. . . my turn to speak to the congregation for 20 minutes came around today. The Spirituality & Religion subforum on BigSoccer featured in my talk. Now that I am outed as one who spends way too much time on a soccer message board, I won't be able to claim to be too busy to help on the myriad of requests to provide free service that are sure to come my way in the near future! Really, this shows how goofily intertwined the various facets of my life really are now. And thanks for the assist!
I visited a new church today and each seat had it's own individual 15" flat screen for keeping up with ESPN or whatever during the Portuguese (Brazilian) portion of the sermon.
Mormons are "called" to give talks every Sunday except Fast Sunday which is typically the first Sunday of the month. The Ward Bishop or Branch President doesn't talk every week like a Pastor or Priest. All of the members share in the responsibilty to preach the word.
As Pathogen said, the LDS Church lacks paid clergy, with the membership doing pretty much everything, including speaking during the main meetings. Usually there is one youth speaker (someone 12-17 who speaks for five minutes - my daughter spoke about prayer) and two adult speakers who speak from 10-20 minutes, depending upon what they were assigned. I was assigned a number of subjects, and used our happy little forum as my organizational device. Nothing salacious, except that what several "took away" from my talk was BigSoccer.com as opposed to anything else. I quite enjoy most of the dialogue here in the forum, although I don't chime in all that often. All of my comments re the forum and conversations herein were respectful I can assure you!
Lord, thank you for leading me to the BigSoccer site lo these many years ago. And I always make thoughtful, well-written, and intelligent posts. Not like that newbie over there who is starting the thousandth thread on why the MLS should have promotion/relegation.
I have sinned. I spend too much time on BigSoccer. All I think about is soccer. Soccer. Soccer. Soccer. Wait. Is it really a sin?
Just say ten "Olé, Olé"s and five "Who ate all the pies" and you'll be fine. If it were really bad maybe then you'd have to go with an "Abide with me".
if all you think about is soccer, then it is a sin. repent in haste. but i bet you think about other things. like cheese...