Back in February, my 12 year-old went in for a tonsilectomy. I contacted my Pastor and my wife contacted her Bishop. The Bishop actually is a physical therapist in the very building where my son had his tonsils removed and was working there that day.
My Pastor, who lives on the other side of town, showed up at the hospital and prayed with us. The Bishop never showed up. When we were leaving with my son, the Bishop's wife was outside waiting in her car and the Bishop came out to meet her. He saw my wife and asked her what she was doing there. She told him, I brought my son in to have his tonsils removed yesterday. His reply was, "Oh, why didn't you tell me?"
Now, I know that my Pastor has no other job besides being a Pastor. The Bishop works at the hospital. However, they're both super busy. I've spent a few days with my Pastor. I know that he's not just sitting around reading his Bible or watching YouTube all day, he's extremely busy.
So, I think we can establish that they're both busy men. Yet, the one who actually works in the same building doesn't show up and the one who lives across town does. Anyhow, this left a really bad taste in my wife's mouth and she almost left TSCC right then.

Very typical of pastors to visit the sick and those in the hospital. So glad yours did. It did show your wife something, didn't it? Bishops may have another job on the side but so do pastors....they are not at home twiddling their thumbs. They are planning sermons by studying, meeting with other people such as the choir director to plan the next wk's music, meeting with the missions team leader, the high school youth group leader, meeting groups for Bible study, meeting with financial folks, going to the food bank to take food that has been provided, etc. So I agree, the one at the hosp. already had it easier. But he did not show.

That's what a micro-managing bishop might do, but ministers dont pull choir director's puppet strings. Yes on some bible studies, but much more visiting sick people, people in nursing homes, shut ins, comforting the grieving and dying, counseling re funerals, weddings, marriage counseling, etc. They're very busy, definitely a fulltime job.

Serena, you and Honestone are BOTH right...and I can say so from spending some days with some pastors. They do what both of you said. So, yeah, busy guys...who work for far less than I would when tasked with the same amount of work. Most are certainly not the "lovers of filthy lucre" TSCC teaches its members they are. Glad to hear Bud's pastor was able to visit him.

Wrong thread



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2013 09:14PM by bona dea.

I've been trying to find the right metaphor for comparing mainstream Christianity and tscc. "Apples and oranges" doesn't explain it. Been thinking it's like the difference between being given a tricycle vs a BMW. Both have wheels, in theory both are vehicles. Both cover distance but one takes a great deal more effort and can't get close to going as far as the other does easily. One is a vehilce for small children, the other is for adults. Then there are the 40 way heated seats... To drive one, you need silly looking safety garments; in the other the safety is built in.

This fell apart when I tried to compare maintenance costs. Maybe a trike that costs 10% of my gross?

Any way, good to know the tonsilectomy went well and your son is healing!

love this!

Had your family been potential converts, I guarantee you the bishop and half the ward would have shown up, playing their manipulative games.

Happened to a family we know.
The wife had surgery and every TBM faked interest in them by showing up at her bedside.
They were so impressed with the Mormons they actually joined.

A year later the wife had surgery again - and NOBODY came.

They're exmos now.
And I was too nice to say "I told you so".

This is the difference between the corporate representative of a pseudo-institutional charity and the pastor of a flock who feels responsible for meeting the spiritual needs of his flock.

The Bishop's mission is to prevent members from embarrassing headquarters and making sure his stats show he is doing a good job. Cash flow and attendance report on his success as a bishop. Compare with any middle manager in any corporation.

The Pastor may have no one checking in from headquarters. He may be accountable only to his congregation. Other Pastors have other arrangements of accountability and decentralization or centralization.

And, of course, if the Pastor leaves his church his wife might stay with him because families are respected as holy. They are not production units, not a revenue stream element.


Anagrammy

I love too, that we as a congregation can fire our Pastor if we don't like the job he's doing. This would never happen in the Morg because you're made to feel guilty if you don't sustain your priesthood leaders. My Pastor is part of a 3 church campus based out of Draper, Utah, so he does have accountability to the head Pastor in Draper but he also has accountability to his flock. However, I happen to know that he does what he does out of love, not out of a sense of obligation. The fact that he came to the hospital before 7 AM was a strong indicator of this.

The ability to fire the pastor is an awesome safeguard, isn't it?

My daughter has been in and out of the hospital for many years. (She's doing great now thanks to a liver transplant!) Whenever she was in for any length of time, I would always get a call from our church's pastor or assistant pastor. They would offer to visit, ask when would be a convenient time for us, and ask if they could bring us anything we needed.

If my daughter was up to having a visitor, one or the other would drive to the neighboring city where the hospital was, Visit with us for a litle while, and never stay longer than my daughter could handle. Sometimes they brought her gifts to cheer her up (cards made by friends at church, a fuzzy blanket to make her hospital bed cozier, funny socks to wear for strolls in the hall).

And there were no silly "blessings" pronounced over her head!

I would disagree. Mormonism says you can bless him yourself. Christians say only the ones who have a degree. LoL. Who do you agree with?

If you're claiming that one needs priesthood authority to bless a person, 1 Peter 2:9 says that I'm a chosen generation, a royal priesthood because I've accepted the one who called me out of darkness. This means that my wife has it too, if she accepts Christ.
I'd rather have someone that actually knows their bible (went to school for it) teaching me about the Bible than someone who's just talking out of their hat.

Mormonism is based on a fake book.
Their fake priesthood can bless away but can't accomplish any healing.
Not even if you pay the 10% extortion money to them.

+1. Must be a TBM lurker.

It's too bad that you're so insular that you don't have a clue about Christian denominations.

Denomination requirements vary. A degree in theology/ministry may be preferred but it's not necessary to be a minister. You do need to be ordained by your church or denomination.

My grandfather was a Baptist minister; became one in his 50's. He did not go to college but he studied the Bible and scholarly religious works constantly. To become an ordained pastor, he was given a test/examination of his biblical knowledge and beliefs by other ministers from the local Baptist association.

We had a small congregation so all of our pastors were bi-vocational. The difference with the LDS church bishops:

1. Ministers/pastors choose to be in the job. It's not chosen for them by a bishop or stake president who felt "inspired" to put them in the job.

2. Bi-vocational ministers don't use up most of their free hours attending BS meetings like LDS bishops do. They work, preach one or two services a week (for ONE hour!) and fit in pastoral care along with family time.

Cymorg: You are talking out of your a$$, and probably a TBM plant. But you clearly don't know anything about what mainstream, non-LDS Christianity says about who can bless whom.

I'm sure this made an impression on your son, too. Maybe as he gets older he'll remember who was there with the family, showing genuine concern.

My son is autistic. He acts up in LDS Sacrament Meeting. The Bishop pissed him off by asking him to sit with his family instead of sitting on couch in the foyer. After trying to get him to sit with us for approximately 15 minutes. I gave up and took him home. The next week is when I attended the non-denominational Christian church for the first time. This son loves it there because he doesn't have to dress up, he loves the music. He loves interacting with the people there.
My wife said she actually prefers he go there if he's not going to act up there than if he goes to the LDS church and acts up. I think deep down, he knows the truth already. He's 12.

Budweiserbaby, I completely understand. I also have a Son on the Autistic spectrum. I'm so glad that He does not have to sit with me through a Sacrament meeting. BTW, I think we go to the same church.

SMCC - The Springs?

Budweiserbaby, SMCC Draper Campus.

Sweet! Yep, I'm at the St. George Campus. Very nice!

My female cousin got the calling to be a Lutheran pastor in her 40s. She spent 3 years getting her Masters in Divinity degree at the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia.

From their website: "Coursework includes Bible, theology, history, ethics, and practical ministry courses such as preaching, teaching, pastoral care, administration, evangelism, stewardship, and worship."

Cousin would come to my house and practice her sermons (and this was when I was a practicing Mormon). She did internships in churches and with a hospital chaplain, visited the sick, and took courses in counseling including marriage counseling and grief counseling.

Look, I'm an atheist, so none of this is anything that I believe. But if you want to talk about knowledge and preparation to lead a flock, nobody can convince me that Dave the Electrician who happened to be "called" to be Bishop has the experience necessary to be the spiritual leader of anybody, let alone do counseling of a sensitive nature such as for marriage problems, depression, grief, etc.

To Cymorg, your statement about blessings isn't really true. Christian churches run the gamut when it comes to what they believe is necessary to be a pastor (non-denominational churches aren't as strict about it as traditional denominations) and what individuals can and cannot do as far as blessings, administering holy communion, etc.

So true.

We actually had an electrician in the Hemet stake who became bishop and he was a disaster.
They called him the electrician from hell.

I wonder if you might know the Fishers who lived in San Jacinto.

Cool. I'd rather have your bishop wire my house, but as for his religious and counseling training, I'll take the guy or gal with the 93 semester hour Master of Divinity.

I've posted this here before but my wife and I have got marital counselling from the Pastor. He's actually gone to school for it. What I really like about it, compared to a secular therapist, is that he puts God into the equation. One session with the Pastor helped us infinitely more than a year of sessions with a secular therapist. Just the simply fact that he prayed at the end about our specific problems was uplifting to us.
In the past, going to an LDS bishop, we were referred to LDS services, who, tries to get you out in as few sessions as possible, something like 5, I think. The spiel I got from the LDS therapist was, "Are you attending church regularly? Are you paying tithing? Are you keeping the WoW?" If I answered no to any, then this was the culprit.

Nah, a True Born Humanist who realize that all religion is to take advantage of u in one way or another

Actually, I kind of agree about religion...but I think many, many non-LDS Christians do try to live by what Christ taught without being religious. I'm sure, of course, that as a secular humanist, your thoughts are worth more than my numerous graduate degrees combined.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2013 02:28PM by stillburned.

I always find these comparisons to be interesting. It's funny that the Mormons will fill with pride over their "no paid ministry" position, yet tolerate Bishops who are constantly peering into their pocketbooks and requiring a literal "temple tax" if they wish to be declared fit to attend something as important as their own child's wedding. That is just incomprehensible in any real world setting.

I've never had a pastor express the slightest interest in my finances apart from occasionally teaching about giving from the pulpit. Most pastors I've known choose to have church finances operate behind an administrative wall, so they have no idea who gives how much. The follows the New Testament edict to simply "give as you have purposed in your heart." Many churches publish weekly stats on the amount of donations and exactly where every penny goes. And Mormonism claims to have the high ground in this respect?

Also, Paul seemed to be just fine with a paid clergy. See:
1 Timothy 5:17-18

Another thought, I read somewhere that SPs and Bishops used to be paid before the Great Depression. I believe SPs got 10% of all tithing and Bishops got 5% of what was left after that. Plus, I'm pretty sure the Big 15 all get, individually, at least $1 Million annually to live on. So, don't think you really have a true lay clergy, morgbots!

I've noticed that regular Christian pastors in the churches I have attended in Utah, including a couple of different ones in draper, are pretty much the opposite of my experiences with mormon leadership. There is no arrogance, they aren't prideful, they really do care about you, they aren't judgemental, they don't ask about your finances, they don't ask about sex but the biggest shocker to me was how willing they are to share their own shortcomings and sin.

I also love how they make it a point to say it's not about religion, is about relationship with Jesus.

I really like how the people don't get dressed up on Sunday and become a different person than they are during the week, they come in shorts or nice clothes, whatever they want to wear and nobody says anything either way.

The people vary from looking like Molly Mormons all the way to fully tattooed with colored hair and it's ok either way.

Also, they don't expect you to believe the way they do, it's like everyone's at a different place all the way from agnostic/humanists who mostly doubt to full believers.

And I've had the same experience with hospital situations where they come and are there to support you while even Mormon family members let alone leaders seem like they are a little put out having to do it out of obligation.

Our TBM neighbors found out we went to one of those draper churches sometimes and a few weeks ago the mom came and asked me what time it started because she wanted to go there and hear about Jesus instead of going to the Mormon church where there was so many missionary farewells. Lol

That reminds me of another thing...the Christian churches talk about Jesus but the Mormons call him Christ..I don't hear Mormons call him Jesus very often if at all.

And yet when a Mormon was a candidate for president, his campaign devoted some effort to refer to his tenure as bishop as his having served as "pastor" of his church. It was to me a clear case of deceit to normalize Mormonism.

Christ is not the last name of Jesus.

Jesus is the Christ. The messiah, the anointed one.

JESUS CHRIST !!!

As a swear word, it is right up there with the 'F' bomb.

Gotta go together to make it sound disgusting and dirty.

I've never understood why certain Christians become so prickly about this.

Many surnames began as someone's career, then evolved into family surnames: Baker, Shepherd, Brewer, etc.

What's so wrong with thinking of "Christ" as his last name?

Because it is a title not a name. Accuracy matters.

I think as long as a person has a personal relationship with Christ, it doesn't matter if they think of it as a title or a last name. I don't think Christ is that pedantic. Just my opinion.

Who's prickly?

So it bothers you that I pointed something out?

Chill. It's Sunday and you're not in church.

Who's prickly, you ask? Read my post: Certain Christians. If you're not prickly then you're not one of them.

Sorry--If we had skype you'd see I'm very chill right now. So chilled in fact that I missed how my question might have come across in plain text--my bad.

relax dude. Sometimes a question is just a question.