The Hierarchy of Church Programs

To better understand my comment, I’d point out that both church programs and I have changed over the years. For instance, my needs may have changed, rendering a church program more/less relevant; a church program may have changed, rendering the program more/less relevant to me.

Missionary work: I agree that not much has changed and that the program has a high priority. Especially now that the every young man has a duty to serve a mission mantra got taken out of storage a few years ago.

I think missionary work is more something that members do when they have an assignment to do so. Like when you’re a full time missionary or when you get a calling related to missionary work. Outside of that, I don’t see many members engaging with missionary work.

Primary: I can’t say that I’ve seen too many changes to Primary over the years, but I haven’t had much interaction with Primary. Two deep leadership has been a thing for a while now. There was an adjustment to accommodate the two hour block. Outside of that, Primary has remained relatively the same.

PH and RS: These took a 50% hit when we moved to the two hour block but personally I was getting to where PH meetings felt less and less useful over time. So much so that I stopped attending five or six years ago. More on the reasons in my Sunday School section.

I do agree that combining quorums had a quieting effect but I understand why they did it. Maybe it has less to do with needing separate quorums for different life stages and more to do with a bystander effect. The larger the quorum, the less likely someone is to speak up because people assume others will comment? I’ve usually had more success in getting discussion going with smaller groups and having two separate quorums made for smaller groups in large wards.

I do like the idea of organizations with the goal of helping to meet members’ needs and to spread the load but I’m not sure whether PH and RS are accomplishing that goal. PH and RS take some of the burden off the bishop’s shoulders but rather than spread that burden out to a group, the EQP and RSP end up with the entire load. Ministering and Home Teaching were meant to spread the burden but I don’t think those programs ever accomplished that goal.

Sunday School: Another program that took a 50% hit when we moved to the two hour block. I could say the same about SS that I said about PH, the meetings just don’t do it for me. I hung on to SS a little longer than I did PH but I haven’t been to SS in four or five years.

Why? It’s stale. We’ve had the same discussions in PH/SS for forever. PH is going to be taking turns reading a conference talk. The conversations really aren’t especially relevant to my life.

I feel like I’m either not allowed to have the types of conversations I’d like to have or that people that attend PH/SS don’t want to have those types of conversations. There are wrong answers and right answers. There are right topics and wrong topics. Nothing wrong with that, but the Overton window of acceptable discussion during the second hour isn’t open wide enough to include me or my thoughts. I leave the second hour for those that get something out of it.

Youth: Youth programs took a massive hit a few years ago. Speaking for the YM, I know people have their opinion about scouts but it was at least something. Now it’s mostly self-started by the youth themselves. It takes a very special kind of youth to get something going and many wards might not have them. Sometimes kids need to follow a plan that’s provided for them.

They also took away the youth advisors, giving that responsibility to the bishop. I think it was in an effort to help the youth and bishops build stronger relationships (and to plan ahead for not having enough people in wards to staff callings) but the net effect was that the youth got less attention than before.

Family History and Temple Work: Family history always felt like an afterthought. It’s the lesson you have on a 5th Sunday when you can’t think of anything else to talk about.

Temples on the other hand are really ramping up as of late. Temples are presented as the pinnacle of the Mormon experience. Right now I think leaders see “temples” as their primary retention/motivational tool. I put temples in quotes because so far I haven’t really heard many specifics about why or how temples are so important, only a nebulous once you’re in the temple all your wishes will come true.

Here’s a common example, “You will feel closer to the Savior by attending the temple” or, “You gain a stronger testimony through temple attendance.” That doesn’t do anything for me… primarily because I can feel closer to the Savior irrespective of whether I frequent temples and I’m done with always chasing more. But that’s me. I’m sure temples do help many members recharge or refocus.

At any rate, temples are becoming increasingly accessible. My problem is that I don’t really view the temple as relevant to me. It’s a powerless motivational tool. I can’t speak for how rising generations will view the importance of temples but leaders certainly are putting all of their eggs in the temple basket.

I think the biggest driver is the “lack of time and resources” now that wasn’t necessarily all-around the case 20, 40, 60 years ago.

The “sandwich generation” [20’s through 40’s really] where young families where the parents were caretaking for their children and their parents wasn’t so “sandwich-y” for a long time. Threads of multiple marriages (creating multiple sets of parents potentially), the current cultural expectations assigned to “motherhood” and related potential helicopter parenting, and more elderly parents and grandparents creates more households where intensive hands-on or intensive care-giving and monitoring is required to avoid situations of actual abuse and in some cases, the appearance of abuse.

“2 income families Normalized” has created a situation where women (who usually provided the executive functioning for communal events) just can’t or don’t feel it is worth their time.

“The Competition” – To be fair, competing organizations such as government recreation programs, local nonprofit recreation programs, community theater programs, private recreation programs (like specific camps and related) provide more specific volunteer security vetting, have specific guidelines that drive the expectations of volunteers, and are still ways to participate. Community building is hard, minimally rewarding work that isn’t necessarily being outsourced to the church community for a variety of reasons.