Shortening the Three Hour Meeting Block

She Said:

I grew up a PK (preacher's kid) which is similar to being the child of a Mormon Bishop, but for your whole life. I learned early what it was like to hang around the church for hours. Both Dr. B. and I love church meetings, and in our early years we thought nothing of going to two wards' full 3-hour schedule of meetings. But these days, the long hours are starting to wear on me. Am I getting a little ADHD in my old age? Or is it that I've heard it all before, and there is nothing new under the sun?

For many years rumors have circulated that church meetings were to be pared down to 2 hours. Usually the rumors have it that Sunday School would be the meeting to go, with members expected to provide scripture study in the home. I don't think these rumors will ever come to fruition, but I want to explore whether it would be a good thing to cut down on our Sunday services.

In today's fast-paced world, 2 hours is a long time to sit still and listen to a lecture-type format. It is especially difficult for families with children. Small children might be better served with a shorter, more varied program during the Primary time. A 30-minute classroom lesson, 15-20 minutes of singing, and a 5 or 10 minute Sharing Time message sounds like a perfect schedule for ages 3 to 11. This would also be less of a burden on all of the many members that it takes to keep a Primary fully staffed.

Adults might appreciate the format, too. One thing I miss about my Protestant upbringing was the coffee hour that followed our meetings. While I wouldn't necessarily suggest something similar for Mormons, I think that if our meetings were shorter, we might be chipper enough to socialize for a while afterwards, instead of rushing everyone home. For me, a big part of going to church is the fellowship, and even with our 3-hour blocks, we don't experience much of that, unless we're skipping our classes.

The biggest disadvantage I see to cutting out Sunday School would be less gospel study. But as it stands now, I think our Sunday School time is ineffective and boring. Any scriptural learning that takes place could easily be replaced by more emphasis in Sacrament Meetings on centering talks around scriptural topics, and a few additions to PH/RS. Perhaps special manuals could be prepared to assist families in setting up a Sunday School hour in their home. Many families would do a fine job at this, although I realize that for some it might take too much effort and fall by the wayside. I'd love to see small group scripture study classes during the week for those who are interested in coming together for discussion.

Do you see any other disadvantages to cutting our Sunday services by an hour?


He Said:

From time to time I hear that the Church is considering doing away with Sunday School so we as parents can better teach our kids the gospel. If it is anything like FHE that means we may or may not have more time for sleeping since FHE is a hit and miss proposition at my home. I think it will be sporadic for parents to actually use a manual and teach their kids as BiV suggests. I would probably try it out for a year or two or even five but it would probably be a very uneven treatment for my various kids. Over the course of several years the manual would get boring. I guess they could throw in the Preach My Gospel or some other manual to liven it up but for all intents and purposes they would need more than one manual because parents and kids would get bored. I suspect they would have us use the priesthood manuals which is way over kids heads just to save on correlation.

My oldest three children born during my youth experienced more concentrated gospel study which included three attempts at reading the Book of Mormon with one successful completion in an eighteen year period. I think a Sunday School manual might work for one or two cycles but for my eight children there would be gaps in their religious education. At least in a formal Sunday School class there is a week after week attempt to get them to engage with the gospel. Sometimes even when they are being obtuse the gospel seems to sink in. Between primary or young men or young women and sunday school with seminary my children have learned the gospel. I personally would hate to see it go for their sakes.

In my case the gospel doctrine class is a big snooze. I have to shut my mouth to keep from monopolizing the class. Nine times out of ten I know more than the teacher who many times preaches false doctrine or the gospel according to them. I have read most of the statements of the general authorities and can quote them til I'm blue in the face. Students and the teachers don't appreciate a know it all. I wish there were a beginner, intermediate, and advanced gospel doctrine class since one class doesn't fit all. I humble myself by sitting through these classes week after week. I always remember J. Rebuen Clark Jr. on his death bed saying he wants to remain faithful. To me getting through a gospel doctrine class for the fifth cycle is enduring to the end.

An interesting thing about the consolidated three hour block was it was supposed to free people up to do more Christian acts and do more gospel related things. However the only thing I noticed was that home teaching shifted in to the slot. Prior to that it was done mostly on week nights. Eventually it became an expectation that on the last Sunday of the month home teachers would want to come over. I resent my home teachers coming over on Sunday because it cuts in to my rest time and my occasional hymn singing. Every few months I like to sing out of pitch from the hymnbook and subject any child I don't see singing to having to sing with me.

I have visited a lot of LDS over the years and most of them seem to enjoy Sunday as a time for socializing with members. A few of the more stalwart invited us over for dinner a few times a year. Youth like to go to each others houses and hang out and end up eating with them occasionally so there is a lot of interaction during the primary and mutual years. In the last ten years I probably remember having a whole family over to our house for dinner or parties less than five or six times a year that leaves forty-five weeks for resting, remember on the seventh day even the Lord rested.

I personally like the earliest morning block so it can free me up to either do genealogy when I am in a quasi-righteous mood or to watch the Big Love, the Chicago Cubs game or the World Series of Poker when I am in a who cares mood. If there were a two hour block I might do the same amount of genealogy which runs in cycles. When my wife is in to it I am more gungho when she isn't I have a hard time now that my eyesight is diminishing. It is a back breaking tedious process to crank a microfilm reel or to even search on Ancestry or Family Search.

Mostly I just spend the time sleeping around eating lunch/dinner so I can be rejuvenated for the coming work week. Unfortunately I spend a lot of time taking my eight children to different firesides, bishop youth discussions or over to friends homes. The latter I try to not do and make the other kids in the ward come to our house. Once in a blue moon my son and I go home teaching to one of the three families. An extra hour means we could go earlier home teaching since we could get our nap in sooner or on the other three weeks I could watch more gospel movies or the Big Love which is tangentially LDS related. Don't worry, I change the channel if I think there is any sex happening to keep the Sabbath Day holy.


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She Said: Why We Should Get Rid of the TV

Dr. B. and I spent several years of our early married life without a television in our home. During these years, our tiny children learned to read, were read to several hours a day, memorized poems and scriptures, and spent time in creative play. We read books together, we exercised, we gardened, we got outside. We held family home evening and scripture study regularly. Now I see a great decrease in the amount of time we spend doing those things. I ascribe this to too much TV watching--and to some extent the time we spend on the computers.

Because our family is not very good at controlling our television habit, I think we should get rid of it completely. Every time I go downstairs, I find the TV on. Sometimes no one is watching it, but it is droning on in the background. We are a family who never watches "R" rated movies, yet some of the shows that are on cable TV are filled with profanity, sex, and violence. Dr. B. and the children are good about changing the channel when I point out that what they are watching does not meet our standards, but I am not always in the room when television is being viewed. And I hate being the one to have to nag. I don't watch TV at all, so why should I have to be the one to monitor which shows are on?

A movie called The Tube discusses the history of television and its effect on the human brain. It is truly horrifying to discover what TV is doing to our minds. High rates of television flicker can cause epileptic seizures in children, to the point that they have to be hospitalized. Others are mesmerized by the screen. There is measurably less brain activity and they lose touch with their feelings. They sit and stare at the screen and cannot get up and turn it off. It is like being under the influence of a drug.

At times I have attempted to set limits to TV watching, but I am unsuccessful. When I leave the room or the house, the TV is turned back on. The children know their father does not agree with my efforts, and they play us off against each other. Our daughter who just graduated is almost 18, and the one who is home from college for the summer is almost 20. It is difficult to set limits on the types of shows they are watching and the amount of time they spend, especially when I retire for the evening before they do.

What kinds of limits do you, our readers, set on TV watching? When do you know that your family's TV watching is out of control? When is it better to just get rid of the TV?

He Said: Why We Shouldn't Get Rid of the TV

As a kid growing up some of my favorite moments of escape were watching television. My parents had constant fights and one of the ways we would drone out the conflict between them was to watch Bonanza, Lost in Space, Star Trek, Petticoat Junction, Perry Mason, Magnum P.I., etc. We watched everything including educational TV like Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, Mister Wizard, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Sing Along with Mitch (Miller), Hallabaloo, Dick Clark's American Bandstand, Meet the Press, the Joker's Wild (gameshow), Jeopardy, and College Bowl. Our afternoons were spent watching soap operas like Dark Shadows or the Guiding Light. Followed by the Joker's Wild, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffith then the cartoon series of Bullwinkle, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Felix the Cat into the Huntley and Brinkley Show. Then usually we would sit down to dinner and discuss what happened at school or what our parents did. We would do our homework fast then watch TV until ten o'clock. On Friday we could stay up since our parents would go out and we would watch the Creeper Feature, Outer limits, or the Twilight Zone. On Saturday we would watch old movies so we saw all the classics like Turner puts on even then since living in Las Vegas Howard Hughes had a fixation on them and they played on his station 24/7. We tried to stay up and sleep in on Sunday.

One of the main reasons I enjoyed watching television was that as a boy I was a know it all and I could relate to my peers if I could tell them every intricate detail about a show. If you didn't know what was going on you were considered a loser. Even today I feel it important for my own children to be able to fit in with their peers by knowing what is happening on the hottest shows including on the Real Housewives of New York or Gossip Girls which they tend to watch when I'm not looking.

As an adult I never had much time to watch television. I married Bored in Vernal who had converted as a teenager to being an extreme Southern Baptist. She was like a Brigham Young Mormon when I first married her. Even though in her own family they were fanatical card players she eschewed card playing, television viewing, and novel reading as the devil's mischief. Trying to be a good Mormon and not wanting any more fighting than I already had I acquiesced to her pressure to put away such practices. Down deep I didn't see what the big deal was to do all three. I understand the Mormons concerns for card playing since my father was a compulsive gambler and I never understood the symbolism to the face cards. I figured that my children would be better people if they used the time to read their scriptures, play a musical instrument, and read educational books.

I saw some results in my oldest children who could bear their testimony by the age of three and recite three hundred poems including the Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Back then we were both pretty conservative Mormons and got along despite an occasional fight fully well as we had the same kind of ideological bent. After the years rolled on things changed and she began to give in from time to time in Olympic years or the time for General Conference. We ended up having more disagreements and distancing ourselves from one another. Television became a form of escape for my kids and I.

Bored in Vernal said I never did anything with my kids so I started watching television with them including American Idol which infuriated me when our contestant wouldn't make the finals or win. Even though we sat for hours watching things my kids don't know how to shut up during a show. They sing songs constantly, they discuss whacked out concepts and tell me the latest gossip about this person or that person. Since we don't sit down to dinner our dinner is spent watching Cash Cab (TV trivia show), Deal or No Deal, Jeopardy, followed by our favorites like House. My wife has been subverted also as from time to time we draw her in to House marathons. It may not be as tranquil as the ten or twelve years we didn't have a television but it is a social way for us to interact.

I recently came across an Internet paper by Amy Showmaker entitled Do Educational TV Programs Have Positive Effects on Children's Learning? She cites several recent studies that show that television is a good socializing agent and that children who learn on such shows as Sesame Street and musical concepts do better at retaining it when coupled with video.

I actually wanted to get the BYU channel and called Time Warner but they don't have it in South Carolina where I live. I am contemplating switching to Dish Network or Direct TV so we can watch them. Then we can have a reformation and compromise watching our dinner time staples followed by good propoganda. Maybe then Bored in Vernal will feel better about our content.

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