My wife likes 11-2. I actually like 9-12.

That’s so insensetive. There’s 3 categories of people who don’t have kids. Empty Nesters, those who haven’t started their family yet, and those who desperately want to have kids but can’t.
I think it should be open to families with kids who are reverent too as a way to not single out and pick on the third group. Let’s face it, we with no kids have that thrown in our face way too much at church.

My favorite time for church has always been the 9:00 to noon slot. This was my favorite time growing up, before kids, and now (with kids). I just think it’s nice to get up, head out, have a nice church experience and then have the rest of the day with your family (whoever they may be). I’m big into naps for both myself and my son so this time period works great. Aren’t Sundays supposed to be a day of rest? :)

When our ward initially split recently and created a branch, we moved from a 10AM start time to a 9AM start time due to the fact that we were sharing our building for the first time. I was hoping we would keep the 9AM start time even once the branch found another place to meet (our building was too far for many of the members) but, back to 10AM we went.

Having grown up out west where there is rarely a single ward to any building, I can appreciate having to change times and not being too excited about it. At our worst, my home stake had 3 wards and a Spanish-speaking branch meeting in one building! The first ward met at 8AM, the second at 10AM, the third at 12PM, and the branch met at 2PM. Talk about challenging! Eventually they built another building and moved us around but until I moved to New England, I never met in a building with less than two wards meeting in that particular building every Sunday. It makes me laugh when our current ward squabbles over building usage. When we had 3 separate youth programs meeting in our stake center we just made did and made friends.

Good luck with brunch (the inevitable with an 11:30 meeting time) and naps, ESO. You’ll be in my thoughts!

queuno #1–that could be it, or it could have been “lots” of people to whom he is married. I really love their family and really admire his wife who sits alone through meetings with 4 little boys.

Shelah–we’ll struggle together

Ron–you know, I think the idea was introduced a little more tactfully like “we would appreciate if the people who will not have to get up and leave during Sacrament Meeting ever will sit on the stand and let the more disruptive members sit in the pews” and in my mind, I interpreted that as “people with no kids.” To be fair, no one seems to be enforcing the seating arrangements (we have been experimenting with no overflow for 2 months) and I have seen people with older kids up on the stand. Also–we have a trilingual ward, so two groups who require interpretation services fill about 1/3rd of the Chapel floor already. I think that added to the urgency of needing to recruit people to be on the stand.

Bruce–enjoy

Paroled–I am planning on corn dogs for brunch–how gross is that? I have been caught unawares after a few weeks of frolicking. Better nutrition next week….

Amira–homechurch–I remember it fondly….

It is interesting to hear about people’s preferences. Thanks for reminding me that I should feel lucky to have a building and to only have one other ward with which to negotiate.

The 3-hr block seems to almost reduce church to something that you only do on Sundays…..my 2 cents.

I would say it’s been crucial to the growth of the Church. No way you could have as many units as we do (which I believe contributes directly to the growth of the Church, having smaller units) without a standardized block.

I have never lived in a part of the Church that had its own building. We’ve always shared with another ward (even in NE Ohio in the 70s) and had a 9am ward.

for those of us with pre-church meeitngs, 1`pm is the Only True Time (and 11 isn’t bad either, but 9 (really, 7) is murder

I really like 11:15. Then you can still sleep in a little and have a relaxed breakfast but still have an afternoon nap. Wow, it’s sad how much that opinion just centered around sleep. Anyway, there are two wards in the city where I live. One meets at 9 with sacrament meeting last and the other at 9:30 with sacrament meeting first, in the same building. It can get a little bit crazy, but it’s fun. :)

Our chapel is in the same building as the Manhattan temple. Manhattan gets a lot of LDS visitors each weekend and it dawned on me that by having an 11:00am start time, we might evade the first rush.

We used to attend another ward that met in the same building and had an earlier start time in the morning. 75-125 ‘tourists’ routinely showed up to our meetings. It sometimes felt as if there were more visitors attending than actual ward members. Honestly, it was not a dynamic I enjoyed all that much.

In that respect, due to that dynamic, I prefer the 11:00am meeting time – but we’ll see how the rest of the year goes.

We just moved from the 1pm slot to the 9am time. As we jumped into the car at a quarter past 12 #1 Daughter said, “Wow we used to get yelled at about right now to hurry up!” The litle kids thought it was wonderful to have the rest of the day to play. I took a nap.

We didn’t change. A couple of wards in the stake are splitting at the end of the month, so everyone’s staying the same for a few weeks until it’s all sorted out. It’s weird not to change on the first Sunday of the year.

I’ve always liked 10 am, though I think we’ve only done it twice. It’s early enough that you still have plenty of time in the day, but late enough that you can still sleep in an hour or two later than a weekday.

I prefer 8:30-11:30 or the traditional 9-12. I could also get on board with 10AM./ Afternoon church sucks. esp if you have a stake calling.

ARJ, I was in the ward nursery for awhile and honestly, the children (18 months to 3 years old) seemed to have it easy. Lots of toys to play with, snacks and parents were never all that far away.

Lessons were maybe 2 or 3 minutes long.

Maybe you’re talking about the older kids?

My ward is the only unit in the building, and we have always met at 10:00. A year or two ago, they dissolved our old stake and our ward moved into a new stake. The new stake president wanted all the wards to start at 9:00 unless there were two wards in the building. Allegedly, the rationale for having everyone meet at the same time was that stake visitors would more easily be able to get from one building to another if they had assignments in multiple wards. (I know: that doesn’t make any sense, especially since the buildings in the stake are 0.5-1.0 hours apart).

Our ward didn’t want to change, and the bishop dragged his feet for a year, but we finally had to make the change this week. About a year ago, I overheard a member of the stake presidency tell the bishop that the handbook directed that meetings had to start at 9:00 if there was only one unit in the building. The bishop clearly didn’t believe him. Attendance seemed to be a bit down this week; we’ll see what the long-range trend is.

It’s popular to complain about the three-hour block, but those old enough to remember where they were when Neil and Buzz walked on the moon will also remember that Priesthood, Sunday School, and Sacrament meeting usually each required a separate trip to the church (except on fast Sunday), and that Sacrament meeting was an hour and a half. That’s not such a big deal if you live three blocks from the church, but if you drive 30 minutes to church, that’s three hours just driving. I could do with the three hour block being shortened, but I sure don’t want to go back to the six-and-a-half hour block.

#29 JA Benson – Having served in the Primary for some time, I can assure you that no three to six year old children sit still for three hours! Even with the 3-hour block, the first hour and 15 minutes they are their parent’s problem and the next hour and 45 mintues is broken into class, sharing time, music time, and wandering aimlessly in the hall. We used to have a woman serving in the Primary who would constatly lament how it’s “impossible” for kids to survive the 3-hour block. But I see families doing it all the time. Now… Do the Primary leaders survive as well? I don’t think so. ;)

#31 JA Benson – I assumed you were being a little sarcastic as was a little of my reply (it’s just in my nature though my dry humor doesn’t translate well via the web either). :)

I don’t disagree that the Primary program can be tough for the very little children. It’s a huge departure from their experiences in nursery and usually the first time they’re expected to sit still *ever*! And while I’m not familiar with Dr. Price, it sounds as though his analogy is right on target.

As a former Star and Sunbeam teacher I personally think a little more liveliness needs to be added to the younger classes. Good teachers and Primary Presidencies manage this though I know from experience as a young child in Primary that there are many teachers and leaders who fail miserably. It’s a rare gift to be able to work with a child on his level without speaking down to him (even 3-year-olds pick up on this) which many Primary teachers and leaders do far too often.

In my latest experience in Primary we had a music leader so interested in entertaining the children that they were impossible to calm once music time was over. While the kids loved it, in my opinion she was a little immature and really didn’t understand that while entertaining the masses is useful, creating havoc doesn’t help anyone.

Any way you slice it, Primary is a tough gig!