I learned in church today

[Pelado]

Your primary kids thank you, for now. But maybe not in 10 years when they hear about it from somewhat else

Either way, they probably preferred that we moved on and handed out gummy worms (and Smarties for the kid with braces who doesn’t like chocolate and isn't supposed to have gummy worms).

[tooblue]

I was surprised to see it addressed in the lesson at all, honestly.

I can see how my earlier post sounded cynical. I didn't feel that the passage was responsive to the question heading the passage (Why?). Had the heading been a bit different, the passage probably wouldn't have piqued my interest nearly as much, which led to my elevated scrutiny.

The “Ask of God: Joseph Smith’s First Vision” video is embedded in the lesson. The video has been playing at the Church History Museum as an immersive experience for many years (I first saw it in 2012). The video is much more than a brief explication. A still from the video:

AskofGod-Joseph SmithFirstVision”.png

[myboynoah]

huh?

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[Bo Diddley]

huh?

I mean, she's nervous, so make accomodation!

[Northwestcoug]

huh?

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I mean there is precedent!

[Copelius]

I learned that the concept of pop-up choir, just inviting everyone up to the choir loft to sing an intermediate hymn instead of the whole congregation doing it is not limited to my ward. Was visiting another, which happens when my ward meets at 9, and they had that. I have two issues with doing that. (1) If you can just mark up a hymn and sing it from the choir seats without any rehearsal, why have ward choir rehearsals? (2) The time it takes for everyone to come up to the choir seats and then receive basic instruction from the choir director, which was clearly written on the hymn sheet, took away from the last speaker. Now many times this is no great loss, but it happened to be ward conference, so we missed out on our stake president, who I would have preferred to hear more from.

In retrospect it was a minor issue, but I just really don't like the pop-up choirs so I thought I would rant and warn any current choir directors away from such practices.

[BigPiney]

I learned that the concept of pop-up choir, just inviting everyone up to the choir loft to sing an intermediate hymn instead of the whole congregation doing it is not limited to my ward. Was visiting another, which happens when my ward meets at 9, and they had that. I have two issues with doing that. (1) If you can just mark up a hymn and sing it from the choir seats without any rehearsal, why have ward choir rehearsals? (2) The time it takes for everyone to come up to the choir seats and then receive basic instruction from the choir director, which was clearly written on the hymn sheet, took away from the last speaker. Now many times this is no great loss, but it happened to be ward conference, so we missed out on our stake president, who I would have preferred to hear more from.

In retrospect it was a minor issue, but I just really don't like the pop-up choirs so I thought I would rant and warn any current choir directors away from such practices.

pop up choirs is a stupid practice. Back when we had a ward choir, we would have rehearsal and spend relatively a lot of time preparing a song. Then the Bishop while announcing the choir number would invite anyone that wanted to sing was welcome to come up and participate. So there would always be a few that would come up and ruin everything. I hated that guy so much.

[Clark Addison]

I learned that the concept of pop-up choir, just inviting everyone up to the choir loft to sing an intermediate hymn instead of the whole congregation doing it is not limited to my ward. Was visiting another, which happens when my ward meets at 9, and they had that. I have two issues with doing that. (1) If you can just mark up a hymn and sing it from the choir seats without any rehearsal, why have ward choir rehearsals? (2) The time it takes for everyone to come up to the choir seats and then receive basic instruction from the choir director, which was clearly written on the hymn sheet, took away from the last speaker. Now many times this is no great loss, but it happened to be ward conference, so we missed out on our stake president, who I would have preferred to hear more from.

In retrospect it was a minor issue, but I just really don't like the pop-up choirs so I thought I would rant and warn any current choir directors away from such practices.

I never did this when I was choir director, but we did do it in a ward where I was a choir member. This was a small ward, and the given reason was that while we had a pretty small choir (<10 people usually), there were several other people who would like to participate but couldn't because of other callings, time commitments, laziness, or whatnot. We would do it maybe 4 times a year and usually get 20-30 people up singing.

In our choir director's defense, we didn't do anything complicated, it was usually pretty much the straight hymn, with modifications limited to something like "2nd Verse Men Only, 3rd verse women only" or something like that. The total instruction time needed was maybe 10 seconds.

Having said that, I have no personal attachment to it, so feel free to continue to hate if you would like!

[Bo Diddley]

I never did this when I was choir director, but we did do it in a ward where I was a choir member. This was a small ward, and the given reason was that while we had a pretty small choir (<10 people usually), there were several other people who would like to participate but couldn't because of other callings, time commitments, laziness, or whatnot. We would do it maybe 4 times a year and usually get 20-30 people up singing.

In our choir director's defense, we didn't do anything complicated, it was usually pretty much the straight hymn, with modifications limited to something like "2nd Verse Men Only, 3rd verse women only" or something like that. The total instruction time needed was maybe 10 seconds.

Having said that, I have no personal attachment to it, so feel free to continue to hate if you would like!

Not since the current choir director, but in the past we have had this occasionally in our ward just as you describe.

[Copelius]

I never did this when I was choir director, but we did do it in a ward where I was a choir member. This was a small ward, and the given reason was that while we had a pretty small choir (<10 people usually), there were several other people who would like to participate but couldn't because of other callings, time commitments, laziness, or whatnot. We would do it maybe 4 times a year and usually get 20-30 people up singing.

In our choir director's defense, we didn't do anything complicated, it was usually pretty much the straight hymn, with modifications limited to something like "2nd Verse Men Only, 3rd verse women only" or something like that. The total instruction time needed was maybe 10 seconds.

Having said that, I have no personal attachment to it, so feel free to continue to hate if you would like!

I had never experienced it until last year during my active year in my ward, so I thought it was a new thing. I guess there is nothing new under the sun, though there is much that should not be repeated.

[LVAllen]

I mean there is precedent!

Is there really a need for the baptisee to get immersed? Can't we just sprinkle a little on her head, and call it immersion by proxy?

Sarcasm, obviously. We had people who were terrified of the water on my mission. They got dunked anyway.

[Pelado]

I had not heard of proxy baptisms for the living. I'm too lazy to check the handbook of instructions.

[Jeff Lebowski]

People are upset about this??

[YOhio]

People are upset about this??

Which thing? The singing or the proxy-baptisms. I've noticed that some people on here have really strong feelings about singing.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I'm curious if the proxy baptismal prayer goes something like, "Sister _________, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and in behalf of _________, who is [almost but not quite dead] OR [sitting nearby], in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." I'll await the inevitable lightning strike for my irreverence.