The Big Meeting

Like many others, I watched the leadership training broadcast yesterday afternoon, and like some I watched it at home. (No one but me got the comfort of my General Conference La-Z-Boy seat.)

I did not have huge expectations of great new innovations in the missionary program of the church. (It’s easy to say that after the fact, of course!) I was a little amused by some predictions of what would be announced at the meeting, or what people hoped would be announced.

In the end, the key messages of this meeting were not a lot different from similar meetings in the past: Missionary Work is one part of the work of Salvation. It is not the only part or the most important part, and it cannot be separated from the other parts. Do it. Do it now. And do lots of it. And don’t limit your efforts to finding new people to teach; work on re-finding those sheep who have been lost. And work on getting them all to the temple.

Oh, and we have lots more missionaries. And they’ll do some things a little differently as time goes on, making use of more modern equipment.

But You (meaning Me): get out of that La-Z-Boy and get to work.

It comes as no surprise that the message doesn’t change much. One Eternal Round and all that. And it comes as no surprise that there are some innovations (lower entry ages, electronic media, chapel tours).

What I also found wonderful was just watching Elder Holland conduct the meeting, watching him interact personally with the video “guests” from outside Provo, and having him share his testimony of this incredible work. Seeing that enormous missionary choir was really impressive. I felt sorry for those mission presidents and their wives, and I wondered how many sessions they had already sat through that day and how overwhelmed they might be as they drink from the firehose.

I remember first learning really about the “Unified Effort” when I was a bishop in South America. Our mission president was in our ward, and he taught us well the value of the ward council in helping people to stay active once baptized. We had two ward councils a month to keep track of our 75+/year converts. It was really impressive to see the whole ward council pull together to help these new converts stay active in the gospel (and that ward council was pretty successful at it, too).

The same theme was repeated when I was a bishop in the US when President Hinckley gave his famous “double the number of baptisms” fireside. But the principles were the same. Every new convert needs a friend, a responsibility and to be nurtured by the good word of God. That message certainly has not changed.

I’ve participated in various church councils since I served as a Deacon’s Quorum president over 40 years ago. I learned then what I know now: we almost never need a “new” program to do the work. We need to do the work. Yes, there will be minor shifts in focus from time to time. New tools may be available to aid us in the effort. But in the end, the work of salvation is one-on-one, face-to-face. An old Sting song years ago proclaimed, “Men go crazy in congregations; they only get better one by one.” (Not that I take all my gospel teaching from rock stars, mind you.)

So why such a big meeting to preach a message that has been preached before? I can think of several reasons:

1. We need to be taught and re-taught. If we got things right the first time around, there would be no need for repentance. And President Packer (bless him!) taught us again in this meeting, we all need repentance. 
2. There are new people hearing this message for the first time. All those fresh-faced missionaries in the Marriott Center are new to this work. They didn’t see Elder Packer teach the 3-fold mission of the church in the 1980’s, nor hear the brethren teach the unified effort in the 1990s. And they’re not the only ones. Many members of ward and stake councils -- especially in growing areas of the church -- are new to this part of the work, and they are hearing this for the first time.  
3. There is value in hearing renewed testimony of eternal things. If it were not so, why would we have General Conference twice a year? Why would we have fast & testimony meeting once a month? Each time we hear truth, we have an opportunity for the spirit to touch our hearts.

 

I for one was glad to hear the messages of the apostles who spoke, to hear of successes in various parts of the vineyard, and be made to squirm just a bit in my La-Z-Boy.

My conversion story

Encouraged by MMM’s 2nd Annual Hug a Convert Day, I am sharing my own conversion story.


I was the first of my family attend any event at our area’s LDS church. I was in third grade and a new kid up the block who happened to be in my class at school invited me to the Primary Halloween party. The only stipulation (you know what’s coming): no masks.

I showed up on at my friend’s house the Thursday afternoon of the party and waited on the back porch while his mother put the finishing touches on his awesome pirate costume (complete with a beard drawn on with eyebrow pencil and a bandana). As I waited, I reflected on my own stupid store-bought troll costume (without a mask). He was very cool. I was a dork. So I did what many self-respecting third graders do: I ran home, deciding not to go to the party.

To my good fortune, my friend was not stopped in his effort to invite me and within a month or two, I was attending Primary every Thursday afternoon with him and his brothers and sisters. Soon one of his sisters invited my older sister to go along, too. By February of the next year, our whole family was invited to their home for a Family Home Evening.

My mother, good southern girl that she was, knew she had to return the favor of an invitation to our home, but she elected only to invite my friend’s parents, not the entire family (including nine kids); they ate in the dining room (something we only did on holidays). And at the end of the meal, my friend’s parents invited my parents to hear the missionary discussions.

(This was not my parents’ first introduction to missionaries. On a couple of other occasions we had missionaries at our doorstep who did not, for whatever reason, return when invited to do so. We lived far from the church and assumed that’s why, so in retrospect, we were glad to have our friends move in up the street to introduce us to the church.)

I remember sitting on the living room floor listening to the missionaries – usually our two young elders, but once in a while they brought a stake missionary with them. I have bit and pieces of memories of flannel board displays from the various lessons (there were six in those days). I remember my baptismal interview, sitting in my bedroom with the district leader and answering and asking questions.

Only later did I realize that the baptism of a complete family of six was pretty special. My parents were well loved in our little branch, and both received callings right away. My sister and I continued to attend Primary and my other sister and brother attended MIA and early morning seminary. (Church was about a half-hour drive away and we made that trip every day at least once, often twice!) One of my father’s first assignments was making a food chest for the scout troop and I enjoyed watching him build it in our garage. My mother taught the three-year olds in Junior Sunday School and we’d help her cut out her pictures for her flannel board stories on Saturday night as we watched TV.

My friend’s father was our home teacher and he came like clockwork. We had those things President Hinckley taught years later we should have: friends, responsibilities and nurturing in the good word of God.

Less than a year after our baptism, we had special permission from Elder Benson of the Twelve to travel to the Salt Lake Temple and be sealed as a family. (Our anniversary would be in September, but an August trip allowed us to make the 1,800 mile trip each way before school started.)

I have memories of scenes in the temple – in the children’s waiting area, in the hallway en route to the sealing room, and in the sealing room itself. I remember kneeling there with my parents.

Participating as the missionaries taught our family, feeling the spirit the night of our baptism and confirmation, and feeling what I did in the temple as we were sealed provided a significant foundation for my personal conversion. Even as I passed through periods of apathy in my teenage years, I could not let go of what I had experienced, and a youth conference experience just before my senior year in high school reawakened and reestablished spiritual connections that had grown dim. By my freshman year at BYU, I was firmly on a path of growing testimony as I received my patriarchal blessing and prepared to serve a mission.

I have sought to relive my conversion experience by inviting others as my third-grade classmate invited me. Sadly, I haven’t been able to replicate the experience of my youth. But I am forever grateful for my friend who did not stop inviting me and for his parents who also invited us and for my own parents who were open to that invitation.

You (or I) may be the sample of one

The following letter appeared in my local paper’s printing of the syndicated Ask Amy column this week:

Dear Amy: My 26-year old daughter waitresses in an upscale eatery in a liberal college town. She has numerous tattoos visible on her arms and legs, which get a lot of attention. I don’t like tattoos, but she is my child, and I love her regardless.

A coworker’s mom, who is Mormon and visiting from out of state, sat in my daughter’s section and proceeded to tell her that she was disgusting. She said she could not believe my daughter was allowed to work there, told her not to spit in her food and said that she is going to hell.

I am seething. My religious beliefs teach love and acceptance to all, and I firmly believe that I should not judge others. My daughter treated the offender with kindness, but she was stunned by this spewing. What a perfect way to turn others against religion!

Was there a tactful response my daughter could have given to make the offender realize her behavior was wrong? – Sad Mom (emphasis added).

*sigh*

My first response was to wonder why this offending woman identified herself as LDS, and worse, why she claimed the young tattooed waitress would be going to hell?

This dear sister obviously missed all those admonitions of the Savior to love one another and not to judge one another.

I’ve spent more time thinking about this than I should, probably, but I’ve come up with some scenarios:

1. Sad Mom was aware of the visiting woman’s religion because the co-worker had mentioned it, not because the visitor had mentioned it. Sad Mom then attributed the awful behavior to the visitor’s Mormon-ness rather than to her being a crabby old lady. (This is the best case scenario.)

2. The visitor actually mentioned her Mormon-ness why chastising the young waitress about her tattoos. (Can you imagine that discussion? What do you know about the Mormons? Do you know we hate tattoos, and people who wear them? Yikes!!)

3. The young waitress embellished the story for her mother. (Can you believe what happened to me today? This woman sits in my station and goes off on my tattoos….)

The lesson that lept to mind is that whether we like it or not, we are missionaries. We are seen by others as representatives of our faith and our church. For some people, we are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Well, of course we know there are stupid people everywhere. And the church is not immune to that condition. How sad that this LDS woman would treat a waitress the way she did and make claims she has no right in the world to make. (I have to chuckle as I think about a professor I had in college who wore long sleeves every day of the year to hide tattoos he’d gotten as young sailor. This tattooed professor was also a sealer in the temple when I knew him.)

I hope that if I’m someone’s sample of the church that I do a better job representing.

(BTW, Amy’s response was spot on: “Dear Sad: This isn’t about religion, but about rudeness….” She goes on to point out that the waitress did the right thing trying to be polite, and suggested that she could have offered to re-seat the upset woman in a different section of the restaurant.)

On whether all roads lead to Rome

While I was on my mission (back when we rode dinosaurs to appointments), my last companion somehow got invited to present a paper at a local university in Saarbrücken during a symposium on religion. There were other papers to be presented on a variety of topics, but his was entitled “Alle Wege Führen Nicht Nach Rom” (Not All Roads Lead to Rome).

 

His point, as one might imagine an LDS missionary’s point would be, was that there was only one way back to Heavenly Father, namely through the authorized ordinances of the restored priesthood. He did a credible job presenting; his non-native German was wonderful, and he was well received by the small crowd at the lecture. (We were actually working in a different city; he’d been transferred after he’d committed to present, so he got permission to go back.)

 

As I’ve grown older, I’ve had some different thoughts on the matter. While I agree with my companion that the saving ordinances of the restored priesthood are required for exaltation, how we get to those ordinances may be on very different paths.

 

I have for several years participated in 12-step programs. Part of the concept of most such groups is the acceptance of a Higher Power whose attributes are not specified except to note that the power higher than ourselves can restore us to sanity. The lack of specificity allows people of diverse beliefs to share the benefits of the 12 steps without reference to a particular religion. Many participants I know are Christian, so they have a similar (though perhaps not equal) concept of God to mine. But others do not worship God as we understand him, and still they are able to find a place on the spiritual journey of the steps. I should add that some who come to one of  my 12-Step groups without religion take some time to sort out how to get past the idea of a Higher Power, but many eventually do, finding their higher power in nature or in the group itself or some other way. (The church’s Addiction Recovery Program is different in this point, as one might expect. There, one openly acknowledges Christ’s role in allowing us to change, and rather than restoring us to sanity, he restores us to spiritual health.)

 

I quietly worried about this Higher Power model for my first while in my non-LDS 12-step program. Should I not confess Jesus Christ as my savior? The answer is yes, but the traditions of the program I attend prohibit the discussion of specific religions. In the end, here is how I sorted it out:

 

•  I can believe as I do, but “check my belief at the door” when participating in discussions of a Higher Power in order to allow the group to function as it does. In so doing, I can contribute to the greatest recovery for the greatest number (another part of the organization’s traditions) by avoiding polarizing discussions of religion that have little bearing on the other elements of the program. I do this already in many other aspects of my life. I do not discuss religion at length in the workplace. Nor do I discuss my faith with my doctor or mailman or plumber.

• I can also acknowledge God’s power to reveal Himself to people when He and they are ready. It occurred to me that if others in recovery accept a Higher Power to allow their progress on the spiritual journey of recovery, they will also find God eventually. As they work the steps, they will apply the lessons and blessings of the atonement to their lives, and in that process, God will speak to their hearts in His way and His time. And eventually He will help them to be prepared to take another step and learn about saving ordinances of the gospel. I can respect that God’s timeline is not mine, and I can strive to see if I have a place on His timeline, and I can be patient if I don’t.

• I can share my faith quietly and privately as moved by the Spirit (or invited by others) to do so, just as I can with my co-workers, my doctor, my mailman or my plumber. In the meantime, I can recognize that God has far greater power than I do in the sharing of His word. In recognizing that, I don’t seek to avoid my responsibility to share the gospel, but I recognize that since it’s His work, I can seek to understand His plan for me and act upon that.

 

Gospel truth is gospel truth. If someone learns truth in an LDS sacrament meeting or in self-study of the Bible or in the hands of a Buddhist monk or at the tables of recovery, it is still truth. In time, a person can learn enough truth to begin to want the ordinances of the priesthood. The paths to that point may be quite diverse. And that’s ok.