I was reading in Psalms in sacrament meeting recently, and I think I invented a new game.
Sacrament meeting has long been the purview of games. When I was a kid we would play Dots on the blank spaces in the meeting program. Another less reverent game was adding “in the bathtub” or for the racier-minded “in bed” to the end of the titles of hymns. This works better with some than others.
As I was reading Psalm 19, I couldn’t help but notice the sing-songy style of the poem. Each line had, not only a specific cadence or meter, but also had a sentence structure that matched the next. Coupled with that half-zoning-out twilight consciousness that sometimes accompanies sacrament meeting, I immediately thought of Mad Libs.
Here’s what Psalm 19 says (KJV):
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
When I first read this, the repetitive poetic nature of it struck me. I read it a few more times. Here’s the pattern I picked out:
The [noun] of the Lord is [adjective], [verb] the [noun]: the [noun] of the Lord is [adjective], [verb] the [noun].
The [plural noun] of the Lord are [adjective]: the [noun] of the Lord is [adjective], [verb] the [noun].
The [noun] of the Lord is [adjective]: the [plural noun] of the Lord are [adjective] and [adjective] altogether.
I put the pattern into a Mad Libs generator here. Using a random word generator I found here, here’s what I got:
The jam of the Lord is scientific, rotting the cushion: the scandal of the Lord is noxious, moaning the prose.
The aromas of the Lord are nippy: the thunder of the Lord is handy, undressing the trick.
The wrath of the Lord is victorious: the whispers of the Lord are lonely and squeamish altogether.
Here’s another go:
The airport of the Lord is woebegone, memorize the existence: the zephyr of the Lord is psychedelic, plug the skin.
The malls of the Lord are quaint: the cracker of the Lord is garrulous, employ the plantation.
The groove of the Lord is illustrious: the taxes of the Lord are guttural and rude together.
Like most Mad Libs, they are pretty silly, but that’s the nature of Sacrament Meeting games; they are usually pretty silly, just a mental distraction from a meeting that might have gotten a bit boring as they sometimes do.
Which led me to do a little research on the perception that Mormon sacrament meetings are superlatively boring. First I found a cache of complaints about the boredom of our meetings in various discussions here, here, and here. On a discussion site called LDS Freedom Forum, they did a poll:
- 67% said that church was boring at least most of the time.
- 20% said it was what you make of it.
- 14% said it was either not boring or not usually boring.
Those aren’t great results. A few highlights from the comments in that site and the others linked:
Music is anemic and not joyful.
The SM’s have become absolutely anemic. Horrible music that no one wants to sing to. Unless you have a bishop or counselors with a real sense of humor, it’s a matter of endurance. The back scratching and rubbing is truely bizarre as other poster already mentioned.
Changed hymn book made the music worse.
Yes, the old blue hymn book was a zillion times better. I’m a bit younger than you, so I was still in Primary when they were replaced. I was all excited because they were new, but then I realized it sucked because they had actually put Primary songs in it, & I could tell that the arraignments were simpler. (I was taking piano lessons at the time, but with a serious professional nevermo.) Plus, the elimination of verses was pretty bad too.
I know you won’t believe this but when I was a child in the 60s and 70s the services were infinitely more interesting than they are today. We had the old blue hymn book with the old Lutheran songs and people used to sing loud and proud. I went to a sacrament service about ten years ago with my brother and sister-in-law and I was astounded at how dull, boring, and sad the meetings had become. Haven’t been to another one since.
Vain repetitions
Imagine repeating third grade 20,30,40 times. No it’s not boring, I am just an incredibly slow learner.
Talks about talks
The members deserve more than regurgitation of talks.
Waiting for Godot
No Church isn’t boring it’s just a painfully vacuous 3 hour stint of hoping there is some point to my attendance.
Distractions as savior
Church got a lot less boring when I got an iPad.
The length of the meeting
When I worked for the Air Force there was a phrase… “A twenty minute meeting crammed into three hours.”
Sacrament meeting should really be cut down to 40 minutes or so imo… It got easier as I grew older (since time seems to go by faster), but as a child it was so difficult. You have so much energy in you, and you’re expected to sit still AND be silent for over an hour. It seemed like it would never end each week.
The tone of the meeting / lack of food
…sorta’ like a really long funeral with a real skimpy snack.
A preference for Fast & Testimony unpredictability
The only interesting times to go were fast and testimony meetings. The crazy people always have the weirdest and funniest stories. It made me able to not be totally bored. And the crazy people would go up and talk every month.
I found Sacrament meeting to be unintentionally funny sometimes. Especially when someone would say something that revealed their cultural & artistic ignorance. Like the first counselor pronouncing Chopin as “Chop-in”.
Comparisons to other types of services:
Advent Sunday
I wasn’t feeling up to snuff on the first Sunday of Advent, so I didn’t go to church, but my inactive but still-believing TBM DH went. (I think, having discovered Advent, he LOVES it!) He came home with his eyes shining and said “S (our pastor) gave an incredible sermon based on a new translation of (I forget what) and it really made me understand it in a different way! I really wish the Mormon church would quit doing its broken record thing and just keep repeating the same old stuff over and over.” He is a spiritual seeker and LOVES to see things from different perspectives, and he doesn’t see why the Mormon church can’t be examined from different angles too.
Methodist
This Chicago Temple is the oldest Methodist congregation in Chicago having been established in 1830. It is in a 21 story building which was once the tallest building in Chicago. The meeting last 1 1/2 hours. The whole meeting was exciting, the multiple speakers interesting, the music truly heavenly , and the building with stain glass windows etc beautiful. I wasn’t tempted to zone out or nap once .Neither were those around me. I thought about transferring my membership. There was a slight difficulty with the doctrine. The pastor spoke eloquently about praying for the time when gay marriages could be performed in this particular church and much of the meeting was taken up with a baptism. The baptism of a 3 month old baby girl. Oh well . I thought if only we could only combine their services with our doctrine we might really have something.
Church is almost always boring, with rare exception. I’ve always thought that since the day I first converted, decades ago. My other family members who were taught the gospel all left the church within about a year or so. They couldn’t stand the long, boring meetings, instead of the friendly, short meetings with a pot luck afterwards (we converted from United Methodists). All of my siblings either found a different church or stopped going altogether, decades ago.
Society of Friends (Quaker)
Every Wednesday we had Meeting. <– sitting in concentric circles in silence unless you were moved to speak. (Just like other religions, not all Friends worship the same.) When I was 12, it was boring hell. When I was 14, it was a nice meditation. Some meeting were total silence, but sometimes someone would stand up and say something, moved not by some supernatural force IMO but just moved to share, and that one thought would set off a change reaction of other people being insightful and interesting and open.
Scientology
What about Scientologists. Staring contests, purpetuaally shouting at ashtrays for hours on end, endless ‘auditing’ sessions to exersise out your space alien cooties. Oh, and pay exorbanant ‘donations’for the privledge to do so. I think many ex-scientlolgist would describe many of their experiences as downright painful. Can you imagine being ordered to…’look at that wall…walk over to that wall…touch that wall…turn around’ over and over again for hours on end? And thats super mild, right at the begining of the scientology indoctorination.
Various Christian services
Every service I went to was more interesting than the Mormon meetings! Every one! They had professional speakers, for starters. The Christian and the secular churches had more meaningful messages, that could be applied to my present, daily life. Essentially, the messages were of love, family, kindness to others, charity, serving in the community. Whatever the sermon, I would be UPLIFTED afterwards. Mormon speeches were depressing to me. Some of these churches joined together in group service programs. There was a feeling of togetherness and friendliness, instead of the Mormon teachings of separateness (Mormons are a “peculiar people”) and elitism (other churches don’t have the REAL gospel) and snobbery (Mormons are the ONLY TRUE church).
Mennonite
I’ve never seen so many people who look so happy to be at church than at our local Mennonite church. And their 2 services on Sunday are packed. Lots of kids, but they know how to shut up.
Menno services I attended: skits, singing hymns in Rounds, vocal parts, coffee hour afterwards, a monthly pot-luck, discussion of decisions, a skillful pastor, with Sunday School (hiatus in summer), about 2 – 2 1/2 hours, but including coffee. People were often networking in open areas about community projects (there was after-school remedial tutoring for disadvantaged students who were bussed Directly to church). People were Actively involved BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO BE, NOT BY ASSIGNMENT! 180 Degrees different from MoChurch, IMHO.
JW / Catholic
I have heard the JW’s are similar. I went to a Catholic mass that almost rivaled morons SM, but not quite. I was in a ward where theonly thing the Bishop pricks allowed to be taught in SM was to basically read or summarize articles from the new ensign. That was boring on steroids.
Christian Scientist & Worldwide Church of God
I’ve been to religious services for over 50 denominations and religions, and I would say that LDS is definitely in the top 3 for most boring. Other ones that make it include Christian Science and Worldwide Church of God offshoots.
Some bloggers, including me, have addressed this topic here, here, and here, generally acknowledging the boredom factor and making suggestions, both personal and institutional, to remedy the boringness. More official sources tend to focus on a strict blame-the-victim approach; if it’s boring, you suck–the implication being that righteous people eat this stuff up with a spoon and ask for seconds.
What about you?
- When do you find sacrament meeting boring? When do you find it interesting?
- How would you compare sacrament meeting with other worship services you’ve attended? Do you think that would hold true if you had attended that same type of service for decades?
- What sacrament meeting games have you played? Or do you always stay focused and engaged on the speaker? Did you play games during sacrament meeting as a child? Do you as an adult?
- What’s up with the weird back rubbing?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I find sac meetings interesting when members give well prepared, heart felt talks that are thought provoking, spirituality challanging and informative. I find it boring when members give GA talk book reports.
My Grandfather was a Lutheran minister. I liked the sense of reverent holiness of their services. Christmas eve services are a particular special memory with abundant singing and candle light. I really like the use of candles.
Pentecostal services I’ve been to were interesting to say the least, but I freaked out when people started speaking in tongues. Their Easter service was really good, but the anti-evolution sermon was really grating.
Dots was a favorite as a kid. I’d also draw elaborate war scenes on the bulletin. As an adult I do try to pay attention, but often I just take a nap. One game is to look for double entendres in the hymns or scriptures. I can no longer get through the 4th verse of “Joy to the World” without smirking.
I always figured sac meeing back rubs was a away to convey empathy for the plight of being bored at church.
I have visited several other denominations, and without fail they have been more interesting and uplifting than sacrament meeting. From the more upbeat music, to speakers trained in theology (what a novel idea!), going back to sacrament meeting is a painfully dull experience. Also, most non-LDS services only take an hour, and they have more signing, or poetry, or scripture reading instead of having 40 minutes or more of talking. The only thing I like better with LDS services is they don’t pass around the plate.
I love the idea of scripture Mad Libs!!!
No fair going once to some other church’s meeting and saying “That was much more interesting!” Of course it is. If you go every week for a couple years, does it stay more interesting?
Sacrament meetings vary tremendously depending on the ward. I like my ward’s SM. When I’ve travelled, I’ve often found SM to be below what I’d come to consider par. I’ve wondered if part of the reason I like the talks in my ward is because I know the speakers and feel a connection to them, or if my ward truly is more spiritually alive. Some of those wards seem to be just going through the motions.
Ahh – JLM. I am not the only one that noticed that in joy to the world. I guess someone else is going to hell with me for having my mind in the gutter. But if “Idle hands are a tool of the devil”, then combine that with nothing from the pulpit to keep the mind entertained and what can you expect?
And I always thought it was “in the bathroom” that you added to each hymn name. I guess you can tell I learned about that at the ripe age of a deacon – the same time where I could never tell you what the talks were on, but I could tell you how many times in the last 6 months someone in the 2 rows of deacons passed gas.
I have been touched only in about 2 sacrament meetings the last decade. They were when someone was being profoundly honest about themselves and that they were OK with who they were. It was wonderful to see that.
Regarding music, the congregation in my ward (mostly Gen-X and Gen-Y) hardly even pretends to sing and special numbers are less common than leap years. I recently went to a congregation full of baby boomers and I could have sworn that the motab was there singing interspersed through the congregation. It makes me wonder if there is a generational reluctance to sing for people my age, but that could be a coincidence.
I’m the organist in our ward (going on 16 years now). I play the hymns loud and (somewhat) fast. I’ve never drowned out a congregation or left them behind. My thinking is that if you can’t hear yourself sing, you’ll be inclined to sing louder, and if you don’t have to breathe at the end of every measure, you’re more likely to keep singing instead of just dropping out (which is what I typically do when I visit another ward). I don’t know how many people in my ward realize what I’m up to (my wife does), but they’re always happy to sing and I get nice comments about the music.
For the rest, I often mentally rewrite the talks I’m listening to on the fly. (I’ve discovered that I’m a riveting speaker with profound doctrinal insight. :-/) Otherwise, I bring reading material — usually the Anglican Psalter — to while away the time until I get to play the next hymn.
It shouldn’t be this way. I’m not expecting to be entertained, but I crave spiritual experiences. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that Sacrament Meeting — of all meetings — provide opportunity for the Spirit to be present. Sometimes I think the Spirit is just as bored as we are.
From Gileadi’s Isaiah 28:10,13 …
“For it is but line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, a trifle here, a trifle here….So to them the word of Jehovah remained: Line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept; a trifle here, a trifle there, that, persisting, they might lapse into stumbling and break themselves, and become ensnared and taken captive.”
Although we like to say that learning “line upon line” is the way of the Lord, this scripture definetely speaks of it as a cursing. We constantly reteach the same things back and forth to one another, never attempting to search more deeply into the word of the Lord. Our manuals are regurgitated every four years, except for the youth SS which is the SAME curriculum every year. Back and forth, we continue to teach the “basics” and we rarely open our scriptures at church. Sacrament meeting talks quote a singular, out of place scripture, from time to time. RS is the same and even in Sunday School, the D and C curriculum, for example, spends over 25% of the lessons on four partial chapters. We are dumbing ourselves down. The only way I get through is using the time for personal scripture study and exploration. I don’t grow at all from my 3 hour church. God’s word quickens us or makes us alive not bores us to death. I plan to leave the church soon, before my mind rots.
This post is a much more entertaining read than Michael Raposa’s book Boredom and the Religious Imagination (The University Press of Virgina), but still I also found Raposa worthwhile (maybe even to read in SM). He tries “to portray boredom as a sign…. sometimes as a sign of sin, a sign of failure… a sign of fatigue, a healthy sign marking as trivial those objects on which we ought not wastefully to spend our attention. Boredom can also be interpreted as a trial, in its deepest and darkest manifestations, as a terrible trial of our love, so that it, too, becomes like a balance ‘in which our hearts are weighed.’ ” I’m still struggling with what to make of my boredom at church. I am not bored when I visit Anglican, Episcopal, or Lutheran services; depending upon the particular Anglican, Episcopal or Lutheran church, that would hold true if I were there weekly for decades. The difference is partly the speakers, but largely the music. (I can ignore false doctrine in others’ services just as well as I can ignore it in ours.) Generally, since we rely upon volunteer and often untrained musicians drawn from very small congregations, there is no hope for the music, though there are some exceptional wards . You might note, however, that there is a variation on the “blame the victim” approach taken by some Church leaders. While that approach is common with respect to those bored by the SM or conference speakers, when the music doesn’t strike the spiritual[?] fancy of those Church leaders, they switch to blame-the-musician. Of course, it couldn’t possibly be that their individual taste or perception filtered through their preconceived (and often incorrect notion of Church music policy) is not the sole arbiter of inspiring, spiritual music. I would echo JLM’s first paragraph. In the meantime, when the talks are poor, games are good, reading is good, reading the backs of my eyelids can also be good. I may need to add Mad Libs to my repertoire. Thanks for the post.
Boredom hasn’t been the issue as much as trying to equate SM with “worship”. It seems we just go from one period of instruction to another. Sometimes one is interesting another not, especially SM talks that are based on conference addresses. For along time now the sacrament has seemed just something to get over so that we can get back to being instructed, When I want to “worship” like at Christmas or Easter, I’ll go to an Episcopal service. Even without the sermon, I’ll have the sense that I’m worshipping and that makes being there worth it. I’ll often get sleepy though it’s more that I’m a HP than bored but my wife will let me nod off as long as I don’t snore.
I’m with GBSmith. I just feel like we’re just shuffling from one room to another at church, with not much that’s new or interesting. We can tick off the lessons/talks we’ll get every year: The temple, missionary work, Joseph Smith, chastity, tithing, and the list goes on. The talks in my ward are excruciatingly bad. I’d say about five a year are interesting; the rest are parroting of conference talks or really embarrassing ones where the people cry a lot or reveal far too much personal information or the whole talk is a kind of humblebrag. I don’t mean to sound cynical, but year after year, the waves of poor talks have just piled up and made me completely inured to anything I might glean from them. I realize that that’s on me as much as it is on the speakers. Every time I’ve asked for something different or new or anything but what we’ve been fed, I’ve always gotten the reply that we have to have “milk before meet.” Well, I’ve been hearing the milk for thirty years. Where’s the meat? We often brag about how we don’t have professional clergy, but I’d sure as hell prefer to listen to someone like Joel Osteen for half an hour than anything I’ve heard over the pulpit. A little training and energy would go a long way. End of rant.
I tend to agree with Martin that other services benefit from the novelty aspect. There could also be a Pepsi “sip test” factor. Some tastes are better in small increments which is why Pepsi, which was generally considered to be sweeter than Coke almost always won the “sip tests” of the 1970s and 80s. But if a person is drinking the whole can or more, Coke performs better. Maybe some religions are like Pepsi and some are like Coke.
It does seem that the change in the hymn books has been a deterioration. I really dislike having Primary songs added while cutting some of the more traditional hymns and some of the extra verses.
When I was young my dad would send me to church with pages and pages of math problems to do during SM. As an adult I’d much rather do math than sit through sacrament meeting. When I got older my sisters and I would spend all of SM putting tiny braids in each other’s hair so we’d usually go to SS about half braided. Unfortunately, it never picked up as a big fashion trend like we’d hoped.
GBSmith. I agree our meetings are generally lacking that element of worship, and blogged about that in my post Worship v. Instruction.
Too many of our hymns are instructional rather than worshipful as well. I’d hope that we can at least open our sacrament meetings with worshipful hymns, but just lately that hasn’t been the case.
I frequently look as though I’m napping in sacrament meeting. Sometimes that’s true, but I also find it easier to follow what the speaker is saying if I’m not otherwise distracted.
I’m a moderate-to-conservative evangelical Presbyterian now. Sometimes church makes me angry or annoyed, but never, ever bored. And it’s not because we have church-as-entertainment, either.
Since leaving Mormonism, I have been to services at Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, non-denominational evangelical (liberal/emergent and reformedish/conservative variants), Russian Orthodox, Quaker, Presbyterian (liberal and conservative variants), Methodist, Baptist, United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist, Evangelical Covenant, Christian Scientist and Druid churches. The only one that was boring was Christian Scientist–way worse than Mormonism.
But every time I go back to visit a Mormon service with family, I feel the old familiar mind-numbing boredom creep in by about halfway through the first talk. Just like old times!
I’ve stopped going because that’s 3 hours of my life I need back in order to help recuperate from the week I’ve had. Those 3 hours are not rejuvenating for me. At all. They’ve always been work, ever since I joined. I thought it was just me the first year I was a member. The second year I started seeing how things worked and well now I’ve come to accept that its the correlation department and all related departments that sign off on this stuff. IT’S PAINFUL. I used to go and just do personal scripture study as a way to help get that done during the week, but hearing it all in the background was still like having a painful and irritating TV show on in the background while you were trying to concentrate. I also got tired of feeling sad that nobody around me could see or felt like they could do anything about it.
Hasn’t anyone just ever stood up in Sacrament and said, “Enough is Enough! Preach us the Word! LIght a fire in our belly! Tell us about Jesus and actually use HIS NAME, not just call him our “Savior.” (Shaking my head.). As a convert now of 2 and 1/2 years, my heart hurts for the LDS community, my anger froths at the departments/lawyers responsible for this, and my spirit within my cries out for the pure living waters of Christ.
(sigh). I feel better now. Back to work.
Grain of salt alerts:
-I attend almost solely so as not to upset my spouse.
-I am much more analytical and critical than the average person.
-I haven’t been asked to speak in SM since 2005
-I dislike the word/concept of “worship.” All the many comments and formal teachings about coming to church to “worship” serve primarily to turn me off. There is nothing in my life-long American, Mormon upbringing that has ever countered my conception of “worship” as obsequiousness. If God expects us to kneel, bow, and (figuratively) kiss his feet, how is He different (in that respect) from any of our earthly kings and potentates? “Reverence” is my preferred description of my best feelings toward God, and doing little more than spinning a prayer wheel or doing an ohm chant (the repetitiveness of it all) each Sunday does almost nothing for my “reverence” for God.
-Many years ago I came to understand/believe that the overwhelming value/benefit of Sunday “services” is they serve to increase our sense of community, mutual friendship, and support. So, when the bishop talks about how we should be “reverent” during the prelude music and get into a worshipful frame of mind, he is just mindlessly ignorant of the value of greetings and chatting that are going on. He and the rest of the -bric should be out mingling, and meeting new move-ins, not sitting on the stand with their arms folded “reverently.” Or, most often, coming in from bishopric meeting about 3-5 minutes late to start the meeting.
That said, I have particularly enjoyed some of the descriptions in the comments of SM/Sunday meetings…”like repeating the 3rd grade 20, 30, 40 times,” “conference talk book report,” “blame the victim,” “before my mind rots.”
I read on one of the LDS Blogs that the practice of assigning conference talks (book reports) as the topic for a SM talk did not come as a directive from SLC. Well, it sure seems to be ubiquitous, and universally found to be boring. Either the Spirit is inspiring all these many bishoprics, NOT!
Beyond agreeing with nearly all of what has been said above, my pet peeve is that about 75% of speakers don’t time their talks, and few of the final speakers (after the time-wasting “intermediate hymn” every d$%^ Sunday) choose to shorten their talks to the 5-7 minutes they are left with–so the torture continues beyond the allotted 65 minutes. My 2nd pet peeve is highcouncil talks. Other than the entertainment factor when one of them shows his xenophobia or apocalyptic bent, I probably haven’t heard one of them say anything interesting more than 10 times in the 600, or so, I have heard. They are, after all, generally chosen because they have shown themselves to be TBMs.
Because, unlike earthly kings and potentates, God is worthy of worship. Worshipping God is actually fitting and appropriate, because of who he is and how we are made. And because, unlike kings and potentates, God is uniquely satisfying.
Kullervo, I appreciate your posts. I want to ask a question and I want to make sure you know it’s coming merely from a place of curiosity, not from a place of negativity or cynicism. I have to confess that one of my many weaknesses as a Christian is not quite understanding why God, an all powerful, omnipotent being, appears to need us, clearly quite inferior creatures, to worship him. One question I find myself asking a lot is: What does God get out of us genuflecting? Respectfully, I’d appreciate any insight you may have on this issue. What am I missing?
Great comments here so far. I can echo many of them. For me the church block is insipidly boring mingled with many moments of exquisite pain. After my divorce I was Mr. Church. I did just about everything you could imagine, checked off every box, did my home teaching, temple attendance, several callings etc, but I realized it was just spiritual busy work. I didn’t feel like I was fed, or that I was drawing closer to Christ. To extend the third grade analogy, I was just doing one lame worksheet after another without ever learning. I hoped for something that would make me feel better, feel closer to Christ, feel uplifted and enlightened, or something fervent to help me live life. But it was a constant endurance exercise with occasional moments of intentional and unintentional hurt. The cite two out of many examples, the orgy of back massages between couples wasn’t enjoyable for this divorced person, and if I happened to express my negative emotions I would be attacked as murmuring or being a boring person because there are no boring meetings.
Now I sleep in on Sunday mornings. I go to the park and ponder about nature and nature’s God if the weather is nice. I do the expert level Sudoku in the Sunday paper. If my budget allows I usually do some relaxed dining. Overall my Sundays are filled with a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a whole lotta nothing. And I feel so much better. Sunday mornings are actually rejuvenating instead of a slog. It used to be so bad I had to spend the whole week recovering from Sunday. Now my Sunday puttering brings a good deal of relaxation.
When I was kid I used to stare at wall. We had one of those old chapels with one of the sides being brick. Everybody laughed and wondered what was so interesting about those bricks, but I treated it like a city grid. I would have Tron like car chases from block to block, or gangsters having running car chases and gun fights, which was far more interesting than sitting and listening. I would also look at the picture of the Jewish temple outline. I liked its symmetry and the multiple rooms that got smaller and smaller. I would imagine it was like a castle being assaulted and I would have to study how to guard the entrances and exits, how to conduct retreats and protect that last smallest space. (Imagine if any part of the church curriculum could harness that imagination!! ) Those were my activities that helped me survive as a kid. As an adult I don’t have to have survival mechanisms, I can just choose not to go and do something valuable with my time.
The discussion has focused on sac meeting, but personally I find SS to be more problematic. At least with SM, you get a variety of speakers with different approaches to life and every so often you’ll connect. With SS, you are stuck with the same boring/annoying bloke week after week.
Looking back over the last decade, I can safely place most teachers into a handful of categories.
The charismatic: This teacher is all about the show. He cracks jokes, tells amusing stories, playfully banters with the class, and never ever strays from the manual. He is popular, likeable, and entertaining, but the gospel discussion is superficial fluff.
The topical guy: This guy doesn’t bother with the actual scriptures presented in the lesson. Well, maybe just one. But why bother with the writings of dead guys when you have living prophets, right. His lessons are filled with snippets from Gen Con, the Ensign, BYU devotionals and such. He does occasionally facilitate good discussion, but it is always in the context of the lesson topic as interpreted by corrolation.
The right wing activist: If you need an obscure quote by Ezra Taft Benson to validate your reactionary viewpoints, this is your man. He is just as likely to read from The National Review as he is the Ensign. Loves to talk about “the world”. Favorite SS past time is to compare the Gadianton Robbers to Democrats and environmental regulation to “Satan’s plan”. This teacher tends to have a group of dedicated attendees but a small but significant group that somehow always gets lost in the foyer.
The Master Scriptorian: She has an extensive library of “scholarly” books, (all purchased at Deseret Books, of course) and she’s got those scriptures all figured out. She knows the one true interpretation of every verse and she is going to tell you. Don’t fall for the ruse when she asks “What does mean?” because whatever you say will be wrong and she has Bruce to back her up.
Sooooo, yeah. I have had a few good GD teachers that dove into the scriptures, tried to put the passages in context and prompted real discourse on how to apply the principles into modern life, but those teachers have been a rare breed.
Sadly, many faith attendees expect (or demand) to be entertained in a worship service and are disappointed when they’re not. I also can’t stand a Sacrament Speaker reading their entire talk, but we can find ways to improve our Sacrament Services.
As far as Music is concerned, the Music Director can use a few tricks like using hymn lyrics with a different tune. Hymns from previous editions can still be used; have the words printed on the Sacrament bulletin. Canvas the congregation for musical talent that can be used in the service.
Some of my suggestions have been met with “We’ve never done that before”. Since they didn’t say we CAN’T do that, I pursued the idea, and met no resistance.
As a child I was deeply influenced by the movie “The Poseidon Adventure”. To this day, when I am bored in church my go to is figuring out how I would get out of the chapel if the whole room was turned upside down.
Moss: I used to play that game ALL THE TIME. That’s too funny! I also used to like to turn upside down at home and imagine how to walk from room to room.
JLM: I agree that SS is worse than Sacrament Meeting in general, although it also has the potential to be much much better than most SMs.
I haven’t attended very many other churches. When I do, it is typically for a wedding or a funeral. Catholic wedding ceremonies are generally long and boring–one was even in Italian which was meaningless to me. A Lutheran woman I dated invited me to attend Bible study. It was interesting to learn more about Martin Luther–I even watched some videos that reminded me a bit of the First Vision. It was all new to me, so enjoyable, but if it had been repeated ad nauseum, I’d have probably gotten bored. It was interesting to me that the pastor always gave the opening and closing prayers. I asked him why, and he said he didn’t want people praying about weird things so he did all prayers. His prayers seemed memorized speeches, not truly communing with God. WHile the Wednesday meetings were nice and informative, I found his approach to prayer off-putting.
Many of the funerals I’ve attended have been long and dull, Mormon or not, although I have been to some good Mormon funerals. Quality mostly depends on the speakers. My brother worked at a tv station in California just prior to his death, and the people in California asked if we would participate in a Memorial service for him. The media asked if they could film the service, but of course the ward/stake leaders said no. I may be biased but I thought that the service was especially moving until the Mission president spoke at the end. All of the speakers were engaging, discussed my brother’s Christian attitude and kindness during his life, but the Mission President turned the service from a wonderful service in memory of my brother, into a missionary service talking about the Plan of Salvation to the non-LDS in attendance. It was truly bad taste, IMO, to have all these people proselyted. The mission president was picked to speak specifically because of the non-LDS members of the media who attended, and was in line with Elder Packer’s request that funerals focus on the Plan of Salvation, rather than the dead. Really it was a horrible idea, and his talk was as boring as could be. He did not know my brother at all and it was evident.
Suffice it to say that I haven’t been overly impressed with other church services either, except for some Easter and Christmas services I have attended. Some of those productions of hymn singing and focusing on the life/death of Jesus have been much more moving than services at Mormon Churches. I haven’t attended any BIg Box Churches though. Some of those sound interesting. I did attend the end of a Community of Christ service in Independence about 6 years ago, and was surprised they had a rock band do the hymns (drums, electric guitar, keyboard.) The people were incredibly friendly, and invited me back the next week, but I told them I was just there for MHA. I also attended a Community of Christ church in Kirtland a few years ago. There were more musical numbers, some with horns, bells, and singing that I was not accustomed to in Mormon settings. The meeting was much less formal than typical LDS meetings. It was an interesting experience, especially the meditation during the passing of the Sacrament in which musical bells were played instead of the silence in LDS meetings. It was definitely unusual to me, but I liked it, as it seemed an attempt to help congregants commune with God.
It always amazes me that many Mormons find the Mass boring. Mormons are always being told to read their scriptures over and over and over. The mass consists of several prayers, two readings from the old testament, two from the new testament, a 10 minute homily, and the Eucharist. That’s it. It takes less than hour. I’ve never seen back rubs and massages being given nor so many children being out of control at Mass. Just saying…
Have you ever suddenly finding yourself listening intently to a speaker or talk just because it is so exceptionally bizarre, you have to see how it ends? Some of the more memorable ones: 1) the analogy of the cat who abandoned her kittens causing the member to question the mothering instinct and dutifulness of cats–only to feel faith validated when the mother cat returns and the lesson that just like that mother cat, God won’t abandon us 2) The pulpit testimony prophecy that a temple would be built in our small town of 5000 people in rural non-corridor America. The children were so excited to retell that news to each other in primary 3) The cut foot from walking in flip flops at a construction site that led to ‘blood on the floorboards’ of the truck, which miraculously stopped bleeding during the drive back to town (vasoconstriction and clotting are good). and 4)–this one from my mission, as I was trying to really make sure that I was really interpreting the foreign language correctly–showing love is like breastfeeding; it doesn’t seem to flow easily at first, but as you keep trying, it flows more freely.
I remember one time I was planning to leave a testimony meeting early when I saw the cat story woman and the cut foot man both head up to the stand at the same time. Forget leaving, I thought….this is gonna be too memorable to leave now!
“I always figured sac meeing back rubs was a away to convey empathy for the plight of being bored at church.”
Not exactly a back rub, but I have passed along the tradition to my children of seeing if they can guess the letters of the alphabet that I draw on their back.
Used to wander the house looking down into a mirror, so that it appeared the rooms were upside down.
Not the chapel though.
God doesn’t need us to worship him at all, because God doesn’t *need* anything that he doesn’t already have. Worship is pure grace, i.e. God’s unmerited favor–God creating us in order to give us the best and most satisfying thing imaginable: himself.
Raised Mormon in the U.K, but find Anglican services vastly more spiritually uplifting. It’s the (lack of decent) music that kills it for me. I could seriously weep over the boring hymn selection we are limited to, versus the astounding canon of musical history that we consider ourselves too good for. I generally listen to the Radio 4 Weekly Service before I go to sacrament meeting, and make it through by meditating on the sermon from that or catching up on my scriptures.
I also have a horde of kids and a lucky husband who gets to sit on the comfy chairs on the stand, so I’d like to be bored in sacrament, but I’m mostly refereeing wrestling matches whilst texting my husband messages like “IF I SEE YOU FALL ASLEEP AGAIN IN THIS MEETING, I’M SENDING CHILD NO. 2 TO COME BITE YOUR ANKLES”. Ahh, beautiful sabbath day of rest.
Morgan Deane, “I would have Tron like car chases from block to block” Yes! Fond memories from my childhood.
A few years back, my wife and I were part of the choir in residence at the Gloucester Cathedral. For five nights we performed during the evensong and then we performed Sunday services for the Anglican church. The music was (obviously) better than a typical SM, it was refreshing to have scripture be the basis for the worship service, but the biggest difference my wife and I noticed was in the prayers. Each night the pastor would make specific, heartfelt prayer for those who needed extra blessing. “Bless the son of so-and-so who is struggling with alcoholism. Bless this dear person who is traveling to such-and-such place because her mother just passed away. Bless the refugees who are fighting to get to a better life.” It made us realize how vague all our public prayers typically are. (Think: “Bless that those who couldn’t make it will be able to make it next week.”) Even in the temple, our prayers are generally quite general. The current state of prayer in our services is pathetic.
Disclaimer: I was raised as a UCC Protestant, with more pulpit- banging preachers than not.
I was taught as a child by my parents ( Presbyterian mother, Evengelical Lutheran father) that we went to church to worship. Period. Not see the neighbor’s new Easter dress, gloves, or purse, or hat & shoes. To worship. To be spiritually fed.
As a result, when the talks in Sacrament Meeting feel like they are dragging to me, I do what I did as a child when the minister went off on a boring tangent. I fed myself. Nowadays, I usually pull out either my Scriptures (more often the Bible than not), or the hymn book, as I find the word to some of the hymns to be very uplifting. The parables are always good to think thru. I find that throughout my life, I have been all four characters in the Good Samaritan: I have been left by the wayside, I have passed on the other side, I have gone to the rescue, & I have filled the innkeepers role as well. Contemplating how I can avoid passing by on the other side is always something that helps me grow.
A friend from my singles ward days and I used to play a game where we tried to creatively name and categorize the types of fast Sunday testimonies. It often applied to regular talks as well. A few highlights that I remember:
The get-it-off-my-chest-imony, wherein the speaker confuses SM with AA.
The give-it-a-rest-imony, in which the speaker recites a series of trite, vague Mormon cliches every month.
The is-this-a-molest-imony? When the speaker just sobs incoherently for the duration.
The I-am-just-the-best-imony where the speaker humblebrags at length.
The I-need-you-to-invest-imony, which airways starts out “I’m actually in [neighboring] ward, but the spirit really prompted me that someone in this ward needs to hear about the new wellness center/tech startup/MLM I’m opening…”
And my personal favorite, the everyone’s-undressed-imony, where a recent male RM would talk about how his earnest search for a bride was being thwarted by the immodesty in this congregation.
These all occurred at least quarterly, which made fast Sunday much more interesting then regular SM
My kids and I play a game on the way to church where we try to guess what gender the third speaker will be. So far this year it’s been male every single time. Wish the bishopric would shake it up a little, if not for the sake of gender equity but because my kids are getting really good at guessing.
The General Conference corollary to this game is “will there be a female speaker in this session”? Since the two female speakers are spread out over four sessions, it’s a little more exciting.
That brings back a memory from my days at BYU. In 1970 or 1971 a sociology professor assigned the class to attend any one of the hundred or so Provo wards on Fast Sunday and categorize the testimonies according to list he provided. I don’t recall what the categories were but not as entertaining as yours.
I truly believe that if somehow the talks were about deity rather than prophets sacrament meeting could actually be interesting and captivating. I haven’t experienced one yet, but it is on my bucket list.
Backrubbings during Mormon meetings of young married couples is a common preening behavior. The religion was founded by a sexually experimental prophet and many oddities including backlashes persist. The basic cause of backrubbings is contemporary Mormon repression of sexual obsession. When you are constantly reminded that you can’t do it even once, even just a little until marriage, then you feel that you gotta make up for lost time at every opportunity. For some it might even be foreplay, they are going home and having each other for lunch. (They should be home and in bed.) When you have been acting like rabbits since age 14 and finally repent and settle down with one partner and attend church, the drive to do this sort of thing has evaporated.
I believe I have almost eliminated this mildly disturbing behavior in my ward. Whenever I observe it, I approach the offending couple and say something like this: You two seem like such a lovely and sensuous pair. As your underground bishop I give both of you my permission, even my blessing, yea even my command to go home immediately and have sex. At your stage in life sex is a more important part of living the gospel than sacrament meeting.
It is most immodest and indecent and cheesy to do this and to respond to it as I suggest. But you have to fight fire with fire.. Since our focus on modesty extends only to what young women wear, there is too little instruction in modest behaviors. The straight forward approach works best.
I swing by to visit the blog from time to time, and today you’ve copied and pasted complaints from exmormon.org (et al.) into the OP text, then invited the comments to chime in with their complaints. It’s like performing a service! Now I don’t have to read exmormon boards to get the info, it’s reproduced here for my convenience! It’s times like this (meaning every time I swing by) that I’m reminded of why I gave up being a regular reader here.
It’s a shame that 67% of people haven’t grown up yet and “need” to be entertained for 1.2 hours in order to find value in that hour.
“20% said it was what you make of it.” The low percentage doesn’t make this untrue, just unpopular with the bloggernacle/commentators, and certainly not ‘exciting’.
Lots of wards (and I’m sure their bishoprics) would love to have some of you super bored people to bring your A-game to your Sacrament Mtg talks, Sunday School lessons, home teaching, teaching of your families in your home, callings, and service opportunities, etc. Aren’t you a renowned orator? Or professional musician? Or enlightened guru? No? Well then your contribution might be “boring.” Never mind; you needn’t bother.
They’d love to have you volunteer to teach Sunday School because the normal teacher didn’t show. They’d love you to volunteer to perform an exceptional or inspiring musical number in Sacrament Mtg. They’d love for you to maybe just pick up the phone when they call to ask you if you can give a talk. You do understand that church meetings are *you*, right? If you’ve spent the meeting “not opening your scriptures” and rehashing “milk” lessons, and complaining of being mind-numbed, you’re doing it wrong.
I guess we can just continue denigrating our ward-members’ sincere attempts to actually contribute and participate in their faith community by holding them up to impossible, unknown standards, or even by negatively classifying/judging them and making a game of them for our amusement. That’s less “boring” anyway.
N, I do agree there is some validity to “stop complaining and start fixing the problem.” I am in management and at work I am constantly pushing that issue.
But part of the issue is that I am fine giving a lesson. I enjoy it and usually want to take about 4 to 5 hours to prepare. But I am being bound by a lesson manual that I feel is a repeat of every 4 years for decades now. I find the prescribed lesson itself a major issue. And if I take some “initiative” and go beyond the lesson (or start over) I get called into the bishop office and told, “Keep to the boring correlated lesson plan.” It feels like we are being FORCED to give the zzz lesson. And within Sacrament meeting my bishopric has a conference talk assigned as the “subject” for each speaker. I have taken that and gone down some tangents and not asked to speak for years now.
N, I got released from teaching Sunday School and Priesthood meeting precisely because I was interesting, so please cut that crap. (Apparently I was tooo interesting for a member of the stake presidency who visited my class because I used a non-KJV bible to actually understand Isaiah. He’d rather have people be clueless apparently.) I have only been asked to speak in Sacrament meeting 1 time in 15 years, though I will say my recent bishop did say he actually learned something from my talk. I posted it here. Maybe you’d enjoy it, or find it boring, but I was asked to speak about Bednar’s talk. I used Bednar to intro and end it, but spiced it up a lot with some information not commonly known, and that Bednar frankly ignored.
The fact is that many of us who actually try to make lessons and Sacrament meeting talks interesting are not asked to speak. Still, I try to make the most of my opportunities. I’m a family history consultant and will be teaching a primary class AND elder’s quorum this Sunday and I won’t be quoting any GA talks when I do it so I expect people will actually be able to log in and find some actual temple names. Please make kinder assumptions than to assume we don’t try to help out.
N.: I think it’s important to understand why people are leaving and how we are viewed by (now) outsiders. Understanding the opinions of those who’ve left is part of that process. It’s not “information” nor is it faith-denigrating. Those are their opinions about the meetings, not negative facts about the church. Trying to come up with ways to improve the meetings is not the same thing as denigrating the valiant efforts of unskilled ward members–and let’s not oversell it. Not all of our efforts are valiant, and if we are boring 67% of the time (that survey was from an uber-faithful site, not an exMo site), there’s a structural problem at play (e.g. the types of talks, the topics, the music, the ward leadership, the culture, etc.). The invective to discuss was to talk about what we found boring & interesting and how we can remedy it, not merely to chime in with complaints. There is nothing in this post about making a game of making fun of people. Mad Libs, dots and tic tac toe are not making fun of people. Your preferred approach is what I noted is the approach the church takes on the lds.org site: blame the bored person for being bored. Doubtless there’s some blame to go there, but if that’s 67% of the congregation, there’s more going on than just people checking out because they aren’t spiritual enough.
When I was a kid, if I ever complained out loud about the boringness of church meetings (and I certainly did), my baby boomer parents usually shot back with chastisement: “Church is not boring! You need to change your attitude!” or something similar. Nowadays, whenever I happen to be in a church meeting with my parents (when visiting their ward, or them visiting mine, or attending a temple session together) they doze off repeatedly.
Hypocrites.
Angela C., I’m going to blame “invective” on auto-correct and think you meant “invitation.”
Mormon Heretic, The Church is not the same everywhere; it depends greatly on local leadership. I have been lucky to be able to teach the GD class for multiple years using art, cartoons, poetry, and music not from the usual sources, using a variety of English (and German and French) translations of the Bible, and multiple sources not on LDS.org — all with a series of bishops’ approval, sometimes tacit, sometimes not. I have been lucky to be able to introduce interest in music in sacrament meetings (and sometimes stake or regional conferences) with varied hymn accompaniments, occasional use of members’ talents with many different instruments, sometimes including brass and percussion — all with a series of bishops’ approval, though occasionally (rarely) encountering negative responses from a stake presidency member or GA such as BKP or AFP (with, however, an affirming response from GBH). For a time the objection from a stake presidency counselor was resolved by showing the stake president the handbook he had never read which makes it clear that music in sacrament meeting is none of the stake presidency’s business — that decision belongs to the bishop.
Still, I’ve been unlucky to find our sacrament meetings largely boring — often it seems for lack of training, lack of explanation of expectations, lack of good interesting examples/models of interesting, motivating talks, and sometimes lack of experience. The latter is certainly excusable; that’s how experience is gained. But there are things that can be done about other causes if local leadership is willing and has time and capacity or resources in the ward to do them. In the meantime, for the most part I have lowered my expectations to avoid frustration and find at least something in the meetings that exceeds them. What I can do in my own head as a listener to a boring talk can be valuable to me, but doesn’t make the talk any less boring.
JR, yes I know you’re right. Wards are different. John Dehlin just posted a message on Facebook saying a bishop refers people with faith struggles to his podcast and has activated 8 people. I know Bill Reel was a bishop and I’m sure a good, welcoming one. But I live in Utah County, the belt buckle of the Mormon belt and it feels downright stifling here. Outside of Utah, I think there is a lot more leeway because the wards are smaller, people are needed more but in my ward, they can’t even give everyone a calling, so the moderate/liberals who rock the boat get shut down quickly. Outside of Utah, there are lots of places where if you show up they give you 3 callings and hope you don’t burn out. (Can’t give women callings because they don’t have priesthood, but I’m sure women have multiple callings too…. It would just be nice if a woman could be Sunday School President or whatever.) They’ll put up with non-KJV bibles, long hair, blue shirts, beards, etc. But they don’t have to put up with that in Utah County. Frankly, I know bishops have lots to worry about and a boring lesson gets fewer complaints than a lesson on the Good Samaritan that uses a gay guy as the hero of the parable. Yes some bishops will tolerate this, but I don’t know any in Utah County who will.
Though it was years ago, I lived in one Utah Valley ward that was not boring. I wonder if there could be more. I suspect mine was not boring (and not uninspiring and not anxious to quell discussion in elders quorum meeting) because the vast majority of the families in the ward had lived and gone to graduate school significantly outside the “Mormon corridor” for some years. Living for some years in a place where one is part of a minority religion seems to broaden some people’s perspectives or at least give them experience with dealing productively with perspectives other than their own, even if their own is “correlated.” Of course, subsequent moves have shown me that it doesn’t do that for everyone.
This past Sunday in my ward the visiting high councilor was seated on the stand, very obviously sleeping (slumped over, almost snoring) while someone else was giving a talk. I hope the irony wasn’t lost on him.
JR: LOL, yes. Not “invective,” although . . .
N:
May I suggest something that is not boring?
The truth.
The truth about our wickedness; repentance and salvation through the Atonement of Christ, which we neglect and ignore at our peril.
The truth about our actual church history.
The truth about why 60-80% of those almost 16 million members on our rolls are inactive.
The truth about how little we do to actually uplift people and how much we do to damage people outside the church.
Don’t tell me this is my fault . I’m not in charge. And when I have been given even a little authority as I supposed, I have done too much to fix it. I am a fanatic, not neglectful (except often misdirected),
Let me tell you what is not boring. When insensitive, self-righteous jackasses make ridiculous comments in meetings when I am not asleep from boredom and I set them straight. Voices are raised, feelings are hurt, and bishop’s reprimands are handed down. Never boring.
May I suggest a non-boring topic for a sacrament talk? The topic of: “Why is sacrament meeting boring?” Some of the better comments here could be cited. I bet people would perk right up. I don’t anticipate any high counselors sleeping at all. Perhaps the meetings would improve, for a while anyway.
As a compromise, let’s just read blogs at sites like this one when things get boring. I think about 80% of these smart young people in my ward are already ahead of me on this suggestion. That must be why God led clever engineers to invent all of these digital contraptions, to keep us from dying mentally of boredom during church meetings.
Back to the topic of this blog, “How to stay awake in church”, often for me it is a Dr Pepper before church. That works better for later church.
The Protestants have us beat, Happy Hubby. They have a little table out in the foyer with COFFEE. Half the congregation is sipping during the sermon. Terribly wicked of them.
One of the main differences between Mormons and Protestants (some) is dancing and coffee. Maybe dancing should be part of our meetings?