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An Hour With No Liturgy and No Clergy

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An Hour With No Liturgy and No Clergy

A visitor walking into a Latter-day Saint sacrament meeting for the first time is usually struck by how little there is. The room is a plain hall with a raised stand at one end, no altar, no cross, no candles, no images and no stained glass. Nobody wears vestments. There is no processional, no creed, no responsive reading and no set liturgy apart from two fixed prayers. The man conducting is a member of the bishopric in an ordinary suit, and he is a dentist or a bus driver from Monday.

The service runs about an hour and follows a simple order: an opening hymn and prayer, ward business, a hymn while the sacrament is prepared, the sacrament itself, and then two or three talks given by members of the congregation who were asked a week or two earlier, on a topic the bishopric set. Anyone may be asked, including teenagers, and the quality varies exactly as one would expect. The congregation sings, accompanied by an organ or a piano and nothing else, and the singing is enthusiastic rather than trained.

The absence of professionals is the point rather than a limitation of resources. In a church with no paid local clergy, the people who speak, pray, play, conduct and administer the ordinance are all members of the congregation being addressed, and everyone present expects to take a turn at each of those things over the course of a life.

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