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I so much want to come out to my wife that I feel most of church is BORING me to death. I work really hard all week long with lots of hours at work and I have tons of stuff I want to do. And to me Gospel Doctrine isn’t great, but get to High Priests and the I’d love to tell the leadership my true feelings about how boring SS and PH are. It’s not that I’m never uplifted in either of those meetings, but there are far more boring ones than uplifting ones. I didn’t realize before that Kirby’s wife doesn’t attend with him. Does she not go at all or does she have some other reason?
As SS president and Gospel Doctrine teacher I’m starting to feel really bad. :eh: I send food with DH for HP group. Attendance improved drastically when treats arrived. I love the article. The part about topics that matter, such as discipline, conflict resolution = yes!! That is what we need. I am tired of the materials that are meant to make you strong in doctrine and try to turn you into good Mormons. The title of the article — akin to “I will attend SS when it is more interesting” is a great title. And one thing that gets me — how many members respond when you express just how incredibly boring church is after you’ve been doing it for 20 or 30 years (or even 3 years). They put the onus on you to find ways of enjoying it rather than addressing the problem — too many unprepared, or incapable teachers. They make you out as selfish or heathen because you are not Polyanna about it.
Sure, people are there to grow, and we should support people who are growing. But there needs to be balance — some really good teachers interspersed with the weak ones. There are some lessons where, when I know a particular teacher is teaching, I am into it. Others, as soon as they stand up there I know it’s time to pull out the Kindle.
Teaching is 90% of what we do on Sunday. As a church, we should be good at it — and if we aren’t good at it, have structures in place that help people become excellent teachers. At one time I was a Teacher Improvement Coordinator and was amazed that a) they canned the position after a couple years and b) how many of the teachers didn’t want to help because they hated teaching. A lot of them told me that. So, I left them alone.
Yeah, more often than not Sunday School (and PH) lessons aren’t interesting. I don’t “blame” (that’s far too harsh of a word, but I’ve got to use it for now) the teachers. A poor craftsman blames his tools and all that but I feel as though this is what happens when the insistence is to only teach from materials that have tCoJCoLDS stamped on the back. I’ve read those materials, they were nice, what else do you have? Personally I’d like to see more discussion in our lessons. I realize this doesn’t always work, in fact more often than not people in the lesson are a bit too timid to maintain a lively discussion.
My experience? A teacher will ask a question and most people are too afraid to answer just in case they get the answer wrong. Even when the questions are banal and the answer is obvious. When a teacher is met with silence after asking a simple question the tendency is to stop asking questions. I’ve taught lessons, I know how it is. Long moments of silence are a death knell.
Here’s a thought. Have a Sunday School where the teacher asks the students what topic they want to cover the next week. Make it personal. Making it personal will keep people interested.
nibbler wrote:I’ve read those materials, they were nice, what else do you have?
Nibbler, you crack me up.Loved that Kirby article, posted it to my FB page. I told DW that if I go inactive it will be from pure boredom (the last month has been excruciating).
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