It’s interesting to hear your thoughts. I see you have generated quite a stir among some members, apostate members, and others. I am a believer in frank conversation. I don’t think you posted your thoughts to have backslapping and way-to-goes poured out. So I am going to say it the way I treat myself.

I love what President Kimball said about spirituality. “Whenever I find that God is far away, I realize that I am the one who has moved” (paraphrasing). Whenever I find that I am not feeling the Spirit like I ought to I inventory myself.

-Is there a sin I have committed that has put distance between the Lord and myself?
-Am I faithfully reading the scriptures?
-Am I fervently praying?This simple self-inventory reveals a lot about what I am doing that might be preventing the Spirit from entering in. I think here it is important to review the following: Church exists for at least three reasons.

1) To renew sacred covenants. The sacrament is the key to having the Spirit in our lives. If you listen to the sacrament prayer, you covenant to do three things (always remember Him, take His name upon you, and keep His commandments); in return Father in Heaven promises that you will always have His Spirit to be with you. This is the reason that we go to church, to renew our covenants. In a very real sense without the sacrament a person cannot have the Spirit in his/her life. In fact Joseph Fielding Smith said: “No member of the Church can fail to make this covenant and renew it week by week, and retain the Spirit of the Lord. The sacrament meeting of the Church is the most important meeting which we have, and is sadly neglected by many members. We go to this service, if we understand the purpose of it, not merely to hear someone speak, important though that may be, but first, and most important, to renew this covenant with our Father in Heaven in the name of Jesus Christ. Those who persist in their absence from this service will eventually lose the Spirit and if they do not repent will eventually find themselves denying the faith” (Church History and Modern Revelation 1:123; see also Doctrines of Salvation 2:338).

2) To be strengthened. I love what Elder Russell M. Nelson said about sacrament meeting talks. While the speaker is delivering his/her address, ask yourself questions about the topic. Have a personal conversation considering what you are doing and what you are not doing to fulfill the expectations being delivered in the address. With this in mind, Church talks are not about hearing something new they are about self-inventory. The congregation ought to ask themselves, how am I doing in these areas? I think people often expect that sacrament meetings will teach them something new. But that is not the point. For example a talk on family home evening: Many people tune out because they have “heard it all before.” But they ought to be asking themselves, am I ensuring that my family is holding regular family home evening? How well are our lessons going? Which member of the family most needs to plan and prepare the lesson this Monday? It seems that many of the people posting to your comment have stopped engaging in this type of inventory. They may be going to church for the wrong reason: simply because it is expected of them. Rather, we go to church to discern what changes we need to make so the Spirit can be with us more fully.

3) We strengthen others. King Benjamin’s address concerning service is timely for your concern. Mosiah 2:17 suggests that when we are in the service of our fellow beings we are only in the service of our God. And Mosiah 18:8-10 suggests that the very nature of our baptismal covenant is to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort. In a very real sense you are not at church for yourself only. You are there for others as well. I like what Heber C. Kimball said, whenever I feel like life is very difficult, I find someone worse off than myself and focus all of my time and efforts on him or her. Soon my life doesn’t seem so bad (paraphrasing). There are people all around us at church who are in need. They feel overwhelmed with life and the adversary is constantly beating on them. One way to make your church experience more effective is to focus on them, find someone in need and make their life better because they were near you.

In writing these comments in no way do I suggest that I am perfect at living this way. But I have made a covenant with the Lord. I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for my moments at church when I can quietly reflect on how my life is going. However, salvation is not found on Sunday only. A group of individuals meet with Alma. They were rejected from their churches because they were poor and those who were prideful would not allow them to attend. They asked Alma what they should do. He responded, “do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week” (Alma 32:11)? Salvation is found six days a week in our personal religious devotions. When these devotions are strong, sacrament meeting and the rest fall into their proper perspective.

My last comment might be least favorable with some of the commentors of this blog. Alma and Amulek taught Zeezrom a powerful truth. Anyone can know the mysteries of God (i.e. the doctrines of God) if they are willing to give heed and diligence to them. Heed means to pay attention to something or someone and diligence means perseverence in application. In other words, those who know the doctrines of the kingdom have gained this knowledge because they pay the price of continued, daily study of the scriptures and words of modern prophets. However, some receive a lesser portion of the word (in sacrament meeting for instance) because they harden their hearts “until they know nothing concerning his mysteries; and then they are taken captive by the devil, and led by his will down to destruction” (Alma 12:9-11). The more dedicated we are to prayer and scripture study and then obeying the promptings of the Spirit, the more likely we are to understand what is taught in church. However, if we harden our hearts to these spiritual promptings we loose light and truth (D&C 50:24). I hope something I have said will spark the desire for you and anyone else who is reading this comment to turn to the Lord in prayer and scripture study and feast upon the words of Christ.

Despite my whining, I actually do like Church, most of the time.

The husband was a recent convert to the church, having spent many years resisting his wife’s attempts to encourage him to take the missionary lessons and join the Church, and she openly talked about the pain of coming to Church on Sundays and feeling like she didn’t fit in, that there are those in the congregation for whom it is a tremendous act of courage just to show up to Sacrament meeting one more time and face all of those other members who are “obviously” happier, more spiritual and who have stronger testimonies of the Gospel.

She confessed to not being a perfect Mormon in that she will still be found at the grocery store some Sundays, buying ingredients for the Sunday dinner recipe because she hasn’t quite gotten her meal preparation act together yet.

She presented herself as a flawed, but still struggling to improve, human being whose testimony about some things is stronger than her testimony about other things. Instead of delivering a dry doctrinal rehash of what a bunch of General Authorities have had to say on a given topic (which is about all we can ever expect from the typical “youth speaker”), she opened herself up to the rest of the congregation, warts and all, and told us of her struggles to stay active, and of her need for more fellowshipping than she had received, and I doubt that there were any adults in the congregation who weren’t able to identify with what she had to say on some level or other.

It was wonderful. It seems that a lot of us are so preoccupied with keeping up the image of being the true blue latter-day saint that Sacrament meeting can almost be viewed as an exercise in dishonesty some days. Hooray for honest Sacrament meeting speakers.

You’re right though — people imitating GAs is often worse that people that don’t know how to speak at all.

Move to Japan and back in time while you’re at it! For a while in the mid-90s there was a pilot program testing out 2-hour church in Japan. They thought the three hour block was too much time in that culture. I have no idea what happened to it. Anybody know?

Since I was old enough to remember there have been rumours that, “something BIG is going to happen at conference!” These seem to crop up about every 18 months. Sometimes they are more specific than others such as, “Women will get to go on missions when they turn 19″ or “We are going to send missionaries to China!” other times they are more vague and include a wishlist as you have done. Experience has taught me that “something big” happens at conference about once a decade, if that, and that the rumours rarely come true, especially the wish-list rumours.

The one thing that seems very likely to happen is that two new apostles will be called. That in and of itself indicates to me that it is unlikely that any big changes will happen, since they like to have a full quorum before moving. It would be a big change if one or both of the apostles called were not from the western US, the only reports I have seen about that were an article in the SLTrib that refenced a T&S entry that I wrote to saying that some more diversity would be nice. So you can see how rumours get started.

I don’t think people come to Church just because it’s “true.” I think they come to participate in a community of like-minded individuals. They like the interaction, and they feel good about spending their (limited) free time this way, in thinking and singing about Jesus. And it renews them, inspiring them to alter their lives accordingly, and do good “works” throughout the week.

I think Church is inspiring even when it isn’t very good, or perhaps perfectly boring. It’s inspiring just being there, just participating week after week. If it were wonderfully entertaining every week, that would be like Christmas every day — too much of a good thing can be as deadening as too little. One reason to go every week is to anticipate a really good talk, or lesson, or musical number, or seeing a visitor who’s a long-time friend, or meeting a new family, or… the list is endless. It’s called life, and one thing the Church does (for me) is provide some of my only optimism.

It’s often boring, because we’re not all trained speakers or teachers. But we all have personalities, and when one breaks through the murk of doctrine, Church becomes an event, something to be talked about and cherished.

What parts of Brasil? I have never heard of that, which strikes me as a bit odd since I served my mission there and keep in contact with people down there.