NOM

Wondering how many NOMers are in the UK? Just moved here with my fam and wondering if the church is much diff here than the US? I’m curious but hesitant to enter a chapel to the extent that they would never leave me alone once knowing my fam and I are here.

Listened to the MS episode on the British rescue. Kind of seems like there is a diff brand of Mormonism here based on that episode?

I’d be curious to interact with members here if they are more serious about Christianity than they are Joseph Smith and Pres Rusty.

If I still lived in the UK I would likely attend more regularly than I do here. Like everywhere else there is variance ward to ward, but I find the UK members more rational and focused on what works than on culture overall.

-lost

I'm American, my mission was in Scotland, and I live in England.

In contrast to the Utah wards I've spent the most time in, wards here tend to have a staffing deficit. Like lost said, they tend to focus on what works, I think mostly because nobody has the spare time to show off how righteous they are. Most people in leadership are doing another calling too, either because they couldn't find someone to call, or the person they did call doesn't show up.

If you tend to get things done and you usually show up, you'll get integrated quickly, and they'll tend to let a little unorthodoxy slide.

A lot of wards and branches have a "core" family or two that have carried the unit for at least a generation. The patriarchs of the families have served as bishops, their wives have served as RS presidents, and their sons-in-law are in the bishopric. Sometimes a unit is like our ward, and the core family finally imploded after years of keeping their dysfunctions bottled up for the Lord.

Units are sometimes propped up by a senior missionary couple, who serve in whatever capacity they're needed in, if they don't have a special mandate. (We're in a university town, and ours work with the students, many of whom are far from home.) Sometimes the younger missionaries help out, too, but I haven't seen much of that in my ward.

There aren't many youth, so if a unit has enough adults to staff the YM and YW's programs, they get a lot of attention. It can be a struggle to get large groups of them together - usually a couple of stakes, a lot of travel, and maybe once per year. Most units I've been in call the best people they've got to the youth and primary, so SS lessons tend to be either way too interesting or - much more likely - boring as hell.

If your unit has a choir, it will have 3.5 people and it will probably suck.

Politically, units here tend to lean more left than in the US. Philosophically, they're probably pretty close to what you would find on the US's east coast. You might occasionally have a pro-BLM lesson, for example, and everyone is on board with universal health care. When people leave the church, it tends to be partly driven by moral differences.

Like our bishop's family and our elders' quorum president's family a couple of weeks ago. Damn, I should write something more about that.