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This is a little different from the other Easter 2014 posts. I don’t know where else to vent. Why can’t we just celebrate Easter? Straight up tell the story. Sing the hymns – the few we have. Today our ward kept with its monthly theme. ‘Cause, ya know, after planning with a purpose and all that inspiration, we can’t possibly take a detour to celebrate Jesus breaking the bonds of death. 
This is saddening and sickening. It seems really odd that leaders miss this opportunity. I was in a ward where they reversed the meetings on Easter Sunday. P’hood, then SS, then sacrament talks, then finally sacrament as the last thing.
They wanted 3 hour build up to the moment of remembering the atonement.
This weekend just gone we had an easter themed sacrament and I taught an Easter Gospel Principles lesson.
I’ll post it here in a moment.
That is sad. In our ward, we had three very good talks about Jesus, the Redeemer – and one of them (a former Bishop) focused on grace and the miracle of resurrection. His talk, especially, was excellent.
mackay11 wrote:It seems really odd that leaders miss this opportunity.
Wouldn’t it be falling-off-a-log easy to tell speakers to focus on Easter? It requires zero extra effort.
Thanks for the blog post; I’m glad somebody heard a lesson like that yesterday.
Fwiw, Ann, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of wards and branches in the Church had Easter / resurrection focused talks yesterday. It sucks that yours didn’t, but it is the exception not the rule, I am sure. I had asked my missionary son about how Easter was there in our weekly email. In his email yesterday he quote: “The talks weren’t even about Easter, they were about family and tithing. But whatever.” So I agree that most wards do have something related to Easter (although maybe focusing than I might), but here are two examples of wards that did not, and this only from the very few of us that participate here. Ann, I’m so sorry. I would have walked out. What a shame… so many unfilled hearts. For my part, although I complained in another thread about our last speaker’s extra dose of anguish, at least our SM was Easter-based. So, “What’s our problem???” Such a great question. I agree with Ray that the majority of ward meetings were likely Easter-focused. But the mere fact that there is even a possibility of wards where it is not is just shocking for our Church. I think that part of the problem is that Easter often falls on General Conference weekend, so we are used to just going about our business. Last Easter GC was in 2010. If you look at the Sunday morning list of talks, it was a a great lineup. But Sunday afternoon was merely the normal fare, highlighted by a talk entitled “Our Duty to God: The Mission of Parents and Leaders to the Rising Generation”. Even with Easter-driven talks in Sunday Morning Session, GC is a terrible way to celebrate Easter… sitting at home in our pajamas watching the TV…
I wish the Church would move GC to the following week, when Easter falls on the first Sunday in April. I think this would accomplish two things: 1) allowing local congregations to celebrate with each other and 2) sending a signal that Easter is important, more important than GC, so we should celebrate it. Dates vary wildly, but Easter falls on the first Sunday in April on average, once about every 4-5 years. FYI… and I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but the next time will be next year, April 5, 2015
In fact, we are in for a bit of a series, because three of the next seven Easter Sundays will fall on GC weekend (2015, 2018 and 2021).I think we tend to associate and conflate our lives in the church with “worship.” Some of the side effects of this are that tangential and cultural things get elevated to very important status. OTOH there is less of a need to make a big production out of our worship of Christ on a particular day because our daily lives are our worship. We are always “about our Father’s business” so to speak. So in summary, I believe we belong to a very even keel, correlated, and predictable church. The valleys are not as low and the peeks are not as pronounced. We don’t do pentacost.
And if they move GC to the week after Easter that frees up local units to give talks on tithing on Easter Sunday. 😈 But seriously… another benefit about moving GC off Easter Sunday is that many people that don’t regularly attend church feel a bit more motivated to come on Easter Sunday. Like you say, it’s a chance to reconnect with people. If GC ends up falling on Easter weekend it might just turn into another church vacation weekend for some. Plus when I was young and attended other churches Easter and Christmas were the only times of the year where the sacrament was administered. If GC falls on Easter weekend there’s no administering of the sacrament. That could make for a letdown if a non-member shows up to one of our Easter services.
Thanks for the heads up on the Easter/GC schedule. I’ll make a suggestion that we administer sacrament between the session next year and see how that floats.
On Own Now wrote:I wish the Church would move GC to the following week, when Easter falls on the first Sunday in April. I think this would accomplish two things: 1) allowing local congregations to celebrate with each other and 2) sending a signal that Easter is important, more important than GC, so we should celebrate it. Dates vary wildly, but Easter falls on the first Sunday in April on average, once about every 4-5 years. FYI… and I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but the next time will be next year, April 5, 2015
I looked this up a little while ago, too. Wouldn’t this also be falling-off-a-log easy to do? People complain about the church being so misunderstood by the world. It’s the natural consequence of strange, stand-offish postures like this.
Ray is undoubtedly right that most wards had Easter Sundays. But by the time I wrote that post late Sunday night I had talked or e-mailed with people who had attended sacrament meeting in three different stakes.
Oneof the three had Easter talks. One of them had stake conference “as scheduled.” A different one sang “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief” for the opening hymn. And two of these were in wards that are “rich” – rich in members, experience, commitment, resources, education, etc. But I’m calm now.
My Bishop happened to give me a bit of a teaser about our Easter SM… A couple weeks earlier, he said we’d have a “unique approach” and that I should be sure to be there. Haha… the “unique approach” was that we sang an Easter-appropriate opening hymn, had ward business as usual, had the sacrament hymn (which is always Easter-themed), then the Sacrament as usual, then we had two adult speakers about Easter, a choir number with Easter music and another speaker about Easter, then finished with another Easter-appropriate hymn. I think the “unique” part was that we had 3 adult speakers, giving shorter talks, and that was nice, but hardly something that will be published in trade magazines or start a cultural revolution. 
We had Easter briefly mentioned during two of the four talks, in passing. I fear organizational wants and institutional needs outrank spiritual nourishment. There certainly was no exuberance in singing hymns, just a few dirges. Too bad. When the last speaker was done a few younger kids audibly shouted “yay!” But then the bishop arose and said a few more words, unrelated to the special day. There’s a little Lutheran church nearby that reminds me of a 70’s-era “Phase 1” church building. From the looks of the outside, there won’t be trumpets or robes or flowers inside, but I’ll be there April 5, 2015, and I’m 99% sure they’ll be talking about Easter. Edited much later to add:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700021832/BYU-study-Disconnect-between-Mormons-and-Easter.html I saw this old article and thought I would add it here in case we ever come back to this discussion.
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