Two weeks ago, I asked How Was Your One-Hour Church? when most wards met for just a sacrament service two days before Christmas. It seems only fair we do the same thing now that era of two-hour church has begun. Let’s compare notes. Here are a few points to consider:
- Did sacrament meeting really seem ten minutes shorter to you? Maybe that’s not a fair questions for open mic Sunday. Maybe it will seem different when there are assigned speakers. I did manage to nod off for a few minutes, so at least that important part of the meeting still works for me.
- Jubilation in Primary. The nicest reactions I heard were from Primary teachers, where I heard the phrase “twenty minutes …” uttered with reverent gratitude several times. I did overhear the Primary President say that it was like two hours of chaos compressed into just one hour, but I’ll chalk that up to trying to implement a new and shorter schedule along with changing all the classes around all at the same time.
- Filling the seats in Sunday School. One of the less-noted changes is consolidating all adult classes into just the Gospel Doctrine class. All the Sunday School electives (Gospel Principles class, family history, and so forth) were eliminated. Well, there’s always the foyer class I suppose. But Relief Socity room was full for once.
- Come Follow Me manuals. I suppose I should have taken notice of the old adage “Be careful what you ask for …” before spending the last five years complaining about the out-of-date and largely useless Sunday School manual. I will wait a few weeks before weighing in with a detailed post. If you can’t wait that long for a solution, click here and wait seven days (two days if you have Prime).
So what was your experience? Did two hours pass by in the blink of an eye? Did you overhear anyone complaining about the missing third hour? Will this change keep restless LDS Millennials in the pews?
Wheat & Tares 
I think it’s kind of hard to gauge the length of Sacrament meetings when they’re Fast and Testimony meetings, but overall, I’d say it was faster.
Yesterday I began my new calling teaching Primary — CTR 6. Aside from a stint in nursery, it was my first time having this calling. We ended in the classroom. It barely seemed like the conversation started before it was time ago, but having substituted in the past, I think that was preferable to longer times.
The manual, at least for Primary, is quickly growing on me. It’s as if it says “Here are a couple of ideas. Use them if you’d like. Just concentrate on bringing the kids to the Savior and Scriptures. You’re smart enough to figure out the rest with a little help from the Spirit.” I find that very appealing.
How was two-hour church? Exactly the same, but only two hours. Sunday school is still a waste of time, and EQ will be too.
Fast and Testimony meeting felt only slightly shorter. The member of the bishopric who was conducting did a good job of getting through all of the announcements quickly so that there was still plenty of time for testimonies after the sacrament. But that leads me to a complaint. Why, oh why, was the decision made to stop acknowledging the advancement of the young women in sacrament meeting? I understand that it’s just going to happen once a year now – every January, right? After the list of young men who were advancing was read yesterday, it felt like a slap in the face to all of the girls that they were not even mentioned. It would have taken two minutes. C’mon. Are the testimonies on the first Sunday in January really so important that we need to sacrifice the one way that the girls get acknowledged? This was a terrible decision by someone at the top.
Sacrament was about the same. Announcements took up quite a bit of time. Much of that was youth advancement, so maybe next week will be quicker.
I’m in primary and love the new primary schedule. I chucked the new manual and just used one of the key scriptures. I teach older kids so we are going to keep that up and do an indepth ‘how to read/ponder/understand’ the scriptures using our 20 minutes a week. The time allotment worked out really well.
My teens said that already turning Laurels into 15-18 year olds is already a mess (from an activity though, not from church so it will be interesting to hear what they think next week). Too big of an age difference and now the 18 year old feels like a babysitter.
We recently moved and this was our first week in a new ward. The lack of Relief Society, EQ, and YM/YW made it difficult to socialize. I had to track down a young men’s leader and introduce my son to get info on activities. I’ve taught the youth Sunday school class for the last few years and really enjoy the come follow me…..for them. I felt more free to discuss topics knowing they were studying scripture in seminary. The small class sizes 5-10 made conversation ideal. Sunday school yesterday in a group of 50+ felt to big to deal with.
Sacrament meeting didn’t feel noticeably longer but Sunday School felt very, very long. I think the teacher felt the same, she seemed to be improvising the last 15 minutes.
Gospel Doctrine was overflowing. I’m not sure what about the new format caused that to happen?
Also, I think I mentioned this on BCC, but our bishopric interpreted the instructions on aaronic priesthood differently than everyone else, so there were no priesthood advancements even though they are attending with the new classes. The bishopric said that advancements will be based on readiness and not automatic. Weird weird weird.
I haven’t had two-hour church yet, since we had stake conference this week. But stake conference was scheduled 1-1/2 hours. Perhaps 90-minute stake conference came with 2-hour church?
I’ve heard different things about Gospel Principles. A sheet we were given last month (“Handout for individuals, families, and teachers. Come Follow Me”) says that “Gospel Principles classes, nursery classes, and sharing time will continue to use their current manuals.” Maybe they eventually settled on not having it.
ReTx, aren’t 18-year-olds supposed to move to EQ/RS as in the past?
Sunday School drug on for 2 hours on it’s own. I ended up playing on Facebook, got bored with that, and the teacher was still (!) talking.
My two hour church got the axe. I suggested that bishopric and ward council also get cut by a third down to 40 minutes each and that did not fly. On top of that our stake decided to start a Spanish group that would join us for the second hour so that there bilingual youth could join with our youth. The Spanish families in the whole stake were attached to our ward and the adults have there own GD/P/RS during the second hour in Spanish. Directly following that, we are having a second Sacrament Meeting in Spanish. Beings as they are part of our ward, we have to wait until after the third hour to count tithing. The good Lord giveth and he taketh away. I left my house at 8:00 and got home at 2:00. At least they are now overlapping the two wards in our building. It was our turn to do 1:00-4:00 church, so that was nice.
Not bad…Not bad at all. Much more focused and meaningful.
Left Field – In every ward I’ve ever been in, the 18 years olds that are still in high school stay in YM/YW until they leave for college the following Sept. So a teen that turns 18 in October of their senior year, has almost another full year in YW/YM.
Back in the Carter Administration, I turned 18 the summer after I graduated, so I generally think of HS seniors as being 17, but I know that’s not the case for everyone. My impression has been that they usually advance at 18, but they can remain in YW/YM longer if they prefer. That’s basically what the Handbook (9.1.4) says regarding membership in RS:
“A young woman normally advances into Relief Society on her 18th birthday or in the coming year. By age 19, each young woman should be fully participating in Relief Society. Because of individual circumstances, such as personal testimony and maturity, school graduation, desire to continue with peers, and college attendance, a young woman may advance into Relief Society earlier than her 18th birthday or remain in Young Women longer. Each young woman counsels with her parents and the bishop to decide what will best help her remain an active participant in the Church.”
The Handbook says that YM can be ordained an elder at 18, without any mention of graduation. But my experience is that they don’t kick you out of the YM at 18 if you want to stay with the priests for awhile. I don’t see anything in the Handbook or in my experience that would forbid someone from moving on to RS/EQ on their 18th birthday if that’s what they want to do. Of course, that doesn’t mean that some bishops might not balk at having them advance. It sounds like Rockwell’s bishop might be in that category.
I’m trying not to be grumpy about it, but not very successfully. Last week, our last third hour was a primer on how to implement the new program, which had already been done in our Relief Society counsel. I left with the feeling that it was an exercise in ‘you will never miss the third hour because you will remember how bad it can be.’ Yesterday felt like another ‘this is how the new program will go.’ I could not get out of the church quickly enough. I couldn’t even muster a desire to visit with my dear neighbors. It’s bound to get better.
Did anyone else get “instructions” on how to bear testimonies? Our Stake President was in our Ward and delivered a message from an Area Seventy. Best recollection of it is:
Don’t make your testimony a talk, lesson, story, socializing, or a list of thank-yous.
Try to limit your testimony to 30 seconds. (previously it was 2-3 minutes)
Acknowledge the love of Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith/Russell M. Nelson, and the truthfulness of the Church (BOM wasn’t mentioned; probably an accident)
Always open with a greeting (Good morning, afternoon, etc.)
Then, to top it all off, he assured us that the Spirit would guide us. WHAT?!?! After that list of do’s and dont’s, where does the Spirit fit in? I was so turned off by this. I could see how a visitor would not feel prompted to say a little testimony since they don’t have all the proper elements.
When he invited the congregation to participate, no one moved for awhile (afraid to be first). In reality, we finished the testimony portion about 5 minutes early. And yes, most of the testimonies were 30 second cookie-cutter. I told the EQ Pres. that I felt like going forward and saying “Good morning. DITTO”.
So, if anyone else got similar instructions, please indicate. I am curious to know how far up the admin ladder this goes.
Rockwell, our ward also held off on the blanket priesthood advancements. We have about 20 YM advancing in the new program and we are waiting to interview each one before they we present them to the congregation.
SP attended our F&T meeting (western US, not Utah). Nothing of the sort was said. The counsel you received is absolute garbage, IMHO.
It went well and smoothly. Meetings fit the schedule. The testimonies were, as usual, generally good and all over the map, just like our ward members are generally good and all over the map.. And our Primary hour was fine.
We have a smallish ward. My husband says that the Sunday school Gospel Doctrine class was able to squeeze into the Relief Society room. My sister-in-law’s ward is much larger so they tried one big class in the chapel. Not a good venue for such. She’s hoping that the Sunday School president will start up a second GD class to reduce the class size and increase opportunities for participants to hear each other and share insights..
No Area Seventy letter in our ward. Some Area Seventies micro-manage when they are trying to be helpful. It backfires.
My experience is that when “authority” advice is given over the pulpit regarding testimonies, people remember and are hesitant for a while, but unless a bishop gets all uptight about it, after a bit most of us soon go back to just saying what we feel to say.
A YW president in my extended family says that with this Sunday’s change she finds herself needing to work on changing the ways she touches base with her YW leaders and young women. She used to rely on Sunday YW time and the time before that YW meeting (Sunday school) to finalize details and discuss ideas. With a stake conference next week, she will not have a Sunday YW meeting/automatic time with them until the 4th Sunday of January. She says she thinks it is going to take her some time to figure that out that communication stuff, but, at the same time, she said it made her realize how much her formal Sunday worship time had been taken up with worrying about details and YW stuff, instead of focusing on worship.
Her comments struck me..
@gilgamesh, I understand taking time to interview each young man and that not everyone will advance in one week.
Our bishopric made an announcement that they will be monitoring the boys and invite them to advance when deemed ready, whatever that means. It doesn’t sound like they are trying to advance people in any time frame.
You hear the adage “less is more”, well two hour church is “less is… well, less”. But on F&T meeting that is a good thing, we ended five to the hour and that 15 min less time did feel good. F&T is an extrovert’s thing, that is how they worship, I guess, as for me it is a good time to read and study; so in the end I loss a little study time.
I can see how for Primary this is a big change. I don’t know how it will affect the kids and what they learn, but I guess we will find out.
Sunday School was longer and the teacher we had ended short by ten minutes, not sure why, still had things to discuss on the board. No real change in the numbers in SS as we rarely have other classes.
As for the manual, I will wait and see. Did not see much value in it, should just list the scriptures we are covering next time and tell people to study those.
Did not hear anyone miss the third hour, but also did not have time to talk to anyone really.
As for the Millennials, I don’t think there is anything that can keep them if they don’t have a testimony for Christ. They have attention spans of a puppies, they can spend hours texting or on Facebook, but can’t spend five minutes consecutively, doing anything like studying, shorter church will not help that.
Markagblog: we get “instructions” on testimony giving about every 6 month or maybe a year. Not in the details (length of time and what to acknowledge) we do get reminded to say who we are, we have a lot of change over in our ward and that it is not a “talk or lesson”. And we get reminded to have the little kids get up and have someone whisper into their ears testimonies, but the people who do, it just keep doing it. If we did the 30 sec testimony thing we would be over in about 10 min, tops. Which for me would be a plus.
(Automatically downvoting any comment grousing about the sins of Millennials.)
In our ward it seemed that people were making a real effort to make the most of a shorter period of time, which I’ve always thought is the best argument for shorter meetings of all kinds. Call it Parkinson’s Law at work.
We received no explicit instructions on testimonies, but I’m a big believer that we need to combat the open mic night mentality. The meeting is intended allow for public expressions of faith, which may involve anecdotes, gratitude, and even disclosure of some personal struggles. However, it’s way too easy for these meetings to drag on due to people who just like the sound of their own voice, people saying something rote because they feel they need to (including children), or people using the mic as an open forum to complain. It’s hard to set the right tone, but ultimately I agree that a specific list of rules probably doesn’t fix the problem.
I was a little late. After a couple of sermons I decided maybe one of the changes was an end to testimony meetings. No, they are the usual mini-sermons from people that really want to speak at Sacrament meeting and this is their opportunity. But I am not opposed to it; better the mini-sermons than 45 minutes of relative silence broken by bored babies crying or demanding Cheerios.
Sunday School was much improved. It is a huge change to go from “what did you learn at church today” to “what did you learn at home last week”. There’s really not a lot for the teacher to do but facilitate people telling each other what they learned at home.
So it has mostly been for me for decades; I learn mostly by my own study but enjoy discussing what I think I understand with others, to reinforce ideas that we have in common and re-visit ideas where I might be in error.
At the ward I visited, the Bishop was very deliberate and pointed about inviting people to come and specifically bear basic, bare-bones testimonies about Jesus, the Church and the Restoration. Thankfully, people didn’t listen. 🙂
Spending time in other churches where the worship service is carefully planned and executed and any disruption is treated as a major disaster has made me love the chaos and unpredictability of a Mormon fast and testimony meeting.
A follow up to what Zach and others have said. The open office time for the clerks that was during Sunday School is now likely to be after church. This will extend the time that the bishopric remains after the 2 hour meeting block.
The hall class was very small this week and it was totally full in Gospel Doctrine class.
We got a brief “testimonies should focus on the Savior” kind of instruction, which I just figured was our bishopric trying to follow the guide that came with the 2 hour church announcement about sacrament meeting being focused on Jesus.
Our meeting was timely, primary was not well planned out, no instructions or announcement about where to take kids other than”there will be signs on doors” only to search and find no signs, but that Jr/Sr had been combined and start with singing time. My 8 year old was SOUR that the much anticipated move away from little kids didn’t happen, and I hadn’t known to set expectations in advance. By the time I got my kids to their class the RS room was packed, no seats left. Thankfully I used some of that time to figure out where to pick up my kids at the end, because again no information provided and it was the kind of mass chaos you would expect as families tried to find each other.
Hopefully they add another SS class.
First Primary class (just got called), 9 year olds. It went beautifully. We got to know the kids, had a couple laughs, ate cookies, read a scripture, set some goals for the year, then off to singing time. We all agreed that we hate singing time but we’re grateful that it’s short.
Primary presidency told us not to bring treats and I pretended I didn’t get the memo, though I did insist to the kids that treats would be a rare occurrence.
I team teach the 3-4 yr olds in Primary. The other teacher taught school. This year is going to be a challenge. We have a very young class who couldn’t listen to anything. The teacher was somewhat prepared for that. Really, these kids should spend another 3-6 mons. in nursery. So glad they/we only have to make it through 1 hr. in a tiny classroom. Thankful for Pinterest and the other places I can get ideas for this age group. The church lesson material is marginal. One would think after so many years the church would’ve developed better resources for teaching?
Autumn,
The YW were recognized yesterday in my ward similarly to the brief announcement of the boys the previous week. I’m not exactly sure why this was done a week later, but knowing my Bishop, I’d guess it was a decision based exclusively on time saving.
Yesterday’s meeting, much to my surprise, almost felt a bit rushed. I’m sure this has a lot to do with how engaged I am with the talks.