The mission of the church is to bring people to Christ (it is not the tri-fold mission of proclaim the gospel, perfect the saints and redeem the dead). Yet many members feel that the focus on Christ is missing in our weekly worship. So, what’s the best way to bring Christ back to the center of our Sundays?
I happen to be cruising around the LDS Temple website the other day and I was looking at the Temples under construction. I was wondering whether we the Church had announced a Temple and not built it. I knew that this happened, so I thought it might make an interesting post. Most of my information comes from that website, except where noted.
The tragedy of 9/11 had a big impact on my views about the relationship between faith and reason. As I watched the video footage of the jumbo jets flying into the World Trade Center towers over and over again, it dawned on me that I was witnessing the destructive power of faith unchecked by reason. Consider for a moment the faith proposition that motivated the 9/11 hijackers: “If you slit a few throats to hijack a plane and then fly that plane into a skyscraper, killing yourself and all your comrades along with thousands of civilian men, women, and...
I am struck regularly by how many members fail to focus on the life of Jesus and, thus, fail to realize that there are incredible lessons (particularly in the Gospels) about specific things we can do to become more like Him – things that can lessen the effects of our sins and actually help decrease the frequency of those sins – thus bringing internal peace and a measure of calmness to our lives in the here and now, regardless of the storms that rage therein. I believe we sometimes buy into the apostate obsession with the afterlife – as...
My home teacher (who is very cool) came by yesterday to drop off some starter cables for my car and as one does in that short interlude we discussed the celestial kingdom and being Gods after this life. He believed that those who don’t make it to the highest kingdom in the Celestial Kingdom won’t have any sexual relationships and if you don’t have sexual relationships their will be no need for sexual organs.
I saw a recent thought experiment. The author asked: what if you had to chose between a doctrine you disliked and results you liked (lets call them doctrine A and result B) or doctrine you liked and results you disliked (doctrine B and result A). Which would you chose?
I know my mother has better things to do at work than to forward generic Christian chain mails to everyone in her address book…my problem is I can’t convince her of that. And so, every day, I receive a treasure trove of faith-promoting Christian stories that make me — a nonbeliever — cringe. And while I ranted on my blog about how offensive I found various parts of one recently received email…I realized too that I found a strange comfort in realizing that it was just a generic Christian chain mail. This served to be one of the times...
Since my last post was quite speculative and controversial, I thought I’d go for a change of pace and talk about something we’re all familiar with, or so we thought. The history of baptism is quite interesting, and much more complex than most people know. Some have questioned the Book of Mormon’s account of baptism which predates Christ. So, I wanted to learn more about the history of baptism, and came across a concept of Mikvah.
This article by a guest blogger originally appeared at Gospel Doctrine Underground. We want to thank the author for allowing us to re-post it here. The Law of Consecration offers a lot of interesting discussion topics and ideas. To me, a political junkie, one of the most interesting concepts tied up in consecration is the idea of equality. The Book of Mormon has some interesting passages regarding equality; I cannot help thinking that they got Joseph thinking about economics and righteousness. Or, the impact of temporal things upon righteousness, anyway. So, when the Lord gives the newly organized Church...
There is a strange parable in D&C 88 about workers digging in a field and their boss giving them the joy of his countenance for an hour during their shift. Read on to weigh in what you think this means.
Recently, a veritable Icon of the Bloggernacle, who for purposes of anonymity we shall call “Aloysius Miller”, published a post stating: “I don’t see the church as an exclusive conduit to God,” and “I reject the claims that the church is a sole avenue to God.” Aloysius further stated: “I realize that those claims are a standard part of Mormon theology, and so my rejection of them makes me heterodox in that sense.” Aloysius’ proclamation of self-declared hetrodoxy made me ask myself: Is he really at odds with Church doctrine in rejecting the notion that the LDS Church is...
Last time, I did a lengthy post on Nepotism in the Church, which you can find here. This is an update for this year so far. As you can see, the list is pretty short. I haven’t had a chance to go back and do more research on the appointments other than General Authorities, Temple Presidents and Mission Presidents. Biographical information is hard to come by for Area Authorities and Stake Presidents. One thing is clear; the church is getting much more diverse in appointments for Mission Presidents and Temple Presidents. While there are still a number of Mission...
It’s been over a year since someone posted something on Book of Mormon geography, so I think it’s about time. Most of you believe that the Book of Mormon occurred in Central America, right? Well it turns out there are over 100 theories. Check out this big list, which is incomplete. In 1991, John Sorenson of BYU, the “dean” of Book of Mormon geography, created a book called “The Geography of Book of Mormon Events: A Source Book“. (It is hard to find because it has no ISBN #, but can be purchased at the BYU Bookstore as well...
There are some speculations I learned about by all the sermons to the contrary. When I was much, much younger, I read a lot of sermons and essays and excerpts. One thing that struck me was the number of talks by Prophets and Apostles who spent a lot of time lecturing that speculation born of the mores of the day was wrong and that women were equal to men and to be treated as equal partners in marriage, not treated as property or subservient. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve constantly run across speculation to the contrary. That proves just...
Comment on any of the following articles – or anything else from the sidebar – or any other article of interest to this forum that we missed. Some Q12 Subscribe to Sunstone A Wave of De-Baptisms Mormon Stories Archive Back on Line African Mission Churches Are Reaching Into America These Researchers Have a Good Grasp of the Obvious Times & Seasons Divorce: Don’t Cry for Me, Adam Greenwood Big OOPS – Just a Typo, but a Good One
“What if you weren’t a Mormon?” For some reason, this is something that I often wonder to myself. And this post is about how I would answer that question.
David Stout is a Disciples of Christ minister. This is the third and final installment of his insightful commentary on LDS Sacrament Meeting Worship. To provide proper context for this final installment, we are including a couple of paragraphs from the end of the last installment. We want to thank David for his contributions here at Mormon Matters; it has been enlightening and well-considered. Now again I want to underscore the fact that I write as a non-Mormon, and I recognize the fact that there must be something about the sacrament meeting that does work and that the current...
Not too long ago, I sat through an Elders Quorum lesson about the First Vision. The teacher, who I like and who generally does a good job, was leading a paint-by-numbers sort of discussion (Q: “What do we learn from The First Vision”; A: “God has a body”). As usual for this topic, the lesson had its share of omissions (no mention of the other accounts) and historical missteps (“No one else in 1820 believed that God and Christ were separate beings”). All in all, it was a fairly typical meeting and, to be honest, I was zoning out....
In a recent CNN.com/living article (“Out-of-wedlock births hit record high”), the discussion centered on the fact that the birth rate outside of marriage in the United States has risen nearly 25% in the past five years. You read that correctly – 25% in 5 years. The following are some representative quotes from that article:
I’d like to start a new feature showcasing stuff I read in the scriptures and getting your opinions on what the heck you think it means. Hope you like it. I just read D&C 88 and ran across an interesting passage we’ve all heard/read before in vv. 64 and 65 that begs the question: What’s expedient?