Two Hour Church

I wonder if there a practical reason for this change too.

Now we can have (3) wards in the same building.

This way we can build fewer chapels & better utilize the space.

That’s what I think. They framed it as a last days thing, with more responsibility placed on the individual for their own salvation, but practically, I think it’s motivated partly by practical/financial considerations. I also think that the accompanying practical benefits (fewer meeting houses, that are largely underutilized most of the week) would make this spiritual change/easing up on the members more convincing to the higher ups.

One problem it creates for me is that I had my own two hour church going. I felt SS and PH were the best meetings. So, now do I go down to 1 hour church? I never really liked sitting through Sacrament meeting. Those two hours were good for my son when he went, too.

Two hour church is nice, but it means trading one tolerable hour for an intolerable one.

Anyway, it’s still a good thing. I have a feeling I’ll be on the one hour church plan. Much better.

Nothing was said about the impact to Primary. My wife feels a little disappointed.

She feels that they didn’t have enough time the way it was. I always avoided 2nd hour

Sunday School by doing Family History training. Now that’s gone.

I’m sure we’ll adapt.

5. In the second session, when sustaining Church leaders, my wife noted she didn’t hear any opposed. I think this is why.

😆

I don’t get why Elder Holland was going around saying, “You had better have your testimonies strong before conference as it will be test your faith”. What? There is NOBODY that is upset with this. Maybe Elder Holland thought people loved every minute of the 3 hour block. I have seen nothing but smiles and happy words.

People who expressed hope for shortened time on Sunday can’t complain or nitpick when it happens.

Just saying. 🙂

I’m glad it happened. It has these effects:

1. People with young children may wonder less why they bother to come. I heard that over and over and over again when my kids were young from other parents. It was 3 hours of hell every Sunday with really young kids.

2. My wife is a nursery leader and explained how the first hour in nursery is fine, but the second hour is really really hard. And she’s very active in the way she runs the nursery with activities etcetera. She was in tears of happiness when it was announced.

3. You need fewer teachers now. People only have to teach twice a month rather than four times a month. This leaves more people for other callings. You could even put your best people into teaching positions and still have more people available for other work in the ward. Taken with combining the priesthood quorums, this frees up a lot of time.

4. 3 hour church was a major stumbling block for my parents when I first joined the church. They thought that was excessive. This addresses that fact, although my parents would never consider getting involved with Mormonism.

5. You don’t have to build as many chapels, which reduces the financial burden on the church — and to some members who are often assessed a certain fee for the building of a new chapel.

As far as nitpicking goes, remember, Curtis, we have many beefs with the church, those of us who post here. Some of us have suffered leadership abuse, repeatedly, feel lied to, feel trapped in our Mormonism due to the impact on our family or marriage if we went completely inactive. Others feel the leadership is stubborn and almost arrogant at times about what they feel are inspired programs, only to reverse these programs. And to reverse them for the very reasons many of us were labelled apostate or disloyal in suggesting such changes previously.

It tends to lead to a kind of cynism when these changes are made. I posted a thread on it previously, about how I find myself in a quandary when the church makes positive changes like this. There’s a kind of “why did everyone beat up on me when I suggested this X years ago, only to do it now?”. “What took you so long?” and stuff like that.

And of course, given my own history, I wonder about the role that financial and temporal considerations play in these decisions. The ability to reduce the number of buildings you need in certain areas by 1/3 is certainly a strong financial reason to go to a 2 hour block. And we have seen the church let the members suffer and suffer and suffer, even go to jail over doctrine (as in the plural marriage imprisonings before the Manifesto) when there was no temporal cost to the church. It was only when the government threatened to confiscate the church’s property over the issue that the Manifesto revelation came. Money is a big deal to the church. So, I tend to look at these changes through temporal glasses and partly as if the organization is acting out of naked self-interest.

And of course, my own experiences when it comes to the church and its temporal concerns (non-welfare, by the way) only makes me see these situations differently than others.

So, yes, it’s a good change, although i wish they cut out all the boring one-way talks in Sacrament and kept the two-way meetings for Ph/RS and also SS. But it’s a step in the right direction, regardless of the motives of the church in doing so.