We’re weeks away from the end of the three-hour block. Implemented in 1980, the three-hour block was, in part, a response to the energy crisis, in part a recognition that as the church expanded, the time it took to get to church (over and over) could potentially be burdensome. And (in reasoning that reflects the current change), it was meant to reemphasize the importance of individual and family gospel study.
Now, I was super-young in 1980; I have vague memories of going to Primary on weekday nights, but, on the other hand, I was young enough that I’m pretty sure I didn’t know what a weekend was, so maybe I’m retroactively imposing memories on the shift. It’s fair to say, though, that I don’t remember what the reaction to the shift was, or how well it met its goals.
And I’m pretty much as happy as anybody about the change. (Okay, not as happy as anybody; my kids are past napping, so three hours doesn’t risk imposing on nap times and making everybody in the house grumpy.)
That said, I see some potential pitfalls in the new, shorter schedule. They’re avoidable, but it will take work to avoid them, so we need to recognize them.
Building Zion
This, to me, is the big potential issue. Family is important, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in a ward where the nuclear family has been underemphasized. But strengthening our families is only one of our communal obligations. We should be actively working to build Zion, a society where we are of one heart and one mind, and where there are no poor among us.
We can build Zion on several levels, but if we limit our Zion-building to our own homes, we’ve abdicated our responsibility to the larger body of Christ and the larger world around us.
I mean, the two-hour block gives us an extra hour each week that we can serve our community. But it takes away an hour we spend with our co-congregants. For some (the extroverts, those who live in Mormon-dense communities), that may not be a problem. If you interact with your ward members outside of church, dropping an hour of formal interaction probably affects your community-building marginally, if at all.
But not everybody is an extrovert. Not everybody live in a Mormon-dense community. I’m an extrovert, so I can’t speak from experience about introverts. But I can speak to Mormon density. Most weeks, the only time I see or talk to a Mormon who isn’t in my immediate family is at church. There are all sorts of reasons underlying that (age, place in life, level of extracurricular activities), but one significant one is, there aren’t a ton of Mormons who live near me. I have kids in three public schools here in Chicago.[fn1] Between the three schools, only one has any Mormon kids who aren’t my kids, and that other Mormon kid is probably seven grades ahead of mine. There are no Mormons who work where I work. Or who work where my wife works. Or who are on my kids’ sports teams. Or who live nearby.[fn2]
Building community—building Zion—requires love, which requires interaction. And we now have about fifty fewer hours of ordinary interaction every year. That’s not necessarily a bug, but it’s something we need to recognize, and something we need to actively take into account as we work to create a Zion community.
Home Gospel Learning
As Mormons, we do pretty well on our religious knowledge.
Part of the reason, I suspect, is that we spend at least three hours a week at church and, as abysmal as the teaching can be, we’re at least exposed to some degree of religious discussion. That we also rotate teaching can’t hurt, either.
Now, we’re spending an hour less a week in formal religious discussion (and, as my bishop pointed out, we also will have fewer callings to go around, so we’ll likely spend less time preparing lessons). I can’t help but think that’s going to impact our collective religious knowledge.
Not for everyone, of course. Some of use will definitely use the extra hour we have to study on our own, or with our families.
But not everybody will. Not everybody has the skills or knowledge base to productively teach themselves religious topics (and, based on my quick skim of the new manuals, they are abysmal).
And not everybody can. I mean, I’ll be able to—my wife, kids, and I attend church and share roughly the same religious convictions. But not every family does. I’ll go so far as to say, some families are hostile toward the church and religious discussion at home. Those individuals—and those who aren’t married, are divorced, are widowed, or otherwise don’t have immediate family to study with—are left without the community, without the discussion, that they enjoy at church.
Again, there are ways to deal productively with this. For some, maybe they get together with other likeminded folks (though that means that they’ve had to not only add a church-equivalent meeting, but they may have to spend extra time traveling, taking them effectively to a pre-consolidated block schedule). Others, though—I’m thinking of individuals with hostile family members—aren’t going to have that as an option.
So how do we deal with the problems of building Zion and of getting enough religious instruction? I don’t know, but I’d be curious to hear your ideas. What can we do individually? What can our wards and stakes do? What can the general church do? It seems to me like a pressing issue, one that risks getting lost in the celebration of a church schedule that better matches our internet-destroyed attention spans.[fn3]
[fn1] Long story about how public schools work here.
[fn2] I mean, there are probably one or two within a couple miles, but at urban density, that’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the people who live near us.
[fn3] Or maybe our television-destroyed attention spans? I mean, ultimately, it doesn’t matter what destroyed our attention spans, just that they’ve been destroyed.