The Whole is More than the Sum of Its Parts

In case y’all haven’t noticed, life is full of challenges! I’ve mentioned in a previous post how we grow as Christians by helping each other deal with these challenges. Through the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints not only can we help our friends, but we have many opportunities to help strangers, too. Whether they be our neighbors or someone living far away from us, whether they be LDS or not, whether their needs are physical or spiritual, the church provides many opportunities for us to give of ourselves. Of course we can (and should) find opportunities outside of the church organization to serve strangers. So then why does it matter so much that we can serve all these people through the organization of the church? Because it’s effective, it’s efficient, it works on both a global as well as a local level, and through the way the church is structured, we learn a whole lot about eternal leadership principles.

Globally

What can the church, as a group 15 million strong, do together that the individual members couldn’t do on their own? Oh man. A whole heck of a lot. Let’s start with:

Missionary work. Sure, I could go on my own to another country to preach the gospel to all the world. I’m sure it would be great fun. It’d be super exciting when I got there and realized no one else spoke the same language as me, and even if they did, I’d have no idea how to teach the gospel (people go to school for years to learn how to teach, y’all. It ain’t the easiest thing to pick up on).  And then I’d probably have nowhere to stay for the night, no idea where anything was or how to go about finding it, no idea what to do with people who wanted to get baptized once I, miraculously, learned the language and, just as miraculously, found people who actually wanted to get baptized. No structure = not much happens. Problem!

Solution: a system where we spend time in the Missionary Training Center to learn the language and how to teach random strangers about the gospel message. More experienced missionaries are put with less experienced missionaries to help them learn. We have a mission president and his wife, as well as people working in the mission office, to help us find places to live and to help us when there are emergencies that we, as young’uns, have no idea how to handle on our own. We have the materials we need, such as pamphlets and scriptures, to give away. We know where the local meetinghouse is and how to get there. We have the resources and knowledge we need to get by in such a stressful environment, so that we can focus more time on working and less time on being lost and confused. Whew. Thank goodness!

And what about things that cost a lot of money? Like, say, temples? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t afford to build one! Even all the members working together in a country like, say, Nigeria quite possibly could not afford to build a temple. You know who can afford to build a temple? Really, really rich people. Or, you could you just combine a bunch of tithing money from people all over the world, including from much richer areas of the world, and voila, suddenly you can afford to build something really expensive in some place that’s really poor. And the members there don’t have to spend a whole lot of money they can’t afford to give to gain the strength and protection they get from covenants made in such a sacred place by the Lord’s own Priesthood power. They just pay what we’ve all been asked to pay, and working together they can have the same spiritual blessings that people living in richer areas of the world do.

There are also things such as Humanitarian work (remember those bright yellow “Helping Hands” shirts? Those represent great effort from many people to accomplish more good than one person on their own could. Or even more good than that many people working separately, in an unorganized, haphazard manner could), the welfare program of the church, church schools (so much cheaper than other private universities), institutes, meetinghouses, and the like. When we all work together in an organized manner, we have the resources and the manpower to do so much good. On our own, it’s much less effective.

Locally

On the local level, a Priesthood leader living in the area is called to lead the congregation as Bishop. He ensures that ward members are being taken care of both physically and spiritually. He is given specific responsibilities to perform. However, like most humans, he cannot personally visit all 300 ward members every week and plan every meeting and teach every lesson while still working 40 hours a week at his normal job.

So he delegates to the presidents of the various organizations (Relief Society, Elder’s Quorum, High Priests, Young Men and Young Women, and Primary), who, in turn, delegate to the other members of their presidencies and committees. Anyone can be called to any one of these callings at any given time, which means that each of us has the opportunity to serve those within our ward boundaries. 

Each of us needs spiritual and physical nourishment, and sometimes we need help from others to get the nourishment we need. These callings provide us with a way to see the needs of others, including people we may not come into contact with normally. And for those frequent moments when we have no idea of their needs, the Lord has promised to provide us with the revelation we need to know how to bear meet those needs. God knows their needs, and He has promised to magnify our efforts as we serve in our church callings with all our heart, might, mind, and strength. Through these callings, we have opportunities to make sure others in our locality are spiritually, physically, socially, and mentally nourished and taken care of.

The one calling in our life that never changes is that of home or visiting teacher. This lifetime calling gives us ample opportunities to serve others on a very personal, meaningful level. Home and visiting teaching gives us an opportunity to visit with others in the ward, to get to know them and their struggles and their joys. As we visit every month, we can receive revelation (and sometimes observe with our own intellect) what they need. If we discover that they are struggling, we can help. If they need love, or support, or help financially or physically, we are in their home every month, and they (hopefully) know they can turn to us. This is the purpose of home and visiting teaching, so that every member of every ward gets visited in their home every month so that their needs can be met by other members. If their needs are something more than we have the resources to help them with, we can inform the Bishop, and he can help them in ways that we maybe cannot. But since he cannot visit every member every month, he asks us too, and in this way it is not just the higher-up leaders of the ward organization that have the opportunity to personally serve the members of the church, but all of us have that opportunity as well.

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Of course there are a lot of other organizations we can, and probably should, get involved in, but this list of things we can accomplish as an organized church is just another example of why we need a church, and not just a religion. A church organization can do things that religious people working individually cannot. This is a small list of what we can accomplish working together. A more comprehensive list can be found in the talk “Why the Church” by Elder Todd D. Christofferson. Without organized religion, the blessings of the restored Priesthood, such as baptism by proper authority and temple work, cannot spread. Nor, without organized religion, do we have as easy an opportunity provided for us to nourish others both physically and spiritually. We can accomplish much good on our own, but when we work together within the framework of the church, our whole becomes more than the sum of our parts.