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I got sleep in and still be home for lunch at a decent hour. I believe this may work to attract new members and keep people in church.
I agree. I always feel sorry for the investigators who probably haven’t attended any church in ages, then GET to sit through 3 hours of ours.
I do feel super sorry for the wards in my Stake that have 2-4 pm slots. That just stinks. 1-4 was bad enough, but what do you do until 2 pm? 2 is my nap time.
Gerald wrote:
However, our Sunday School was very well attended. I’m not sure if it was because there was less motivation for loitering in the halls (which many of our members do) …
I miss my foyer class
It was one of my only downtime social outlets.
We also meet with another ward in the same building, so we started an hour and a half later than normal, slept in and still out by about lunch.
All around a plus for me.
After a while, we’ll get used to two hour church and the experience of community, the doctrine, the spirituality will take over again as the primary driver of church attending happiness. It’s human nature to start taking things for granted. I am still really surprised that they did this. The only reasons I can think of are a) making the most of our buildings so you can have as many as four Wards in the building at any time, or maybe even more b) making the LDS experience easier for young families and people in general and c) maybe it really is the last days and more responsibility for learning and teaching is being placed on individuals and families. I tend to think this is the order of operations.
My wife and I both felt the day seemed a lot longer since the two hour church started. My plan is to show up in time for the final speaker each week. This will make it 1.5 hour church or so. The final speaker is usually usually better than the other speakers.
Now if I could show up at church in fitness clothing it would be Utopia!
I honestly wonder how long this current iteration of the two hour block will last. Alternating weeks of SS and EQ/RS/YM/YW seems like an odd compromise. Our current YW president has told DW and I that she is very concerned about the lack of face time she will get with the girls now. Many are so busy they do not attend the mid-week activities. Now the Sunday face time has been cut in half. I wouldn’t be surprised to see SS get incorporated into the curriculum of the other classes. The current alternating week format seems “clunky.” I know its not related to the two hour block, but the other interesting change with the youth advancements now is just how large the Priest Quorum and Laurel classes are now. In my ward each of those are easily as big as the two younger groups combined.
Quote:I honestly wonder how long this current iteration of the two hour block will last. Alternating weeks of SS and EQ/RS/YM/YW seems like an odd compromise.
Since I know this idea of “home church” has been in discussion for 38 years, I wonder if this was the best compromise that could be found at the moment. If the home study plan works will they phase out the SS portion.
It took a good 2 years for the block program and it’s details to get settled in. I hope the church will adjust.
Most of us here aren’t big SS people, but for a certain population SS is traditionally part of church. Most Christian faiths still have SS. If we were to totally abandon it would there be a conflict for people who find that tradition part of their worship? – Just thinking out loud.
mom3 wrote:
Quote:I honestly wonder how long this current iteration of the two hour block will last. Alternating weeks of SS and EQ/RS/YM/YW seems like an odd compromise.
Since I know this idea of “home church” has been in discussion for 38 years, I wonder if this was the best compromise that could be found at the moment. If the home study plan works will they phase out the SS portion.
It took a good 2 years for the block program and it’s details to get settled in. I hope the church will adjust.
Most of us here aren’t big SS people, but for a certain population SS is traditionally part of church. Most Christian faiths still have SS. If we were to totally abandon it would there be a conflict for people who find that tradition part of their worship? – Just thinking out loud.
I agree. I think the word compromise is appropriate. A few years ago, and I don’t remember which Q12 member it was, it was said that the church was looking to simplify but the problem they had was what to cut. I think each program is a sacred cow to somebody. I think the home centered church is here to stay and I think the two hour block is here to stay. There is little scriptural evidence that any of the meetings need to be held, and in my book PH and SS are a bit redundant anyway – they’re both essentially gospel study classes. I agree that at some point in the not too distant future we’ll see some sort of consolidation of PH/RS/YW and SS or just the outright end of regular meetings of one or the other. (FWIW, the current iteration of the block was piloted over two summers in our student branch, exactly as it appears for everybody now. They loved it, and it worked there.)
Rumin8 wrote:
The current alternating week format seems “clunky.”
In the past we’ve struggled with things like:
Oh, it’s fast Sunday (1st Sunday). I forgot.
Oh, I forgot it was 5th Sunday combined. We didn’t plan anything.
Is this 3rd or 4th Sunday? Are we supposed to read a conference talk or do the council, or what?
Our stake did Cub Scouts on even weeks. Lots and lots of den leaders and families alike getting confused about which week to show up and which week to stay home. Many times it was cancelled because one group or the other didn’t know the schedule.
We don’t do a good job of keeping up with what week it is. Alternating helps establish a rhythm, a 5th Sunday can disrupt it. I wonder how long it will be before a teacher shows up unprepared because they thought they had the week off?
DarkJedi wrote:
…and in my book PH and SS are a bit redundant anyway – they’re both essentially gospel study classes.
I’ve felt like we’ve struggled to know what to do during the PH/RS hour for a few decades now. What do we do? I dunno, read general conference talks or the Teachings manuals… that were general conference talks from one guy, organized by theme. Tomorrow we’re going to have PH in lieu of SS. We’ll be reading a general conference talk. It’s super hard for me to get excited about that.
I think the trouble they’ll run into with dropping PH/RS is that they don’t want to lose out on having that time to instruct the PH body. RS still has enrichment night for bonding (is it still called that? is that still a thing?). In my experience PH has nothing outside of PH on Sundays. Maybe they could drop PH/RS, make PH a quarterly stake level meeting so the boys can get in their obligatory ‘do your ministering’ lesson
There’s also the issue of Primary. Right now it’s super awkward. It’s the two hour Primary block condensed to one hour. My vote is to do sharing time for the smaller kids and classes for the older kids. Do older kids really enjoy sharing time? I dunno. Maybe.
This Sunday (1/13) there were some growing pains. SM had a youth and two adults scheduled, youth was short (well under 5 minutes), first adult took a long time (babbling basically), third adult had no time. There had also been a rest hymn scheduled, it was not done. Priesthood ended 10 minutes early. The instructor was just done, although he could have have elicited more discussion if he tried. He did well with discussion as it was, I think he thought himself limited to what was in the talk. (I thought the point was to use the talks as a catalyst and expand on the talk, but whatever, I am a heretic.)
I was talking to a friend in another ward. He had a bit different SM experience, where they also had a youth and two adults. The youth was one of the 1 minute kind and the first adult took less than 10 minutes. Fearing the second adult was left with too much time, the bishopric guy conducting stood up and introduced an impromptu rest hymn to which the pianist literally said out loud (according to my friend) “We’re not allowed to do rest hymns anymore.” They did do the hymn, and we are allowed to we just don’t have to. And the last speaker had 20 minutes still, but I know him and he wold have been fine or just finished and allowed the meeting to end a couple minutes early. He didn’t say how priesthood went.
That is an interesting dynamic. We’re not accustomed to having such little time to conduct SM and so much time for SS/PH/RS. We had two adult speakers and an intermediary hymn. The first speaker spoke for 25 minutes
:crazy: and I thought for sure we’d scale the intermediary hymn down to one verse. Nope, we sung the whole thing. We ended up going over the allotted hour by only 5 minutes.:thumbup: There are no prayers or anything to get SS going. Couple that with SM ending early and there’s a good 10 minutes more instruction time for SS.
I did skip PH this past Sunday so I don’t know how well the plan to reduce PH announcement time went. Was a part of the changes eliminating PH opening exercises? If so, a PH instructor may find that they now have three times as much time to plan for. I remember back when I was a PH instructor that some Sundays I’d have 15 minutes or less after transition from SS, opening exercises, transition to quorum, second round of announcements.
nibbler wrote:
I did skip PH this past Sunday so I don’t know how well the plan to reduce PH announcement time went. Was a part of the changes eliminating PH opening exercises? If so, a PH instructor may find that they now have three times as much time to plan for. I remember back when I was a PH instructor that some Sundays I’d have 15 minutes or less after transition from SS, opening exercises, transition to quorum, second round of announcements.
Indeed, no priesthood opening. YM go directly to their quorums, men go directly to elders quorum. No song or prayer and way less announcements/droning on about nothing (like the “fun” Scout trip). I do think that was part of the problem – where before 30 minutes was the max anyone ever got to teach and it was usually closer to 20 minutes and sometimes less than 15. This Sunday the instructor had a good 45 minutes. I think it is just a matter of adjustment to having that much time.
DarkJedi wrote:
nibbler wrote:
I did skip PH this past Sunday so I don’t know how well the plan to reduce PH announcement time went. Was a part of the changes eliminating PH opening exercises? If so, a PH instructor may find that they now have three times as much time to plan for. I remember back when I was a PH instructor that some Sundays I’d have 15 minutes or less after transition from SS, opening exercises, transition to quorum, second round of announcements.
Indeed, no priesthood opening. YM go directly to their quorums, men go directly to elders quorum. No song or prayer and way less announcements/droning on about nothing (like the “fun” Scout trip). I do think that was part of the problem – where before 30 minutes was the max anyone ever got to teach and it was usually closer to 20 minutes and sometimes less than 15. This Sunday the instructor had a good 45 minutes. I think it is just a matter of adjustment to having that much time.
The obvious snswer is to divide that up.
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