How the church could get me back

John Larson of Mormon Expression recently proposed the idea of starting a new community for people like me, people who have left the LDS church or aren't true believers anymore. You can read his ideas in detail here.

John Dehlin of Mormon Stories recently gave a talk about the future of uncorrelated Mormons. You can check that out here.

I love the idea of building communities like that. I fully support both John's in what they are trying to do. But it did get me thinking. In my last post I wondered if I should even consider myself Mormon at all. Now I will explain what the church could do to get me back.

First and foremost is this one thing. It is not negotiable at all. If the church cannot fully commit to it than it doesn't matter what else they do. I will never return.
The first thing the church must do is stop involving itself in political activities. No supporting parties, candidates, or political campaigns of any kind.

No urging members how to vote on any issue whatsoever. No donating money to any political group of any kind.

And certainly no Prop 8 type debacles ever again. All the church should ever do politically is urge their members to participate in the political process in whatever way they see fit and leave it at that.

If you are still with me than let's move on. Some of the next few ideas are negotiable, we could tweak some of the details here or there but the general idea should stay the same. So here are the rules.

The first huge change, and the one where I will probably lose most of you if I haven't already, is this. There will be two Sunday School groups, two Relief Society groups, and two Priesthood groups. One of these groups will be considered orthodox and one considered liberal.

If you choose to go to the orthodox group you should stick generally to discussing official LDS teachings and ideas. Essentially what happens now in most wards and branches.

The liberal group would be much more open and free to ask questions and discuss controversial ideas. What group any person goes to each week is up to them, they do no have to commit beforehand and should not be judged either way.

Nobody will ever be told that they must believe any specific thing to be a member.

Sacrament Meeting stays the same with one big difference. Sacrament meeting talks and testimonies should be kept uplifting and humanistic. Talks on love, compassion, family and general human values are encouraged.

Talks about LDS history and our shared heritage and ancestry are also encouraged. Quotes can be from current and former LDS leaders or from great thinkers outside Mormonism. Talks specifically attacking Mormonism are not encouraged. On the other side, Dogmatic talks are also not encouraged.

All of these will be general guidelines that people will be asked to follow. Nobody will ever be pulled from the pulpit or chastised for anything said.

Basically Sacrament meeting should be a chance to come together and celebrate our shared heritage and worship God, or not, according to our own beliefs.

These guidelines should not be interpreted to stop people from saying what they believe. It would be okay, for example, for me to say I am an atheist or for someone else to say they know The Book of Mormon is true. As long as the talks are positive than it's okay.

Because of this, those in the pews should be respectful of opinions that may differ from their own. Discussion afterwards is fine but interruptions during any talk would probably be inappropriate.

Again, these are general guidelines, not strict rules. Everyone should try to give others the benefit of the doubt if they feel the guidelines are being broken.

The same general guidelines that exist for Sacrament Meeting talks would also apply to Stake Conference talks and General Conference talks.

Music in Sacrament Meeting would be essentially the same except for one thing. The rules against certain types of instruments that exist now would be removed. Any instrument can be uplifting. All types of musical expression should be encouraged.

The three hour block stays but is breaks down differently. 1 hour of Sacrament Meeting, 30 minutes of Priesthood/Relief society, 30 minutes of Sunday School, and 1 hour of socializing. How the socialization goes is totally up to the local unit. Creativity is encouraged.

Tithing changes from 10% to pay whatever you think the church is worth to you. Donations will be anonymous and nobody will ever be told what to pay.

There will be only one temple recommend question. Do you feel comfortable going to the temple? In fact we could just get rid of that and make the temple rituals open to anyone. I think there is a lot of beauty in the rituals, and the chance to escape from the chaos of the world is always good.

Callings will be volunteer first and then if they are not filled it would be okay to ask people. But people should never be made to feel guilty if they don't feel they can fill the calling for whatever reason. Callings should never be made up just to give someone something to do. If it doesn't need to be done don't make someone do it. Also, meetings that don't really need to be held will not be held. Family time should always take precedence over church time.

The church will rehire it's custodial staff and stop asking normal members to do that work. It would also give back those jobs to members who lost them.

The business interests of the church can remain, as long as the financial statements are available to anyone who wants to see them.

I think that's about it. Do I think that this idea is realistic? Not at all. I do think something like this is possible, maybe even inevitable. But certainly not in my lifetime. Probably not for at least a few hundred years. But I man can dream can't he?

What do you think? What ideas do you like or hate? If you are a believer now would you still go to this church? If you aren't, would something like this make you come back?

I promised to talk about MorCon in this post. But I think I will wait and do that one next time.