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I thought I’d share this with the group… Yesterday we had some meetings with a newly called General Authority. He shared with us the things that the brethren shared with him when he went to training with the Q12 and First Presidency, which training always happens after conference when newly GAs are called.
The thing that stood out to me was that the brethren are deeply thinking about how to best SIMPLIFY the church for the church members. He said that many times church programs are great ideas, and have good intentions and meet needs of individual circumstances or members for a certain time, but then they don’t go away. Then more programs or ideas are implemented, and then more, then more. He said, pretty soon, the wagon gets so full of “good” things, that it is too heavy to pull any longer, and stops the family from progressing. And so the brethren are trying to simplify the church and make it more realistic for members to live the important principles, and not be weighed down by the tertiary things of the church.
This was music to my ears.
It made me feel good inside to think that the leaders of the church really do try to keep a finger on the pulse of the church members, and strive to make the church meet its goals of uplifting families…not weighing them down. I can’t help but wonder if the attrition numbers motivate them for these thoughts.
I hope there are good ideas coming and it doesn’t take too long to get them from the top down to the local leaders to be taught correctly.
What are the things that you would most like to see simplified in your church experience?
(I’m voting for 2 hours of church instead of 3
WoooHoooooo!
Heber13 wrote:What are the things that you would most like to see simplified in your church experience?
(I’m voting for 2 hours of church instead of 3
Agreed. I would like to see GD/SS moved to 3rd hour, and be purely optional.I would love to see attitudes in general changed from “magnify our callings” to instead “simplify our callings”. I think so many of us feel a great amount of unnecessary stress do to the high expectations we feel placed on us to go above and beyond.
Time to get back to the basics… love the Lord, love our neighbor.
If a program does not accomplish these objectives, consider dropping it.
Quote:What are the things that you would most like to see simplified in your church experience?
Do away with the 3 hour block.
Scouts
Correlation committee meetings
Most other Sunday morning meetings
Stake Priesthood training meetings on Saturday night
Meetings in general
More meetings
EQP PPIs
Most ward socials
These meetings I have to go to when YM or YW enter the program. Why?
Potlucks on High Council Sunday
Ward Missionary meetings
cub scouts
flowerdrops wrote:Time to get back to the basics… love the Lord, love our neighbor.
If a program does not accomplish these objectives, consider dropping it.
YES! Well said. I also think “back to the basics” means more emphasis on studying and understanding Christ’s teachings…which are all around love.cwald wrote:Scouts…
Meetings in general…
cub scouts
I agree. I wonder if they could get creative and do things more efficiently online or using websites instead of meetings.
For that matter, do away with Sunday School, and just make a home study program for reading material and posting comments on the “sunday school” forum. I would get a lot more out of that.
I also agree with your mention of scouts. I personally don’t like the program but see its purpose…but why not make it voluntary…why make all the primary boys and deacons get involved in scouts? My son feels guilty he’s not 2nd class yet…and he’s 11. I dunno…just seems to be putting pressures on our family that are unnecessary. Simplify, and make it voluntary for those who care about that.
I find church government very complicated… but the gospel lessons, please don’t simplify them! They’re already a bit too simplified already! I think I’ve shared this before, but my favorite meeting-related quote of all time is: Quote:It takes a great meeting to be better than no meeting.
SamBee wrote:I find church government very complicated… but the gospel lessons, please don’t simplify them! They’re already a bit too simplified already!
SamBee…this is a great comment and addition to the discussion…I absolutely agree…and think that if they would cut out all the complicated government stuff… the lessons could be better, not simplified down further. The church can improve the quality of lessons if there is more focus on the important things.
I find myself very impatient at church when 1/2 the time we are there we are talking about bulletin announcements.
I understand communication is important, but we have announcements over the pulpit, then announcements at the end of sacracment meeting before we are excused to Sunday School, and 20 minutes of announcements in Priesthood Opening Exercises, leaving only about 15 minutes for a lesson. We are at church for 3 hours and seem to have 30-45 minutes of that spent on church governance and announcements, leading to simplified skimming the top of the lesson material.
Good comment.
Quote:I would love to see attitudes in general changed from “magnify our callings” to instead “simplify our callings”.
For a while I’ve mentally told myself I am “minimizing” my calling, which is in fact how I deal with the amount of time some things require. “Simplifying” is a much better way of framing this! Honestly, it’s the only way to get everything in life worth doing done.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Honestly, it’s the only way to get everything in life worth doing done.
Exactly! I have always hated the old saying…”Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” Total B.S.! Anyone who lives by this adage had better get themselves some anti-anxiety meds! There are so many things that are worth doing, but only worth doing mediocre!
I would like to see a “Stay lds’ type class where each Sunday a question could be discussed with real answers for members like us. My dad used to have the book series called, “Answers to Gospel Questions”, 5 vols by Joseph Fielding Smith (1957-1966). I loved it when the church used to encourage questions and inquring. I have tapes by LeGrand Richards, and Hugh B. Brown that really valued getting answers to gospel questions. Now, you are looked as anti-Mormon if you ask questions or have doubts. When did this change? bridget_night wrote:Now, you are looked as anti-Mormon if you ask questions or have doubts. When did this change?
I think there was a change during the 70s and 80s when the church tried to start clamping down on professors and institute teachers, and even BYU professors who had to have temple recommends and their tithing was automatically deducted from their paychecks. Then there were some excommunications, and it seemed the correlated efforts to bring order in the church led to frowning on the intellectuals or liberal thinkers, including sunstone and the like.In my opinion, they are starting to swing the pendulum back the other way, and seem to be more tolerant, especially at the higher levels of the church leadership based on the more recent conference talks. But from what I see, if they are more inclusive of those who question or are searching church history, they want that done individually. I like the idea of a “stayLDS” class for questions…but I don’t know if they would ever produce a lesson manual for it. Besides, I don’t know if they know the answers to some of the questions people have. But it would still be a good class to discuss how you can still stay a believing member, even if we don’t know the answers to some things.
Hey, I sent this post to one of my brothers who is NOT StayLDS, but occasional stops by the site and visits with me about it. He is not a TBM, but pretty close. Here is his response — He doesn’t worry about being politically correct and his lack thereof make me laughs. This is not meant to offend Flower – its just a little humor that touched my funnybone this morning. 
Quote:“Agreed. I would like to see GD/SS moved to 3rd hour, and be purely optional.”
Whoever said that is a moron. Who do you think is going to be called to teach that “optional” class? It’s gonna be me and you and the handful of other “Utah raised Mormons” who were raised to always say yes when asked to do something for the church. Sorta takes the “optional” out of the picture and throws the whole plan out the window.
Anyway, I’m all for simplifying, just not sure where to start. The programs I think need to be cancelled, others will think are vital. For some reason those programs seem to revolve around parents dropping their kids off for somebody else to babysit for an hour or so on a weekday evening.
Anyway…
Kirk
I think the basics of the gospel are clear – love, service, goodness etc, but this is not the problem. There is a very bureaucratic set up which can sometimes be faceless, and people like me are often afraid to say things which might sound divergent. Boredom and being asked to do too much too soon be two of the biggest problems for members. I also have mixed feelings about the “obey”, “sustain” etc line put out all the time. A completely unquestioning culture comes with problems of its own – I suspect it may enable abuse and corruption in some quarters, plus a lack of personal initiative.
I think many of the church’s problems come out of a siege mentality which goes back to its early history. That’s a whole thread in itself.
cwald wrote:This is not meant to offend Flower – its just a little humor that touched my funnybone this morning.
“Agreed. I would like to see GD/SS moved to 3rd hour, and be purely optional.”
Whoever said that is a moron. Who do you think is going to be called to teach that “optional” class? It’s gonna be me and you and the handful of other “Utah raised Mormons” who were raised to always say yes when asked to do something for the church. Sorta takes the “optional” out of the picture and throws the whole plan out the window.
Ha… no offense taken! He makes a good point. (about him being called to teach the optional class… not about me being a moron!)
😆
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