum. :angel:

My takeaway from the PH meeting on ministering is that I feel we have it backwards. Most of the lesson turned out to be how to minister to the church’s needs, not the individual’s needs. We project our goals and desires onto people. I came close to making a softened comment stating as much but that’s where I struggle. A large part of me says, “If that’s what brings them fulfillment, who am I to…”

[Anonymous]

DarkJedi wrote:

Again, our stake and ward have made no overt or covert statements about actually requiring visits although I know lots of Old Guards who can’t let that go and still don’t get (and to some extent can’t deal with) no one is counting.

I’m sure I mentioned this one before. Our stake recently had a goal to visit in the home to share a message by the end of the month. Sound familiar? 😆

Now, that was a one or two month thing, not a every month thing, but the expectations don’t feel all that different from HT. It’s like ministering is the exact same except now you squeeze your visit in at the end of a quarter instead of at the end of every month.

I do feel like ministering could be the very best thing about the church but right now it’s hard for me to get behind how we use ministering.

It depends on the individual, but the program is still presented as a way to check up on people to ensure they’re meeting expected behaviors. We still present it with a lot of rhetoric about how it’s the minister’s responsibility to make sure their families are doing [insert stake goal of the month].

In our meeting the other week, multiple people expressed how they ministered to an inactive person that was hostile and how they regretted trying to be “just their friend” and never challenged them to do church stuff, because if they challenged them to do church stuff their hostility would have melted away. :crazy:

For me in my situation it’s a program that I can’t get behind. One I don’t want to be a part of. It feels like there are too many ulterior motives. We don’t minister to a person’s needs, we try to convince people what their needs should be.

Ugh, sometimes I feel like I’m from some alternate reality.

[Anonymous]

All I can say is ministering is different here. We do have stake goals (AKA “area priorities”) which do include things like reading the BoM daily, doing family history and praying for missionary experiences but ministers haven’t been instructed to ask families about them and I haven’t been asked about them for me or about my families (2 empty nest couples and the inactive) in my interviews. I’m not going to say my stake/ward or stake/ward leadership are perfect or anywhere near it – but it would appear they get it better than yours do. My somewhat connected friend mentioned in another post said that as a mission president 400 people could attend the same training and come out and do vastly different things. Maybe that’s what’s happening. Ministering is nothing short of a culture change and not everyone wants a different culture.

[Anonymous]

OK, my turn. Ward conference. There’s only so much focus on the “Area Plan” I can take. Read the Book of Mormon every day. Pray to have a missionary experience every day. Make a plan that works for you to do family history and take the names to the temple. Take your kids to the temple. Minister. Invite others to “come and see.” Make the Sabbath a delight by worshiping at church and at home. Ugh.

In fairness it wasn’t totally awful. The above was mostly from the adult meeting second hour (complete with Power Point and Elder Christofferson videos). SM wasn’t one I’d put in the record books though. I like my bishop, he’s a good open loving man who has been through much of what others in our ward have been through. But he sure can pontificate. And I like my SP, but even though he had 20 minutes of time in SM the meeting went over and it was the same old same old (he mostly harped on reading the BoM and Come Follow Me).

I have to say the home part of my “Sabbath” (I don’t believe what we do is the Sabbath and shouldn’t call it that) was by far the better part.

[Anonymous]

That sounds like all church meetings these days. Telling people to come to church (they’re already there, so mission accomplished), do ministering, do missionary work, and go to the temple. I don’t find it that fulfilling.

I could understand if we had an occasional meeting where we focused on one of those things but it feels like that’s all we ever talk about. Maybe it’s a monkey see, monkey do thing. We only know to invite people to keep coming to church, do their ministering assignments, give referrals, and go to the temple because that’s all we have experience hearing. It’s the easy answer to, “Oh no, now what can we talk about?”

I honestly don’t know if it’s always been this way and I’m just now feeling it or if this is a newer phenomenon. The constant focus on doing the standard Mormon goals isn’t very nourishing. It’s close to all we say, do the goal, not much on the hows or the whys, just the whats. But I remind myself that I’m probably in the vast minority and most people are probably finding the reminders beneficial.

Edit:

SS is a reprieve from what I mentioned but to underscore what I’m talking about… we’ve got six PH lessons under out belt this year and so far three of them were on “do your ministering.” Ok, I get it. It’s the exact same thing as HT. We get it. Next subject.

[Anonymous]

Warning Rambling Post Ahead-

DJ – I honestly believe the Area Focuses are damaging. Which set of goals is a person supposed to focus on?

[Anonymous]

I did one hour church today. The SM topic seemed good enough but the talks were “meh.” I was in the ward I advise. They have this knack for getting a Christ centered topic and somehow leaving out Christ. I do not exaggerate here, I once heard three talks on the atonement there and not one mentioned Christ or the atonement itself. Today was somewhat similar. Not one scripture in any of the three talks. Not even a quote from a prophet (no quotes at all actually). It was interesting in that respect. I started the mandated financial responsibility thing but couldn’t get past the bishop’s monologue about how important this all was because the Lord commanded it through the prophet (again, no exaggeration). I came home and grilled my steak.

[Anonymous]

Our 5th Sunday was on finances. They opened up the lesson by saying that the FP has instructed that wards talk about finances during one of the up-coming 5th Sundays. If your area didn’t get it today, they may get it in June.

Our instructor talked about fixed and variable expenses and asked people for examples. We spent the majority of the time (at least 25 minutes) giving examples of different kinds of bills. “The light bill is a fixed expense.” “Actually light bills are an example of a variable expense.” “But I’m on this program where the light company averages out your monthly bills and sends a bills for the same amount every month.” “Oh, then yes. That’s an example of a fixed expense.”

Some people really, really struggle with finances so I give it a pass. It bored me to the point where I started getting antsy, but I’m sure someone there needed it, even if all they needed was to prove that they knew the difference between fixed and variable expenses.

Our SM was F&T. I guess you do your stake does F&T after general conference. Now that I think about it, I imagine post GC F&T would be… predictable. Glad we do ours first.

Here I was surprised. The makeup of the testimonies:

One third Jesus.

One third church leaders.

One third “dirty doubters.”

When I say one third I don’t mean “the third part” third but roughly 33% of the time spent on each subject. I was pleasantly surprised that we spent so much time on Jesus, especially the week before general conference. I was also surprised that we had so much pent up ill feelings about doubts and doubters.

A few things set the tone for the doubter talk. We have a monthly newsletter and this time the spiritual message was “doubt is the polar opposite of faith.” The conducting counselor also led things off with a story about their inactive brother that uses logic and how sad it is that he doesn’t have the church in his life. It went downhill from there.

I guess it’s a thing on people’s minds. They may be processing it the only way they know how.

[Anonymous]

I attended a funeral mixed with regular Sunday Service today. It was awesome. Jesus hymns all over the place. Choices between wine and grape juice. Crying with friends. Mentally planning my own funeral.

I heard from a neighbor that our entire 2 hours was MINISTERING. Ahhhh. This program that was supposed to be lighter and more Christ like is turning into whipping post. The ward sent out a survey about it, then tallied it and shared it with 2nd hour. The Bishop and a member of RS Pres spoke on it during Sacrament meeting.

My neighbor, who is battling stage 4 cancer, said she was so inspired. Then texted to tell me how guilty she feels because she hasn’t been doing a good job at her ministering and could I help her figure out who is on her list? Holy Crap. Really.

I don’t blame RMN for this, it’s an US problem. We can’t figure out how to let go. (Cobbling things together here). I see goals coming down from a million places, Area Reps. visiting GA’s, Stake leaders, Salt Lake (the every Friday emails that local leadership gets). I actually think RMN imagines a less processed plan and after it leaves him, it gets cranked back in.

My personal Sunday was renewing. My neighbors update not so much.

[Anonymous]

*sigh* That’s all.

[Anonymous]

I skipped all options today.

I didn’t want the disappointment that could happen.

I carried Easter in my heart.

[Anonymous]

mom3 wrote:

I skipped all options today.

I didn’t want the disappointment that could happen.

I carried Easter in my heart.

Maybe I’m a little disappointed, underwhelmed is more correct. Perhaps my hopes were too high. SM was fine, it went over and the guy clearly wasn’t done babbling yet. His big problem was missing the simplicity of it all and his predecessor did exactly the same thing for 20 minutes. She quoted all of I Know That My redeemer Lives – all 24 “He lives…” – and the whole Living Christ. He quoted JFS and BRM. But they were Christ and Easter centered.

Then SS rolled around. Sub teacher. She tried hard. She got to a part in the manual where she put sin, death, trials and weakness on the board and the class was supposed to share how Christ helps us in those areas. That’s all well and good, there was some spotty participation (the usual suspects). Then she put up a scripture to go with each of them – all from the BoM. I thought the point this year was to learn about Christ and come closer to him by studying the NT, his own words and the “eyewitness” accounts of his teachings. Instead we get BoM.

I wish I could have done as you did, Mom. The home part of my Sabbath was much more fulfilling.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

Then she put up a scripture to go with each of them – all from the BoM.

I see this happening over and over. In talks, lesson’s, spiritual thoughts – the person starts with some “Jesus said…We see in Alma, where Corianton and Helamen…”

One of my pet peeves about this new “Christ Centered Model” is give the BoM a rest. A big rest. Like, let’s not read it for one full year. Hide it, forget it, and take a break. Strong farms have rotated crops.

I was going to attend the local Lutheran Church that Pastor Friend covered until his recent death, but I just couldn’t.

I am wrapping my home Easter day by downloading Adam S. Miller’s book “An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ Before You Die.”

Thanks for making me doubly glad I didn’t even venture out.

[Anonymous]

mom3 wrote:

I heard from a neighbor that our entire 2 hours was MINISTERING. Ahhhh. This program that was supposed to be lighter and more Christ like is turning into whipping post. The ward sent out a survey about it, then tallied it and shared it with 2nd hour. The Bishop and a member of RS Pres spoke on it during Sacrament meeting.

My neighbor, who is battling stage 4 cancer, said she was so inspired. Then texted to tell me how guilty she feels because she hasn’t been doing a good job at her ministering and could I help her figure out who is on her list? Holy Crap. Really.

I don’t blame RMN for this, it’s an US problem. We can’t figure out how to let go. (Cobbling things together here). I see goals coming down from a million places, Area Reps. visiting GA’s, Stake leaders, Salt Lake (the every Friday emails that local leadership gets). I actually think RMN imagines a less processed plan and after it leaves him, it gets cranked back in.

You’ve all heard me complain about this and it sounds like my area is not as unique as I had hoped it was. The shortest way I know to explain the phenomenon is that we operate under the mindset that the members are created for the programs, not the programs for the members.

When I was an orthodox believer I was one of those that was guilted to death by things like this. Non-participation wasn’t even something that crossed my mind and anything less than 110% participation became one of many sins of omission that weighed me down. I know it’s unintended, but programs meant to help people can end up causing more harm than if there were no program at all. I hear it in the voices of many that share their testimonies during F&T, it’s an echo of a voice that was once in my head, it shouts “you are not good enough” so loud that it overpowers all other voices.

I’ve noticed a pattern in my stake. We take the latest thing and hammer the topic to absolute death. Hasten the Work. Ministering. We made over half of the Sabbath experiences relate to those topics when they were hot. “The covenant path” will probably be the next big thing after the fervor over ministering finally dies down. Given the lay clergy, I think we hit the topics hard because we don’t know what else to talk about. But it can have a very negative effect on people like your neighbor. The next time the subject comes up the thoughts become, “I haven’t gotten any better at ministering since we talked about it two days ago. I’m such a failure.” Then the toxic shame sets in, reinforced with every meeting we have that reminds us how negligent we are in our duties. We’ll even get the explicit reminders that the reason we talk about a subject so much is because we’re not adequate enough to move on to some other subject.

It’s a mess. My area talks of ministering using the exact same language we used for home teaching. I’ll minister where I can, but not as someone enrolled in the program.

[Anonymous]

I’ve chanced upon a warning about the SS lesson scheduled for May 19th.

https://www.lds.org/study/manual/come-follow-me-for-individuals-and-families-new-testament-2019/19?lang=eng” class=”bbcode_url”>https://www.lds.org/study/manual/come-follow-me-for-individuals-and-families-new-testament-2019/19?lang=eng

That particular lesson includes portions about gay marriage and divorce… you know, because it’s the New Testament and Jesus put so much emphasis on those subjects and had such clear opinions on the matter. The subjects are a small portion of the overall lesson, there’s no guarantee that they will come up, but if you’re in a more conservative ward or have a more conservative instructor the chances are higher. That and the lesson leads off with gay marriage = wrong. If your instructor is a read from the manual type it will probably come up first thing and set the tone for the lesson.

[Author]

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