COME JOIN WITH US? (Part I)

I don’t generally write out my lessons verbatim, but this one is special, and by that I mean hard. I'll start with how it all went down.

I was lazing about like a heathen on a Sunday morning in a hotel room in San Francisco in February when I received a text from my friend Karen, a counselor in our Relief Society, asking me to sub and teach on March 23^rd.   I said yes, as I don’t know how to say anything else when I get calls from Church, and I kind of missed my old calling to teach.

She only had the page number, so I asked for which one it was since I don’t have the paper version.  She had to go look it up.  She texted back, “Come Join With Us.”  Uchtdorf’s last talk from General Conference encouraging us to keep coming to church. 

This particular Sunday was the 7^th week I had not been at Church. 

I texted back jokingly, “Is this your way of reactivating me?” Her response, “Actually I just looked up the title since it is not on the bookmark and realized what it was.  I have to say it made me chuckle J  it must not have been my idea.”

I took a deep breath and opened up the talk on my phone and read while I waited for my turn in the shower.  I’m in marketing by trade, and a big part of my job is to review all of a client’s documents and boil them down to their most simple, understandable form in the most logical order.  Having applied that process, here’s what I came up with:

The Church consists of a group of people that has these things in common:

1. They LOVE the Savior and wish to draw closer and follow Him
2. They YEARN TO KNOW Christ’s pure doctrine, rejoicing that God speaks to man
3. They ARE GOOD: caring, kind, honest, industrious
4. They want to put FAITH INTO PRACTICE, and see assignments as opportunities to fill covenants and engage in a great cause

These people share a common belief that:

1. Jesus CHRIST HIMSELF LEADS the church
2. As a result, this Church has the AUTHORITY to act for Him
3. This is used to administer necessary ORDINANCES & COVENANTS
4. Christ guides his Church through REVELATION & PROPHECY

Because of this shared belief, members willingly take on a very large commitment which includes:

1. Callings
2. Home Teaching
3. Visiting Teaching
4. Family Home Evening
5. Temple Work
6. Service
7. Teaching Assignments
8. 10 Hours of General Conference
9. 3 Hours of Church Weekly
10. Family History
11. Youth Activities
12. Early Morning Seminary
13. Maintaining Buildings
14. Word of Wisdom
15. Fast Offerings
16. Tithing
17. And Much More! (a well-worn final bullet in marketing materials)

Uchtdorf also makes clear some important things about the Church Organization itself:

1. It has a course and destiny and God will not allow it to drift or fail.
2. Is operated by flawed human beings, yet the truth of Christ’s gospel not tarnished, diminished or destroyed.
3. It is designed for the imperfect with desire to follow Christ, not for those who have mastered it all: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
4. The Church values pondering and questions, it was restored by a man with questions and doubts.
5. The Church honors personal agency and the right to worship however others choose, even if we sorrow when others chose differently than we do.
6. The Church benefits and needs unique perspectives, backgrounds and diverse experiences.

While on an individual and ward level we don’t always allow room for flaws (in self or others), can become fearful about pondering, agency or unique perspectives, official policy isn’t quite as down on these realities.  Even the best of us are imperfect, uninformed and needing forgiveness from God and each other, and all of us have very different experiences here.

Uchtdorf then breaks down the features and benefits of his Come Join With Us call to action.  Here’s the “WHY” of the proposal—these are the blessings that surely will come as a result that long commitment list—the ACTIONS: 

•         Peace

•         Happiness

•         Hope

•         Purpose

•         Healing of Wounds

•         Healed Suffering

•         Comfort for Grieving Souls

•         Nourishment

•         Rest

•         Truth

•         Meaning

•         Feel God's Power & Presence

•         Know & Grow Closer to Savior

•         Belonging

•         Benefitting a Group

•         Great Treasures of Knowledge

•         Words of Eternal Life

•         Way to Act on Faith, Take Up Cross,  Follow Him

•         Forgiveness of Sin

•         Sanctifying Influence of Holy Ghost

•         Salvation & Profound Joy in World To Come

•         Revelation and Prophecy

•         Priesthood Ordinances  & Covenants

I finished reading the talk.  Tears were soaking the pillow in my San Francisco hotel room. Peace?  Happiness?  Hope?  Healing? Comfort? Rest? I’d been going to Church for 42 years with an obedient, sincere heart and can’t witness to the truth of that. 

In fact, the last time I had went to Church, seven weeks before on the first Sunday of the year, I had gone in heartbroken fasting and prayer and pleading.  I went praying that I would recover emotionally, mentally, and spiritually from the very difficult last year.  I had spent several months carefully weaving together a peace out of Christ’s grace and love and went holding it carefully in my hands.   But when the meetings ended, I had fled sobbing, all of my very carefully constructed peace had been unraveled—first a picking, then pulling, then a hard yank in the last of those three dutiful hours—and it left me entirely undone.  Church shouldn’t hurt like that.

This was followed the next week with emails from old, once-solid friends about why they left the Church that left me wide-eyed and reeling in my weakened state. How could all this be the result of my effort and asking? And all these blessings, aside from the last two, all of my faithful non-LDS Christian friends could make the exact list of reasons why they benefit from going to Church. 

What did all of this mean?

Before I jumped in the shower, I texted Karen back: “I just read it and it hit tearfully close to home.  Are you sure I’m the right person to do this?” 

She assured me I was, so I asked for her prayers and said maybe this would be a good catalyst to work through some things.  And it has been. I can’t say my attendance stats have improved terribly over the past month since this request, I still feel sad and hurting when I leave Church and have noticed myself subconsciously avoiding it, so this has been a good exercise to investigate that more.  

So all of that said, I am either highly qualified to teach a lesson on why we should go to Church, or am extremely under qualified.  

Next: PART II: THE MISSING FACTOR

Post by Valerie Wise Christensen.

PART III: THE DARKNESS
PART IV: THE LIGHT
PART V: THE WIND & THE WAVES
PART VI: CAPAX DEI 

The Honest Truth: Thoughts on Church Meetings

Tonight we found ourselves in a discussion with another couple and my mother about the tendency of Church meetings to lean toward abstract principles, ideas and to-do lists.  These meetings helpfully review what we should be experiencing.  We all longed for more discussions that can be felt, not just conceptualized—personal discussions that reflect the complexity and difficulty of our daily experience, a space for us to safely be honest about what we are actually experiencing in a group environment.

I mentioned that perhaps the reason for this is that in our attempt to be unified, it is easier for us to agree on outside abstractions of a true principle, then call that unity.  It is much harder to really see, hear, understand and connect with our actual—generally messy—experiences that require Christ's grace.

It seems we often replace true unity with the illusion of sameness—we all agree on these principles and parameters, therefore we are of one mind.

Yet we are not of one heart.

Sameness is a lazy, lower unity.  True unity—being of one heart as Christ has asked—requires more than nodding our heads at a set of tidy, abstract ideas and parameters.  It requires connecting with each other in honest, personal ways about our own fallen experience in a fallen world that daily requires Christ's intercession.  It requires that we are safe to share this reality with one another in a spirit of empathy and forgiveness, devoid of fear or judgment, because we trust in God's goodness.

As a community of Saints attempting to falteringly walk with Christ, we have the opportunity to gather together and discuss not just abstract truths, but the truth of what we are actually experiencing, thinking and feeling from day to day as we try to walk with Him—even when we stumble or walk away.  When all can meet together in faith (which is trust, really), we are protected and unified in our honesty.  In a community of true faith, we can all trust that God's grace is big enough for each of us, wherever we are on the path.  We can be open with one another about our struggles and pain as we work out our salvation—but now no longer as isolated and alone as before.

That is the harder, higher unity—having our hearts knit together in love.

So, we settle for the easy road and we too often worship through sameness over love: we can agree that faith is the first principle, discuss the abstraction of what it means, read quotes about its importance, and list on the board handy steps for building it.  That's Religious Unity 101—we are unified because we all subscribe to the same theology.

But we live far below our blessings, and in a moment we could graduate to upper division unity.  And that discussion of faith can be an honest sharing of how we fallen sinners are learning to trusting Jesus Christ's promise that he can heal us—even here and now—in this moment of loss, disappointment, betrayal, trauma, abuse, loneliness, weakness, sin and despair.  We can honestly share our stumbles and wonderings and wanderings.  We don't need to be restrained only to affirmations and happy endings, and we never have to wear our game face to church.  In safety, trusting in the reality of a real Savior, we can learn from each other in messy, real love.

As a Church, our Sunday School lessons and Sacrament talks can move past the conceptual abstractions and statements of truth to the heartfelt truth of daily experience.  We all sit up and notice on the occasions where that happens—the Spirit of the meeting changes when the speaker moves from pontification to the honest, faltering struggle of an effort to connect with the Divine.

My husband said that one of his most successful Sunday School lessons came as a result of the question "Why do you go to the temple?"  He did not ask "Why do we go to the temple," or "Why should  we go to the temple."  Instead, he dismissed in advance any easy answers.  He asked his class to really think honestly about why they personally go—and the resulting answers took time.  The answers were personal, honest, and surprising—and not the same.  The manner in which the truth of the temple met with the truth of their daily experience varied.

The unity of sameness dissolved into the true unity of love.  The Spirit not only served then to confirm truth, but to bind together the hearts of the individuals there.

My mother shared a similar experience with a recent lesson on the power of women.  While the discussion tended toward extolling the virtues of beatific femininity and idyllic motherhood, one woman raised her hand and spoke honestly about how the conversation was difficult for her, because she didn't have that kind of mom—her mother was cold and uncaring both in her childhood and now toward her and her children. The abstract talk of a true principle was leaving her hungry and sorrowful because the truth she had lived and was living was not reflected in that discussion.  But while the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life.  She added her honest voice to the discussion so it could include not just the truth of a principle, but the truth of her experience, one that required Christ's grace.  Surely there were others in the room who could relate to the reality, the pain, the guilt of our own falling short and the falling short of those we wanted to rely on.

In this moment we get to why we are really there in that meeting—to see the healing power of Christ in action in the moment of loss, pain, sin, and falling short.  A discussion of perfect womanhood needs no saving, no Savior.  But the truth that we all experience as flawed, mortal women—all daughters of flawed, mortal women—needs saving.  Christ's grace now has room—a gap in our perfect ideals—to enter in and save.

And further, that honest expression led to a personal conversation later with my mom that served to connect and heal to them both—the honesty of the grace-starved gap that only can be filled by Christ served, and always serves, to bind hearts together.

In the end, if we narrow our focus only to the ideals, perfect principles, and tidy checklists, where really do we need a Christ?  Only as exemplar perhaps.  True worship includes an honest discussion not only of abstract truths, but of the flawed, daily truth we live each day—full of the gaps we need Christ to fill.