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Which lesson topics at Church lately have you enjoyed? and
Which lesson topics at Church do you have a hard time sitting through?
For me, I enjoyed some of the Joseph Smith manual lessons that included Church history. Now that I have spent a larger amount of time studying Church history, I feel like I can participate a lot more. PLEASE NOTE though that I am very selective about what I include in the Elders Quorum lessons I prepare. I also feel comfortable just nudging the conversation a little when I participate. I don’t unload the whole truck full of controversy, but instead try to find creative ways to insert something small in that direction. I make it positive. This is a fun and interesting challenge for me — to be challenging without being scary.
The hardest lessons lately are the do! do! do! topics. For the first time ever, I had to walk out of a lesson this year. It was an Elders Quorum meeting to call everyone to repentance for bad home teaching numbers. I don’t mind staying normally. Those meetings don’t phase me at all. But I could see them starting to go around the room to ask people for their excuses (in a positive way to talk about solutions). I couldn’t let them get to me. Not that day, and not in my situation. I talked frankly in the past with the Elders Quorum president, a great guy, and told him I would not be doing home teaching. My family situation will not support that right now. We had a heart to heart talk, and he understands. So that is why I couldn’t have them come to me in the open group environment and ask me to explain to all the Elders why I don’t HT — way too big a can of worms for the lesson.
The do! do! do more! lessons make me squirm in my chair a little. Those are the hard ones for me because I feel overwhelmed a lot between work, a large family and Church responsibilities — all of which are extremely valuable uses of my time.
I had a great day at church this sunday. The gal doing the lesson in RS was sooooo genuine and open to her own frailties and non condemning of anyone, including herself for NOT being perfect. The humility of this woman is soooo touching to me and I feel love and a burning in the bosom during times like that. I was so excited to not have experienced anything that was hard this sunday. I prefer not to discuss that things that are hard right now. It just makes me notice them more and makes them more real even when they are NOT happening. Like the memory becomes alive at present. I hope to keep this sunday alive for a long time to come.
Thanks for sharing, valoel.
I enjoy almost any lesson, since I don’t go into them with any expectations. I don’t enjoy every class. There is a difference, and it’s important. That EQ class did not include a lesson, and it can be hard to sit through that.
Well I have been involved in Primary for ages. Most recently as a teacher for the past 2.5 years. I asked for a released about 6weeks ago, as my dh has totally dissaffected himself and some Sundays I will choose to do something non-church as a family and I hate always letting the Pres down when something comes up ( as it has of late)…so as my Bishop is fully aware I just ask to be released as right now for my marriage I need my dh to know that some days he is more important to me then attending a set of meetings. Any ironically its been within the last month that my own crisis of faith has started….so now i am out of Primary and been to RS only a couple of times as I was still helping Primary a bit with the SM presentation. Well I have to say I am not liking RS at all. Its all so static…the repsonses I mean….not much mention about following the example of church…but plenty of answers to questions like “what can we do as Sisters to resist being less then what we are?”….answers were “attend all our meetings every week, follow the prophet, support our husbands in their callings etc….they asked me and I just said “well maybe Ive been in primary for too long but I guess I think if we always think “well what would Jesus do?” then we usually are on the right track!”, I just got a few nods and then more of the same blah blah blah.
Anyway some teachers are better then others.
i watched general conference for the first time in a while, and i really enjoyed it — i have always liked the music, and certain speakers still resonate for me (holland especially). i find sunday school difficult right now in general — i find myself footnoting and commenting a lot, probably because my views of the bofm have changed so much recently — it’s still kind of hard for me to feel at ease there.
cjonesy, there are at least two members of our ward who sit in Gospel Doctrine class and read the assigned chapters silently on their own during the lesson. In essence, they study the lesson during the lesson. For those who have a hard time with the general tone or regular comments in a class but want to attend, I really like this approach. Yeah, I hear you. I always carry around what I call my “extra material.” Its something printed, or a book on religion or spirituality (not always LDS either). If i’m irritated or just not connecting, I read my extra material. I also carry a notebook around with me everywhere. I think and write stuff. I like to write. those are reallygood ideas. i love to read and i love to write — good alternatives for a guy who feels some discomfort right now. thanks!
My current ward is really very good. My DH and I occasionally surf the internet on our blackberries when a lesson gets dull, usually in GD. RS has mostly been good, although there are times when I clean out my church bag during a lesson that doesn’t require much thought. I also just enjoy being in a room that is mostly quiet, and I jot down ideas for writing also. I really only find it boring sometimes, never “hard” in this ward. In my old ward in UT (before we moved to AZ), I had a few pet peeves:
– women with low self esteem who never felt they were good enough and constantly commented on everything from that place.
– a GD teacher with some really odd old-fashioned yet truly scary notions (women who dressed immodestly brought rape on themselves, children should be whipped with a stick when they misbehave), and another GD teacher who was campaigning to be the next bishop.
– people who weren’t very educated making comments they thought were common sense but were really only the former.
– all lessons on food storage. In my current ward, those don’t bother me. In my old ward, they were just not very practical about things. When I suggested buying things you actually eat rather than food you don’t even know how to prepare, everyone looked at me like I had a second head and went back to weevil-themed recipes.
Something really cool in my ward this week: one of the counselors in the Bishopric was sharing a story in his testimony and he referred to “recent unfavorable publicity” due to an “event.” It was great. No mention of politics or gay marriage or opinions. Just that this negative publicity had him concerned about how a friend might view Mormons as a result and how his friend dispelled that worry. What a great example of how to keep things neutral.
I had a really hard time sitting through lessons, SS especially. Now that I am in the Primary, church is becoming more enjoyable. What I like best though, is seeing the other members, thinking about the challenges some of them have, and realizing how very blessed I am to be in my situation and to learn from their examples. I like singing the hymns. I like most of the talks and lessons, as long as they aren’t about how wonderful and important the Church is to the world. What’s hard to sit through is rejoicing in our unique priesthood, superior understanding, true prophets, and higher morals.
KM
Well, I love Relief Society. It has some of the nicest women in our community who attend and they always have a warm smile and friendly outlook. I adore all the babies crawling around too. It’s a safe place for me and I alway s learn something. I enjoy SS too. I would say the only thing that makes me uncomfortable is when I hear a lessons that give me the message that we should always be YES people, and never NO people. You can’t always say yes. That can lead to getting burned out, frustration, anger and resentment. Then you get fed up and leave. Those kinds of lessons are when I shift over to a fun little day dream. Getting a facial at the Aveeda Salon and smelling a rain forest candle burning with some nature sound music in the back ground. Ahhhh, relaxation! 
Whimsey
Valoel wrote:For me, I enjoyed some of the Joseph Smith manual lessons that included Church history. Now that I have spent a larger amount of time studying Church history, I feel like I can participate a lot more. PLEASE NOTE though that I am very selective about what I include in the Elders Quorum lessons I prepare. I also feel comfortable just nudging the conversation a little when I participate. I don’t unload the whole truck full of controversy, but instead try to find creative ways to insert something small in that direction. I make it positive. This is a fun and interesting challenge for me — to be challenging without being scary.
I do much the same thing in HPG. Perhaps I push it a little further and harder than you. I am selective. I ask people to think. When they say they don’t understand how mainstream Christians believe in the Trinity, I ask them how much and what they have studied to develop an understanding. In teaching about the WoW from the JS lesson manual, I inserted a section from Mormon Enigma that gave a little more clear, more naturalistic explanation of the foundations of the WoW.
Perhaps ironically, I find that some lessons are just hard to listen to from the JS manual. If I am not teaching, I usually don’t attend when lessons are being given from the manual. Aside from that, any talk or lesson on obedience gets me a little riled up. Other topics that are hard to sit through are tithing and the “one true church” type topics.
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