Just in case some readers don’t know, the Community of Christ is not one of the polygamist branches of Mormonism. They formed about 10 years after the LDS left Nauvoo, out of the saints who were not convinced that either Brigham Young or Sidney Rigdon should be the successor to Joseph Smith. They rejected polygamy especially, but also most of the theological evolution Joseph Smith went through during the Nauvoo period (i.e. ordinances for the dead, God as an exalted man, etc.).

Thus, from their beginning they were sort of founded on a very different profile than LDS. One of questioning authority and viewing a prophet as something more nuanced than the LDS view, something which LDS are only now beginning to experience in a mainstream way through things like Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling and the church-sponsored Joseph Smith Papers Project.

Without further ado, the list:

1. Pragmatic Priesthood
   Members are only given the priesthood when they are called to a position which requires it.  Teenagers are rarely ordained.  The priesthood is not considered a rite of passage for spiritual maturation, but a tool that is used when necessary to perform the Lord’s work.
2. A Democratic Canon
   We all agree that all human beings, even prophets, have the potential to be fallible.  The CoC leaders embrace that admission to the point that even new revelation from God is put to the membership at their bi-annual world conference to vote and either approve or reject as new scripture.  I don’t know if there is a corollary, but they also have a much more active canon than their LDS cousins.  The Doctrine and Covenants of the CoC only shares the first 120 sections or so with LDS, and yet they currently have 163 sections, with the latest one coming in 2007.  In the last 100 years, the LDS church has only added one document to the official canon.
3. Formally Trained Leadership
   In order to be an Appointee (an equivalent to a General Authority), a bachelor’s degree is required.  Once someone becomes an Appointee, they are admitted into an Advanced Leadership Study program which results in the equivalent of seminary graduate degree. Many callings actually have an application process where the needs of the position are measured against the talents and gifts of the candidate to provide a good match.  That process is combined with spiritual inspiration for the ultimate selection, but generally callings are qualified on the basis of a person having the appropriate skills for the job.
4. An Open Diversity of Opinion
   Just as with LDS, the Community of Christ membership hosts a wide diversity of opinions and beliefs.  There are CoC members who believe the Book of Mormon is a literal, historical translation of ancient scripture and there are those who see it as complete fiction which may or may not be useful as a source of poetic inspiration.  The primary difference is that the Community of Christ, at the leadership/authority levels, does not impose an orthodoxy upon its members.  They can freely and openly discuss these varied opinions in their public discourse and its just totally normal.  This cultural aspect actually harkens back to early church history when it was fairly common to see a public debate between Orson Pratt and Brigham Young (at the time was the Prophet) heatedly arguing some pretty core doctrines and walking away as friends and fellow saints in good standing.
5. Cyclical Leadership
   The modern leadership system in the Community of Christ is not a lifetime calling.  Even their prophets retire before death.  Current president Stephen Veazey is quite a young man, and I would guess based only on physical appearance that he may be younger than any LDS church president since Brigham Young, and younger than any current LDS apostle.  Some CoC apostles serve for only a couple years (their world conference, in which major priesthood business is conducted, is every two years).  The position of Pastor (like an LDS bishop) is only a one year call which has to be re-confirmed each year (I think most pastors get “renewed” for a while, though.)

Honorable mention: women in priesthood and leadership (but I’ve already written about this before), focus on peace and justice, and fearless approach to facing reality.

1. Service Missions
   I’m talking about Peace Corps style service work, full time. I honestly believe that if 75% of our full time missionaries were doing strictly community service, the church would see higher teaching and conversion rates… and perhaps even retention rates, too. The physical aspect of “raising the bar” would not have to be so severe as the less physically capable missionaries could do the teaching and the stronger missionaries could do the service work. Think about the impact that could have on the world.
2. Women in Priesthood
   This one might be controversial, and its definitely the least likely to happen anytime soon, but I think it would be cool. The talent pool for leadership and administered spirituality is more shallow than we realize since we can only draw from the men in the church, and we constantly hear how men are spiritually weak compared to women. I’ve seen women operate within priesthood in other churches and its very impressive.
3. Consolidated Sunday School – Relief Society – Priesthood
   For about a year, my stake had too many members for the amount of chapels available so they had to fit five wards in one building. In order to make that work, the block of meetings was reduced from 3 hours to a little over 2 hours. In this scenario, Sacrament meeting was still the same but Sunday School and the Relief Society/Priesthood meetings were each reduced to 30 minutes. The short block was fantastic, although with young children the length of Sacrament meeting is still a real issue. However, keeping separate Sunday School and RS/PH meetings ended up limiting the effectiveness of teachers in either meeting. I’d like to see a shorter block, with Sacrament meeting reduced to maybe 45-50 minutes, and then a consolidated Sunday School/RS/PH, with men and women together. The idea of men and women in separate meetings is a theory that doesn’t really bear out anymore since both are giving the same correlated lesson anyway.
4. More Musical Performance
   Without question, my favorite LDS Sacrament meetings have been the ones dominated by musical performances. A few years ago I visited a relative’s ward for Christmas and the Sacrament meeting had NO talks at all. After the Sacrament was administered, the remainder of the time was given to several musical numbers and it was my favorite church experience in a long time. I’d love to see at least 50% of Sacrament meeting time given to musical performance (aside from the usual congregational hymns), although I’d like to see a wider range of musical styles allowed (as opposed to mostly MoTab-style choir numbers and Janice Kapp Perry solos).
5. Less Administrative Meetings
   There are probably not many active LDS folks who need an elaboration here. In recent years there have been General Conference talks, letters to bishops, and programs developed to try to reduce the amount of meetings taking time away from families, but it seems to make little difference. We still have tons of meetings and many of them are way too long.

1. We will either have a black man, or a woman, in the White House.
2. Conservative Christians and Mormons will now have a precedent set for supporting a woman with a young family as being more appropriate for a very high-ranking, important, and demanding job than a man.
3. The dynamic personalities of Obama and Palin will attract a lot of otherwise uninterested folks who will then get some exposure to the important issues facing our country.
4. Regardless of which candidate wins, and as long as they are telling the truth, most of us will see tax savings, less dependence on foreign oil, and some assistance towards making health care more affordable.
5. All of the candidates for the office of President can pronounce the word “nuclear”. (Let’s hope for whole tickets possessing this remarkable ability in 2012!)

1. Mindfulness Exercises
   Bhuddism calls it being mindful, Eckhart Tolle calls it being present or “in the now”.  I’m more familiar with, and practice myself, Tolle’s suggested exercises for trying to get into this state.  Basically, you are trying to stop all the thinking noise about the baggage of the past and anxiety about the future and just become fully present in the current moment.  He suggests simply to take some deep breaths and really focus your attention on the air entering your lungs, all the little sensations that come with that, and the air being exhaled.  As you “get lost” in what your body is doing in the simple involuntary act of breathing, you can then start to expand your focus.  Noticing other sensations you never pay attention to.  Your whole body is constantly moving.  From personal experience, it really has the effect of calming you and bringing your attention to the only time in which you can really take any action… now.  You can’t change the past and the future cannot be affected until it becomes… you guessed it the present.
2. Soaking up the Sun
   On the TV show 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock spent a month living on a Navajo reservation and one very cool practice they shared with him was to get up before dawn and “race” the rising sun. When the sun peaked, they would stop and engage in a ritual of holding out their open hands to face the sun, and then pull them back in to their faces and then inhale whatever it was they soaked up. The idea is that the sun represents the source of light for our world, and thus the source of life (sound familiar?) and they wanted to begin their day by drawing life into their bodies. Way cool.
3. Yoga
   Its exercise, discipline, and spirituality all combined. There was an episode of Speaking of Faith which describes how Yoga can even be used as a way to perform “body prayer”. Using the movements and poses in a concentrated grace that focuses your positive intentions towards a specific goal.  It sounded very similar to Mormon fasting to me.
4. Prostrate Prayer
   In an interview with a representative of a Muslim organization in the United States, an explanation (or interpretation) was given for the practice of bowing prostrate during the five daily prayers of Muslims. The main reason is to demonstrate humility and subjection to God, but an additional insight given was that when you do this, and specifically when you put your face to the ground, it has the effect of mostly blocking out all the light around you. It shuts out all the visual distractions and enables you to enter a mode of direct one-on-one communication with God. That concept seemed beautiful to me.
5. Gardening
   This one might not seem that weird to Mormons. Really, the spiritual aspect is in the way that you are communing with nature and taking up God’s work of tending to and nurturing the growth of living things, and facilitating the cycle of life. Its a great thing to be able to disconnect from the inanimate framework of modern convenience and spend some time in places where you can so clearly see how much life is all around you, all the time.