The Church Service

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mkprr
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Re: The Church Service

Post by mkprr » Mon Aug 13, 2012 8:02 pm

Well you are all cordially invited to join me at church any time or you can visit any LDS church and you’ll find something similar. We do our missionary work outside so our church services are primarily meant for making disciples of Jesus out of those who already believe. (visitors are welcome of course)

Congregations are kept to around 100 to 300 or so participating members. Every member of the church who is willing to serve is given a responsibility. There is no full time clergy on a local level. The first hour we meet to take the Sacrament (bread and water in remembrance of Jesus’ atonement), to sing, and to listen to talks prepared by members of the congregation. A bishop presides and assigns speakers so from the time you are about 12 and on, if you are willing and in good standing, you will be invited to speak from time to time. Once a month we have a testimony meeting where all are invited to go up.

After this is an hour of Sunday school. There are over a dozen small classes going on at a time all lead by members who have accepted the duty to teach and lead the discussion. After that the men separate from the women and we meet to discuss each others needs, to finalize plans for upcoming events and service projects, and then we separate in to small groups to further teach each other.

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mkprr
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Re: The Church Service

Post by mkprr » Mon Aug 13, 2012 8:11 pm

Outside of the Sunday meetings, every worthy and willing man goes “home teaching” where he is assigned a few families to visit during the month to share a brief spiritual message, encourage them to continue in family prayer, scripture study etc, and will make sure they are temporally taken care of. (mowing lawns, fixing sinks, debugging computers etc) Also if anyone has financial struggles the home teacher will bring this to the bishop so they can get help from the church. The idea is that everyone in the congregation will get a home visit once a month. The Women are also all assigned other women in the congregation to visit teach once a month.

Then throughout the week we have youth activities, seminary classes, and other happenings. It isn’t perfect by any means, but I think if I ever were to leave the LDS church, I’d really miss the way we work as a congregation. Although I think there is much room to make things better, it generally feels like the way Christ would want it to be.

Right now my assignment is to be the assistant young men’s leader. We run a scout troop during the week, and on Sundays with the young men we split up and visit members who are too old or too ill to make it to church and have a short service in their home. I am amazed at how genuinely dedicated some of these young men are to the Lord at such a young age. It’s awesome.

The downside to it all of course is that it is all rather time consuming. Depending on what you decide to give to your responsibilities, you can end up spending a lot of time with the church. It's important to balance work, family, church, and personal time wisely or you can end up swimming in over your head. It isn't always easy to do but it is really rewarding. Just yesterday a family that I home teach had a baby over 3 months early and they wanted my helping giving the baby a blessing before a surgery. It was an amazing experience that I'll never forget.

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backwoodsman
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Re: The Church Service

Post by backwoodsman » Tue Aug 14, 2012 2:37 pm

mkprr,

It sounds great as far as you've described it. I have a question, though: What happens when one of those really involved, dedicated young folks wants to explore a view of some scripture or point of doctrine that differs from your church's official position? Are they encouraged to study such things and follow their conscience?

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mkprr
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Re: The Church Service

Post by mkprr » Wed Aug 15, 2012 10:25 am

First I would point out that, like most denominations I assume, you don’t have to fully agree with everything taught to be in full fellowship but you present a difficult question to answer because there are so many different types of people who would react to a youth in different ways. My dad as a young man recounts questioning some scriptures and teachings so he went to a local church leader to talk about them and was told that it was “stinking thinking”. This of course I think is a horrible way to respond to someone who is searching and it certainly didn’t help him in any way. I hope that this sort of response would be really rare, and from my experience at least, it is.

I searched through the church website to see what kind of instruction there might be for youth and this talk represents some of the most typical responses that I remember hearing growing up. http://www.lds.org/liahona/2012/08/keep ... +confusion

To sum it up he encourages us to seek truth continually by close, prayerful personal study of the scriptures. He points out that it is likely that not all of our questions will be fully answered but that we need to expect God to answer us when we faithfully ask him questions that are important to our salvation. He encourages us to seek knowledge by the spirit and to trust that the spirit will be our teacher and guide. He tells us to patiently exercise faith by living the commandments of Jesus Christ as we understand them so that we can see firsthand the good fruits of the gospel.

The one thing I would add to his advice is that it is spiritually healthy to question whether the things you have learned are truly of God, and it is encouraged in scripture to test those things to make sure that the source of the doctrine is in fact Jesus Christ. He also emphasized the limits of intellectual reasoning to find answers to gospel questions, and while I agree that there are limits and that he makes a good point quoting 1 cor 2:11, I also think he really should have pointed out that Paul also used logic and reason powerfully in his defense of Christian doctrine.

Hopefully that's a good rounded answer. And in the spirit of this post which is really about how we can better improve the Sunday service, one thing that I would love to see, is for the LDS church to drop the old fashioned tradition of dressing in your "Sunday best". If you go to an LDS church on a Sunday you'll see women wearing skirts or dresses, and most of the men wearing ties. I think it's kind of silly, and distracting. It's of course not mandated, but it's what everyone typically does and I think it's wholly unnecessary.

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jriccitelli
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Re: The Church Service

Post by jriccitelli » Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:36 pm

I was LDS, and I attended LDS service while I was living in Mesa Arizona. It was wonderful because (most) everyone wore shorts (everywhere) and (I seem to remember) even to church. The men and women both wore much lighter / casual clothing.

Everything you said Mkprr is true, the LDS Church models, and does a near perfect job of Church services and Sunday mornings and general organizing. The thing the LDS church does extremely well is 'church', from welcoming, attention, kindness, getting to know one another, participation, and best of all are the 'local' missionaries. I think the LDS church does better than any other 'denomination' at church service and gathering.

The reason probably is three fold; the LDS church had a chance to start from scratch. Two; they really modeled what church life was like around the turn of the century, and kept it that way. Communities were smaller, churches had more classes and it was an all day affair.
Three; the Mormon church does not have what other churches of the time had (post Joseph and Brigham) an office of preacher / evangelist, and I would account this to the fact that the real charisma and fire of preachers came from a the message of repentance and joy contained in the true Gospel, something the LDS gospel really does not contain. (A people taught that they are literal offspring of God, and on their way to Godhood themselves, securing Temple recommends along the way, can never understand or grasp the depravity of their own sinful nature. And still, because of a works salvation, Mormons cannot grasp the magnitude and utter dependence upon the work of Christ alone for our forgiveness. And wrapped up in this is the joy we have in the security of this truth - Christ the hope and all in all of our salvation - nothing else)

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jriccitelli
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Re: The Church Service

Post by jriccitelli » Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:37 pm

Churches today are not based in small communities, and the Gospel message has been sugar coated and neutered as Paul warned;
'For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.5 But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry' (2 Timothy 4:3-5)
What was the Churches original instruction to; 'preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction' (4:2)
…has become many other things.

The Jehovahs Witnesses have done what the Church was suppose to do, and they do it well, that is going door to door, being very welcoming and organized, but this does not justify the JW doctrines or beliefs.

As I sat in LDS services I totally missed the fellowship and joy I was beginning to experience among Christians. Christian fellowship for me at other churches (other than LDS) were focused on God and around His Word, and I was meeting people who were 'excited' about God. When I spoke up or mentioned the wonderful joy I was experiencing in knowing God with other LDS members they looked at me with blank stares like I was speaking another language.

As I mentioned in my previous posts I was at times experiencing wonderful fellowships outside of the LDS church, and unlike many churches I have experienced since. In fact I had attended a wonderful 'Christian church' fellowship while I was staying in Salt Lake City one time, the pastor even let me sleep on his couch, while I was looking for a room.

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jriccitelli
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Re: The Church Service

Post by jriccitelli » Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:42 pm

One time you mentioned you would be interested, but I never sent you the link to my story / testimony that explains the opening of my eyes and my experience within the Mormon Church. I have more to my story but I posted most of it here at;

http://jriccitelli.blogspot.com/

(Note this is not the blog about DelTondo, or anything else I had linked to earlier)

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mkprr
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Re: The Church Service

Post by mkprr » Mon Aug 20, 2012 3:20 pm

You brought up some good insights about how the LDS church is able to pull this off. I’ve been thinking over the past few days about another key element that might give the LDS church the ability to function the way it does. A believing LDS is typically strongly convinced that God cares about where he attends church, whereas in protestant Christianity, denominations are in competition with each other and sometimes they might find that making church fun and easy draws a bigger crowd.

The Catholics, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, the LDS’, etc can easily get their congregations more involved because the people in their congregations believe that God has a strong opinion about where they should attend church.

As much as I love the LDS church, I pray that if Joseph Smith was a false prophet or a fraud, God would help me see that so that I could spend my time serving God elsewhere. If it is based on a lie it doesn’t matter how great the modern LDS church seems to be, I wouldn’t be interested in joining in with it. It is in this mindset that I conclude time and time again that the LDS church is what it claims to be. I am part of it not only because it is good at church services, but because I am convinced that it is a true restoration of the ancient church where Jesus is the Lord and King and where things are generally done His way. (I say generally because both in ancient times and modern times, the church was and has been in constant battle against the prejudices, limited understanding, and the traditions of the men and women who make up the church.) I am however still opened to correction and fully acknowledge that I could be mistaken or blinded by my predispositions. It might sound like from my posts that I am not weighing things very evenly but that is because when it comes to the LDS church, most here hold to the idea that the LDS church is inspired by something other than God and I am usually answering their accusations or concerns.

I read your story and I appreciate you sharing it. While I think you are confused by some distorted views of LDS doctrine, at the same time you are following through with convictions that you have carefully arrived at which is something that I admire and that I am sure God likes to see.

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Jepne
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Re: The Church Service

Post by Jepne » Thu Sep 27, 2012 8:14 pm

Oh dear, I guess I am a little late, but so be it.

Can we go back to Paidion’s post about ‘body ministry’? Has anyone ever experienced this? It is New Testament ‘church’.

The very term “The Church Service” makes me cringe. The most alive functioning church I was ever apart of called it ‘assembling’. We would just be there at the appointed time. There were about 200 of us, and we operated by the Spirit of God. The leadership sat on a platform so they could see what was going on. Literally ‘oversight’. Sometimes there was music at the beginning (with an open microphone), sometimes it was prayer or a message. Often someone not in leadership would have the message – something he had been looking at during the week and felt the Lord would have him (or her) share with the Body. Prophecy and spiritual songs flowed like a river.

We shared our goods with one another, took time to help people pack, or clean house – practical ways of showing love.

Every once in a while, someone would begin a story with, “We were having church in Wal-mart the other day and. . . .”

Where we live up here, I know of only one group (out of more than twelve in the four closest villages) where the ‘pastor’ does not conduct a planned structured ‘service’ – and it is based on the writings of one man - there is no real freedom to move by the Spirit of God except with three of our friends.

Pret-ty difficult when you have tasted the real thing, but we determine to be content and thankful for wonderful godly neighbors.
"Anything you think you know about God that you can't find in the person of Jesus, you have reason to question.” - anonymous

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Jepne
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Re: The Church Service

Post by Jepne » Thu Sep 27, 2012 8:15 pm

Oh dear, I guess I am a little late, but so be it.

Can we go back to Paidion’s post about ‘body ministry’? Has anyone ever experienced this? It is New Testament ‘church’.

The very term “The Church Service” makes me cringe. The most alive functioning church I was ever apart of called it ‘assembling’. We would just be there at the appointed time. There were about 200 of us, and we operated by the Spirit of God. The leadership sat on a platform so they could see what was going on. Literally ‘oversight’. Sometimes there was music at the beginning (with an open microphone), sometimes it was prayer or a message. Often someone not in leadership would have the message – something he had been looking at during the week and felt the Lord would have him (or her) share with the Body. Prophecy and spiritual songs flowed like a river.

We shared our goods with one another, took time to help people pack, or clean house – practical ways of showing love.

Every once in a while, someone would begin a story with, “We were having church in Wal-mart the other day and. . . .”

Where we live up here, I know of only one group (out of more than twelve in the four closest villages) where the ‘pastor’ does not conduct a planned structured ‘service’ – and it is based on the writings of one man - there is no real freedom to move by the Spirit of God except with three of our friends.

Pret-ty difficult when you have tasted the real thing, but we determine to be content and thankful for wonderful godly neighbors.
"Anything you think you know about God that you can't find in the person of Jesus, you have reason to question.” - anonymous

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