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Survey for those who attended Sacrament Meeting Today (12/23)


Survey for those who attended Sacrament Meeting today (12/23)  

81 members have voted

  1. 1. During Sacrament Meeting, how often was Joseph Smith's birth mentioned compared to the birth of Christ (i.e. Christmas)?

    • The program focused entirely on "Christ" (or other non-Joseph Smith subjects). No mention of Joseph Smith.
      73
    • Mostly "Christ" focused, with at least one mention of Joseph Smith's birthday, life and/or teachings.
      7
    • Mostly focused on Joseph Smith's birthday, life or teachings, with at least one mention of Christ and/or Christmas (outside of ancillary mentions in the context of normal LDS worship).
      1
    • The program focused entirely on Joseph Smith's birthday, life and teachings. No mention of Christ (outside of ancillary mentions in the context of Joseph Smith or normal LDS worship).
      0


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No mention of Joseph Smith at all! Sole focus was on the birth of Christ, as it should be! Choir and primary sang. Narrator read sections of Luke and Matthew. Bishop spoke. Good meeting.

I should note that we only had Sacrement today. No Sunday school or Elders quorum.

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3 minutes ago, Duncan said:

Ours was just Sacrament mtg. and the two speakers focused on Christmas and what it means to them, some others sang songs, no mention at all of Joseph Smith. 

Sad not to take the opportunity.  But that's probably how Joseph would have wanted it.

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We had a variety of excellent music and two very good speakers (including the stake president), totally focused on Christmas and the Savior. One of our best ever. We had double our usual attendance, but I’m not sure how many were relatives or non-member guests.

It wouldn’t have twisted my knickers if someone had mentioned Joseph Smith, though.

Edited by Bernard Gui
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We only had a 90 min Sacrament meeting, which was basically the nativity scriptures read directly from the Bible without commentary by our favorite royal older couple, interspersed with the traditional holiday musical numbers by the primary, flute/piano, violin/piano, vocals/piano, and then for some reason they made all us elders get up and sing Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains.   I nailed it, despite missing every practice.

I don't think there was a single mention of Joseph Smith, or the word "restored".  The only way you could tell it was a CoJCoLDS service, was the thing started with some releases and callings, and then the sacrament.

Edited by LoudmouthMormon
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5 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

We only had a 90 min Sacrament meeting, which was basically the nativity scriptures read directly from the Bible without commentary by our favorite royal older couple, interspersed with the traditional holiday musical numbers by the primary, flute/piano, violin/piano, vocals/piano, and then for some reason they made all us elders get up and sing Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains.   I nailed it, despite missing every practice.

I don't think there was a single mention of Joseph Smith, or the word "restored".  The only way you could tell it was a CoJCoLDS service, was the thing started with some releases and callings, and then the sacrament.

I don’t think a meeting about Christ should consciously omit any reference or allusion to the doctrines of the Restoration, since Christ Himself is the author of that Restoration and those doctrines. 

We could hold an interfaith service at some other time. Sacrament meeting is for discussion of pure truth as it has been revealed to us. 

I don’t believe we need to Protestantize or Catholicize our worship services and ignore truths revealed in the latter days just because some among us are over-sensitive to outside criticism. 

Edited by Scott Lloyd
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4 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

The poll options do not cover what happened in our meeting. There was a single mention of it being Joseph Smith’s birthday but that we were there to observe the birth of Christ and that Joseph himself would no doubt prefer it that way. 

While option #2 is worded in the plural, that would fall under that category with just one mention.

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funnily enough one speaker told us why he doesn't like Christmas!!!!!! he is now a pediatrician but he grew up here and his family lived in abject poverty, his mother was just incapable of raising a family, through no fault of her own. She had a good heart but she had significant challenges in life. His father died of flesh eating disease when he and his downs syndrome brother were quite small. So the ward and community basically raised the two children and looked after his Mum. He said Christmas just reminded them of what they didn't have and others gave them stuff because his Mom just couldn't give. Now, that he's a Dr. I am quite confident things are different but the emotions of people pitying you and seeing you as needy still linger, he was thankful people helped of course but no one wants to be seen as a project or anything.

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10 minutes ago, cinepro said:

While option #2 is worded in the plural, that would fall under that category with just one mention.

Not really, not the way it was worded. The speaker today did not elaborate on Joseph’s life or teachings. If anything, the speaker’s mention of Joseph was to underscore our intent to observe and celebrate the birth of Christ. 

Edited by Scott Lloyd
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13 minutes ago, CMZ said:

For antis if we breathe a mention of JS somehow it means we don't believe in Jesus Christ.

Which is ridiculous.  And Christ would have said quit calling me good and get on with my Father's work.

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1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Not really, not the way it was worded. The speaker today did not elaborate on Joseph’s life or teachings. If anything, the speaker’s mention of Joseph was to underscore our intent to observe and celebrate the birth of Christ. 

The "or" was meant to include mentions of any of those three things.  So just the mention of it being Joseph Smith's birthday would qualify it for #2.  I'll re-word it to be more clear.

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We did our musical program last week. We had three speakers but the Relief Society President did a special musical number on her harp which was amazing.

The Grinch got mentioned in the talks more then Joseph Smith. The Savior was talked about more then the Grinch though the margin is lower on that then the last statement.

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3 hours ago, cinepro said:

The "or" was meant to include mentions of any of those three things.  So just the mention of it being Joseph Smith's birthday would qualify it for #2.  I'll re-word it to be more clear.

Doesn’t the re-wording midstream skew the poll results? In any case, I don’t believe the thought originally conveyed fairly characterizes what happened in our meeting today. The wording as it stands now scarcely does so. 

Edited by Scott Lloyd
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Just a one-hour Sacrament mtg in which the Choir sang three Christmas songs (not from the Hymnbook), the Primary sang three Christmas songs, the congregation sang the usual Hymnbook songs, we had a male solo, and one speaker -- who recounted the Christmas story in 20 min.  There were a number of members in church whom we seldom see.  The place was packed, with smiles all around.  The stake pres, who is a member of our ward, chose to sing with the choir (he has not done so for years).  We all forgot about Joseph Smith, which I believe Brother Joseph would have wanted.  A lovely occasion.

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I haven't done the research on this, but I strongly suspect the whole "Smithmas" thing is a vestige of the year-long celebration of Joseph Smith's birth in 2005 (the 200th anniversary).  I even seem to remember making some comments about it back then.  There was probably a bit of Joseph-centric December observances that year, and that planted the idea.

If these survey results are any indication, the idea hasn't caught on, and 2005 was probably an (intended) aberration. Ironically, "Smithmas" now is probably an idea that is only perpetuated by critics of the Church, and defenders of the Church who bring up the idea to try and debunk it.

Edited by cinepro
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Besides the Sacrament we had Christmas songs by ; The Ward Choir, the Primary kids, The Congregation, and 2 soloists, along with one Talk about Christ by the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric. 

No mention of Joseph Smith at all.

We only had the 1 meeting, no Sunday School, Primary, EQ/RS/YM/YW

Edited by mnn727
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