The Exponent provides excellent Come Follow Me lesson plans. I volunteered to write a lesson plan that will cover 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Every time I sit down to write the lesson plan I keep writing about why Titus means so much to me. I’ve been trying to weave my experience with Titus into the lesson plan, but after a while I realized I was actually writing a whole separate post. 

I’ve decided to make this something of a two-parter. Today I’m going to talk about what led me to love the book of Titus. In a week and a half you can read my lesson plan about 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. It will be published on the afternoon of Monday, October 16th.

Looking for Something

This story is for anyone who feels like their spiritual life could need a boost.

At the beginning of 2021 I was searching for something MORE for my spiritual life. My ward was coming back to church after COVID had shut things down, but things weren’t fully up and running again. Adult Sunday School wasn’t being held in my ward yet. Even if we had been meeting, the curriculum wasn’t great. That year Come Follow Me focused on the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History. The lessons were all “rah rah rah, this church is great!” I wasn’t enjoying that message when I felt like the church was failing me spiritually. 

That year Easter coincided with General Conference weekend which – in my opinion – is always the worst combination. I feel like Easter should be celebrated in a church. Plus we were visiting my in-laws for the first time in months and so no one was really paying attention to conference anyway. We hadn’t turned on conference at all on Saturday and I wasn’t sure how much we’d listen to it on Sunday.  

But I really needed some sort of spiritual recharge.

I turned to my favorite way to jumpstart my spiritual life – I went to Catholic Mass.

I like “High Church” traditions. I’d been to a Catholic Mass as part of a field trip for a college humanities class. I’d been struck by all pomp. I liked the processions, the singing, the feelings of tradition. Years later I started following a Catholic writer named Jen Fulwiler. I always loved her spiritual insights. In 2019 I decided to attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. That ended up being the spiritual highlight of my life for the next year. When everyone else was lamenting the closing of the temples I was lamenting that I couldn’t attend Easter Mass in 2020.

I made sure I made it to Easter Mass in 2021. There is a little chapel in a town near my in-laws rural home so I looked up the Mass Time and drove over there a little before 9:00. I hadn’t packed a dress, but I had a nice shirt and pants. I’ve seen people in jeans at Mass before so I knew I wouldn’t stand out because of my clothes. I planned to just hang out in the back and try to blend in. 

Blending in didn’t really work though. It was pretty obvious I wasn’t Catholic when I didn’t genuflect when entering the chapel. And when the priest greeted me with “Happy Easter” I replied with “Thanks!” Instead of something along the lines of “Happy Easter to you Father.” But nobody cared or made me feel like I wasn’t welcome. And I wasn’t there to pretend to be Catholic, I was there for a spiritual experience. 

I definitely got the spiritual experience. I often feel the spirit stronger when I visit other churches than I do at my own. This is probably for two reasons. 1. I don’t have my kids with me. and 2. I don’t know enough about the other church to notice anything that happens to go wrong. I can just show up and plug into the Spirit. 

I don’t know what it is exactly about Mass that I love, but I think a lot of it has to do with how much the audience gets to participate. I love standing up to sing. I love the scripted responses. (And thanks to COVID I had to wear a mask and no one could tell when I was mumbling along or leaving out certain phrases.) I appreciate the way holy Communion is presented. It’s special to hear the priest explain the Last Supper as he’s preparing for Communion. 

At one point the priest said a prayer for many things and then audience repeated certain phrases. Then he added a space where we could silently pray for what we needed. I remember praying for “Something, I don’t know what. Just Something.” My spiritual life was so depleted I didn’t even know what I needed.

Because of COVID the priests came into the congregation to distribute Communion rather than having the congregation come to them. They gave Communion “On the Hand” meaning they gave the wafer to each person rather than putting it directly into their mouths. I’m not a baptized Catholic so it would be inappropriate for me to take Communion, but I knew I could request a blessing from the priest if I crossed my arms and bowed my head when the priest came to my row. I found myself really wanting that blessing. When the priest reached my row I crossed my arms and bowed my head. He held out his hand and whispered something in my general direction. 

I don’t know if it was that blessing, or if it was hearing the priest say, “Receive the Body of Christ” to each person who took Communion around me, or if it was just the atmosphere created by the music that was playing during this time, but I broke down crying. I cried for a long time while kneeling on the floor. It was one of those really good spiritually cathartic crying sessions. I definitely got my spiritual recharge.

Finding Something

Mass had been a good recharge, but not much changed in my life. We were gradually allowed back at church for more weeks and for longer times, but we were still studying Doctrine and Covenants and Church History. I just couldn’t enjoy studying a very sanitized version of church history that also somehow featured a really angry, grumpy version of God.  

I wanted to find a Bible Study. Years earlier, when my husband was in the Army and we were living in the South I’d attended Bible Studies with non-denominational groups. I’d attended MOPS (Mother’s of Pre-Schoolers) in Texas and PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) in Alabama. I’d loved the chance to study scripture and learn about Jesus with other women. I found myself missing those groups and started to look for something similar in my current city. 

Nothing was really working out though. The nearest MOPS group was 40 minutes away. Every Bible Study I found online was held in the evening and didn’t quite fit my schedule at the time. 

In July I went to a block party at a house around the corner from my house. I thought it was just a neighborhood thing. But it was really an outreach event for a new non-denominational church. Even after I figured out that it was kind of a church thing I still thought it was a good party. I was able to meet many of my neighbors, including my neighbor who was the assistant pastor of this new church. There were a lot of people at the block party, but the first person I happened to talk to was the Women’s Ministry Leader. When I found that out I asked her what the Women’s Ministry did for Bible Study. 

She told me they did have a Women’s Bible Study. They met at a church close to my house, and they met on Friday mornings at 6:15. She said they were currently studying the book of Titus. She invited me to come the next morning at 6:15. I told her I probably would.

I may have wandered into that block party not expecting much, but I can recognize when things line up well. I’d been looking for a Bible Study and I’d just been led to one that fit my schedule and was hosted by people that were hospitable. I was willing to give this a try.

I went to that Bible Study. For 90 minutes we dived into Titus Chapter 2 verses 1-5. 

Yes, we spent an hour and a half discussing 5 verses. First we took turns reading them from different translations. We looked at them from the author’s perspective (what was Paul trying to tell Titus), from God’s perspective, (What was God trying to tell people) and finally applied them to our lives (What do these verses mean to us.) 

I was completely mystified. My LDS brain that was used to discussing whole books of scripture every week could not comprehend how we spent so much time on 5 verses. But I loved it. And I was hooked. 

I came back every other Friday for more of this slow crawl through Titus. This was the spiritual food I’d been looking for. 

One of the things I really enjoyed was the chance to study the gospel without all the extra baggage that came with the LDS church. I didn’t have to think about family history, food storage, temple work, etc. It could just be really simple and yet really profound truths that had lasted 2000 years. Primarily, that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected and that we could have new life though him.

At some point the Women’s Ministry Leader gave me a copy of her favorite book for how to read the Bible. It was called Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin. That book was the basis for how she was leading the Bible Study. I read the book and it blew my mind. Jen Wilkin had so many good suggestions for how to read the Bible and understand it. I bought the book for myself and referenced it often. 

I also brought myself a copy of the ESV Translation of the Bible. We read from many translations of the Bible as we studied Titus and I was realizing how clunky the KJV version could be. This church preferred the ESV translation so that’s the one I bought. I bought a Study Bible that had introductions for each book of scripture. These gave good insight into the time and place and themes of the book. There were also fabulous footnotes that explained complicated phrases. Those footnotes came in handy many times as I worked through the Old Testament Curriculum for Come Follow Me in 2022.  

The women in the Bible Study group became my good friends. The Women’s Ministry Leader had children who attended the same school mine did. We served together in Parent Teacher Organization for a year. The wife of the Assistant Pastor lived around the corner from me and we often talked about our gardens. She had chickens and my children took care of them when she was out of town. Other women were always ready to chat when I ran into them at the pool or other places around town. I started attending Ladies Retreats with the Women’s Ministry and relished the chances to get to know these women on overnight trips.

In some ways, it would have been easy to cut ties with the LDS church and go all in with this new church. However, there were some doctrinal things that prevented me from joining this church and there were other doctrines that kept me tethered to the LDS church. I set up a kind of duel residency status for myself. I attended the LDS church on Sundays and then spent week days with the Ladies Ministry of this church.

I kept attending the Bible Study group. In 2022 we did a whole year of Systematic Theology. One of the first subjects we tackled was Bibliology. I’d grown up with the 8th Article of Faith baked into my personal theology. That line, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly” had somehow always diminished the Bible in my mind. Studying Bibliology was a really good exercise for me. The book we were reading argued for Biblical Inerrancy. I never could believe in an inerrant Bible, but studying the ideas behind it really increased my love and appreciation for the Bible.

As my love and appreciation for the Bible increased, I began to realize that the Bible was the Something I’d prayed for at Easter Mass in 2021. I’d known Bible Stories all my life and had studied it in Sunday School, Seminary, and even my Protestant Women of the Chapel group back in Alabama. However, it was when I started reading Titus that I realized what a treasure the Bible really is. That’s why I love Titus. Because slowly reading that that little book showed me how beautiful the whole Bible can be.

Loving Something

On Easter in 2022 I found myself at my in-laws house again. I continued to enjoy my tradition of attending Mass to celebrate Christmas and Easter. So on Easter Morning at 9:00 AM I went to that little chapel again. 

It was interesting to be back in the same place physically, but not spiritually. I didn’t feel spiritually malnourished anymore. I felt like I had friends who could help me find spiritual food and that I had tools to feed myself. 

When the procession came into the chapel I noticed that the priest was holding an ornate Bible high over his head. I started crying right then. I’d prayed for Something in that very chapel a year earlier. Here was that Something. God’s Word in scripture. Handed down for generations. To teach us about Jesus and what His life, death, and resurrection meant for us. 

I hope that this story helped you if you are also looking for Something. Your Something may not be the Bible exactly. But maybe it is.

I’m really looking forward to sharing some of the beautiful truths that are inside Titus. It’s where I was able to let go of so much LDS baggage and take a look at a simpler version of Christianity. Please come back Monday, October 16th at 4:00 PM Mountain Time to learn about Jesus through the book of Titus. 

Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash