Subscribe Feed (RSS)Grateful Dead-style Meetings (Or, If Jerry Garcia were your bishop)
October 16th, 2006 by Richard K Miller | Filed under Ideas, Mormon.If you're new here, read more about the More Good Foundation. We help members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) share their beliefs on the Internet. Learn more about what Mormons believe or talk with Mormons at LDS.net.
One distinctive feature of a Grateful Dead concert is that everyone is allowed to record it. Tapers, as they are called, bring their own recording equipment to concerts, then share their recordings with other Deadheads. Instead of hurting record sales, the sharing of concert recordings promotes the band and grows the fans.
What would it be like to record every sacrament meeting and testimony meeting, every seminary and institute class, and share?
We could share recorded meetings with the sick, home-bound, and less active. It would allow non-members to get a feel for the meetings in their own neighboorhood before they attend. While what a bishop is moved by the Spirit to say to his ward doesn’t necessarily apply to the whole Church, many talks, stories, and lessons would be of general interest too.
The one major problem I see with that is that most of the ones giving the talks are lay-memebers. Only one in fifteen do I think is possibly good enough to even pass out to other members.
It seems like a lot of work to do all that recording to get so few “keepers”. I do think it may be a good idea to record more talks and things. We do record General conference to be listened to by anyone. When was the last time you were passed a bootleg copy of that?
Well, I think the idea of bringing services to the homebound is indeed noble. However, I am not so sure that providing them on the Internet is appropriate. Already, you can easily hear most sessions of General Conference on the Church’s approved web site.
Part of Christian worship is fellowship. We need to do everything we can to encourage people to attend. Also, I think the spirit isn’t felt as much in isolation as in a communual setting. I am just old fashioned enough to believe certain aspects of worship, (sacrament/communion) shouldn’t be photographed or videotaped.
I think we can learn from the mistakes of others who used television in its infancy to preach to a larger audience. Eventually, those who began that kind of ministry were corrupted by the power and influence it brought.
Although recording sacrament meeting is out of the question (the Church Handbook of Instructions forbids using video or audio recorders in the Chapel) I think there is an opportunity to share lessons with others.
These decisions should probably be made on a case by case basis and with the acknowledgement of class members (e.g., the members of my married student seminar may be more reserved in their class discussions if they knew their words would be posted online). But it’s an issue worthy of consideration.
Note the following quote from Elder Eyring’s recent talk in the Priesthood Session of General Conference
“I learned to follow his counsel because I knew God had given him responsibility for the teaching of his quorum members. I knew one Sunday that God had honored the charge to a young quorum president. I was teaching the deacons. I noticed an empty chair. There was a recording device sitting on the chair, and I could see that it was running. After the class, a boy sitting next to the empty chair picked up the recorder. As he started to leave the room, I asked him why he had recorded our discussion. He smiled and said that another deacon had told him that he wouldn’t be in the quorum that day. He was taking the recorder to his friend at home so that he could listen to our lesson.
I had trusted in the responsibility given to a young quorum president, so help from heaven came. The Spirit came to touch the members in that room and sent one of them to a friend to try to strengthen his faith and lead him to repentance. The deacon carrying the recorder had learned according to the covenants, and he reached out to help his friend and fellow member in the quorum.
Priesthood quorum members are taught in more ways than by lessons in a class. The quorum is a service unit, and the members learn in their service. A quorum can give greater service than the members could give alone. And that power is multiplied by more than their numbers. Every quorum has a leader with authority and responsibility to direct priesthood service. I have seen the power that comes when quorums are called to move out to help in times of disaster. Time and again I have had people outside the Church express surprise and admiration for the effectiveness of the Church in organizing to give help. It seems to them like a miracle. In all priesthood service the miracle of power comes because leaders and members honor the authority of those who direct the service in priesthood quorums across the earth.”
http://www.lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,49-1-646-17,00.html
Unintended consequences- “Oh, it’s okay if I don’t go to church today. I’ll just catch Bro./Sis. Soandso’s recording of it.” How many times have we declared that we will read General Conference talks in the Ensign when we have something else we would rather do on that weekend? I think that an unintended consequence of having recordings of meetings would be that many people would skip the meetings, weakening the meetings themselves.
@Ian: You’re right — recording talks would be a big burden for little return. Maybe it would depend on families recording their own family members, missionaries, etc., so there’s a self-interested reason to do it. That’s probably why the Grateful Dead recordings get made.
@Robert: I agree that some parts of the services shouldn’t be recorded because of their sacredness. And one would also have to guard against priestcraft if given a larger “audience”. Hopefully it would be reverent enough to invite the Spirit for those who are stuck at home or becoming acquainted with the LDS Church for the first time.
@Aaron: Great quote from this Conference. I didn’t remember that story when I wrote this but I’m glad to see an application of it in real life, and endorsed by an Apostle. Interestingly, it seems that a lot of missionary farewell and homecoming talks get recorded (audio only.) I wonder if that’s a stretch of the guidelines or a valid exception. If those families would share the recordings on the Internet, we might have a large repository of faith-promoting stories from the mission field.
@siredge: Hopefully recordings wouldn’t discourage church attendance. At church there are people to see, duties to perform, and callings to fulfill. I believe the faithful would continue to attend either way. And if someone wants to skip meetings, better that they want to listen to a recording than nothing at all.
I want to comment on all these comments !
I agree completely with Aaron: we can’t record sacrament meetings but we could record some lesson on a case by case basis.
I also agree with Robert when he says that “the spirit isn’t felt as much in isolation as in a communual setting” and that “certain aspects of worship, (sacrament/communion) shouldn’t be photographed or videotaped.”
However, we should use technology when we can and not be afraid of it.
Siredge wrote that “an unintended consequence of having recordings of meetings would be that many people would skip the meetings, weakening the meetings themselves.”
I think that this may be possible, but the General Authorities record their talks and are not afraid that many won’t listen during the days of Conference because of those recordings. So, I woudn’t be too afraid of these unintended consequences.
A slightly different idea would be to record testimonies of members to share on the Internet with people who usually don’t go to Church. If we do it, probably there won’t be many side effects. It is obviously better to listen to a sacrament meeting (more fellowship, more Spirit) but perhaps even a recorded testimony of a member may touch the spirit of a person on the Internet.
If you want to share your testimony in writing or in tape with your voice, or even in a short video, please contact me: Giuseppe at gmartinengo@moregoodfoundation.org.
We can add some of your testimonies in sites such as http://www.meetmormonmissionaries.org
It would probably be fairly easy to create a blog or website that contained talks LDS people have given. LDS people could be encouraged to submit talks they’ve given, comments on the talks could be made, etc.
In a sense, we could have something even better than tapers … instead of amateurs or fans putting up their notes/recordings of talks, the writers of the talks could themselves provide the material.
Growing up in the Centerville 1st Ward, every Sacrament meeting was taped and the tapes were circulated to the homebound people in the ward. Also families were allowed to make copies of farewells and such.